Page 56

When marching on a campaign, staying in step didn’t matter.

The most important part was keeping your head up.

Any time they were organized into ranks and made to hold them as they processed along worn country roads, it was done to show that Telrus’s strength hadn’t flagged, that the soldiers were still hale and hearty and up to the challenge.

Marching down a city street in a victory parade was another matter entirely.

Adrien had the fool idea to move an entire legion through Rusta, and so the First Legion’s sixty centuries were arranged end to end, dressed in their formal uniforms, and told to make it look convincing—which here meant keep your feet on the drumbeat if it’s the last thing youdo.

They could have done with some practice, but the Third Century was giving it their all.

Mira led them with her head held high, and if she could do it battling through the damage the third Lesser Lord had done to her body, so could the rest of them.

As the victory drums pounded, they advanced through the tight streets of the capital’s interior, drenched under the stiff dress uniforms they’d all been made to wear.

It was a small mercy Kat had been assured there would be time to change and freshen up before the ball itself.

Rusta greeted them with open arms. Red streamers soared through the air overhead, the common folk lined the streets and hung from rooftops just to get a good view, and some Aurean wind magic must have gone toward keeping a constant churn of petals lofting above the ranks as they swept along the well-cobbled avenues.

Even as the dread began to build in her, Kat couldn’t help smiling at the sight of every cheering kid perched on their parent’s shoulders.

She may have been forced into this, alongside many of her compatriots, but it soothed the ache of those lost years to be properly celebrated for once—even if the public would never know that the fight had continued all the way to the capital’s doorstep.

With all three Lesser Lords conquered at last, nothing stood between the legions and the praise they’d earned for a job well done.

At the royal palace, the rest of the legion marched onward and the Third Century split off into the magnificent, manicured courtyard just beyond the outer wall.

Freed from the view of the public, half the century tore out of their uniform jackets without hesitation and began squabbling over the waterskins being passed around.

For Kat, there would be no catching of breath. Mira, even worse for wear and panting like she’d just sprinted a circuit of the city wall, caught her eye and whistled, and the two of them rushed off with the escort sent to take them to their evening attire.

Kat had seen dire wounds on the battlefield dressed with less urgency than that with which the two of them were wiped down and stuffed into their outfits.

She hadn’t spared a thought for her hair, but fortunately there were attendants for that, too, stylists who swept her long platinum-blond locks back into an elegant twist at the nape of her neck after weaving the smallest, most ineffectual battle braids she’d ever seen in her life through them.

Any impulse Kat had to complain about the accuracy of their hairstyles—clearly meant to wed the practicalities of keeping long hair on the battlefield with the sensibilities of the city’s fashion—were broadsided by the sense memory that hit her at the feeling of another person’s hands moving carefully over her skull.

It had been eight years since the last time she’d feltit.

It must have shown on her face, because Mira gave her a look that promised disciplinary action if she didn’t start acting like she was about to go to a party.

Said party was already in full swing by the time the two of them arrived.

Their escort led them through the vaulted halls of the palace proper, where Kat couldn’t help craning her neck back and ogling the tallest ceilings she’d ever seen.

That ogling proved incredibly premature when they stepped through the massive doors to the ballroom.

Aurean craft must have gone into building this room.

Nothing but the hands of the angels could possibly raise a structure so grand, much less suspend a ceiling of magnificent glass panes overtop the whole thing.

The part of Kat that was a blacksmith’s daughter through and through was captivated by the distant ironwork overhead, the lattices that had been built to support the substantial weight of the glass.

After months as an accessory to the logistics of laying a road, she couldn’t help imagining how long it had taken to coordinate all the materials, craftsmanship, and vision that had gone into this masterwork of stone, glass, and iron.

“Mouth closed,” Mira muttered at her side, and Kat’s attention snapped down to the rest of the room.

Four hundred, her legionnaire’s brain said immediately.

A sea of glittering nobility, punctuated here and there by darkened clusters of soldiers in their dress uniforms. Tables were set throughout the hall, laden with the finest finger food the castle kitchens could produce, and servants roved throughout the crowd to keep glasses full, pouring from frost-encrusted bottles that had Kat’s freshly marched throat aching.

A dais at the center of the room promised to be the focal point of the spectacle to come.

Their entrance to the hall had been quiet and unannounced, but as Kat descended the steps to the ballroom’s main floor, she felt eyes on her all the same.

One pair of eyes in particular. Her gaze darted to a knot of soldiers huddled together near one of the towering pillars that supported the ballroom’s ceiling.

Someone else needed to keep his mouth closed.

They’d already marched in rank together—quietly, businesslike, focused on keeping in step.

She’d already seen him in the trim dress uniform that emphasized the swell of his shoulders and the sturdy thickness of his torso.

But her breath caught all the same at the sight of Emory seeing her, dressed in finery, every inch Aurean nobility if not in name.

Not yet, anyway. Guilt and pride tangled within her at how often she seemed to be capable of devastating this man.

“KATRI EN, ” Ziva hollered, jarring her from the moment, and she broke into a sheepish grin as her fellow spear darted to her side, grabbed her by the elbow, and dragged her into the thick of the decade.

“Kat? Where?” Carrick asked, craning his neck until Sawyer jabbed an elbow in his side.

“You look good,” his spearbearer said. Any sympathetic, knowing look he might have spared her was immediately overwritten by Sawyer continuing, “Emory, tell her how good she looks.”

“It’ll go right to her head,” Emory quipped, tensing even worse. Hiding their flustered little romance had been hard, but it occurred to Kat now that it would be harder still to hide the hole that had been left in its wake.

“If you’re jealous, I can ask the highborns if they’ve got another pretty dress in reserve,” she replied, and the chuckle it raised from the rest of the decade was enough to smother her worries—at least for the time being.

“Scraps!” a voice called from behind their cluster. Ten of them blinked in confusion, but only one turned, and Kat had barely a moment to wonder at a man Emory’s size responding to “Scraps” before another man was colliding with him in a hug so forceful it nearly took out both Brandt and Elise.

“I’ll be damned, it is you,” the newcomer exclaimed, wrestling out of Emory’s grip and shaking him by the shoulders. “Hosts, you filled out.” He was dressed in the same uniform as the rest of them, though his shoulders were striped in golden braids that marked him as a garrison captain.

He was also—and Kat was simply being objective here—the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life, with a magnetic smile, rich brown skin, and tightly coiled hair impeccably styled into short twists.

She understood, even before Emory turned out to the rest of them and said, “Everyone, this is Von.”

“A pleasure,” Von said, ducking his head to each of them in turn. “I knew this one back when he was, oh, about this high,” he said, measuring with his hand and chucking Emory’s sternum in the same motion. “Can’t believe you made it from Egren all the way to the palace proper.”

“Can’t believe you made it,” Emory replied, awestruck. He’d looked, hadn’t he? He’d mentioned he kept checking the rosters, but he had never been sure of the man’s fate.

“Takes more than a few thralls to put me in the ground, little brother,” Von replied, but beneath his cavalier tone there was an undeniable softness, an understanding. He laid a gentle hand on Emory’s shoulder. “And you made it, too—that’s no small thing. You enlisted?”

“As soon as I was able,” Emory replied. “Had to catch up to you somehow.”

Von barked a laugh. “Classic Scraps, always dogging our heels. But I assume you’ve heard the news? The prince is going to offer full releases from service to anyone who wants one.”

“We’ve been traveling with the prince himself,” Emory said, nodding to the rest of their circle. “My century was tasked with protecting him on his campaign to build the road.”

Von’s eyes widened. “Then you must have known for months —what am I even saying? You have everything all planned out, then?”

“Planned out?”

“What you’re going to do when you take your release?”

Emory’s eyes flicked traitorously to Kat, then back. “I…I hadn’t been planning on taking my release.”

“Ah, so soldiering’s your true calling. I should have known, the way you were always stomping around in our wake.”

“It’s not yours?” Emory asked, sounding rattled. “You were enlisted, I thought.”