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W e make remarkably good time heading across the wide plains, taking advantage of the skill and experience of the Savasci to follow trade routes that lead us along meandering streams and the occasional thriving town.

We stop only long enough to gather food and supplies and pitch our camp early the first few days, to allow those who are still injured more time to sleep under the wide sky.

The first night, I’m dead to the world. The second night, I realize that while so many of the sick are sleeping, Fortiss isn’t.

He moves from pallet to pallet, standing over each of the wounded, murmuring words I can’t quite catch.

They sound both musical and foreign to me, and I think about the books that he spirited out of Lord Daggar’s inner chambers, the ones he didn’t send into the Blessed Plane.

I’m once more drifting off to sleep, lulled by the odd cadence of words that he speaks over the still gravely burned Tennet, when I hear a murmur to my left.

“He walks too close to the darkness, even now,” murmurs Syril.

I glance up at her with some surprise, but her eyes are on Fortiss, her manner taut and high energy. I want to ask her what she means, but I already know. “He’s carrying the winged crown with him, isn’t he?”

“He never puts it down. He knows enough not to put the thing on his head, at least. Whatever happened on the other side of the border wall convinced him that isn’t a good idea, but he told me he feels connected to it.

He found it after all, he liberated it. And even though he nearly was trapped by it, he felt its power—and has used it to heal.

” She grimaces. “The dark shall draw the dark.”

“And what exactly is this particular darkness capable of, Syril?” The time has come for me to ask this question.

It’s something that has been niggling in the back of my brain since nearly the moment we arrived at the Eighth House…

and everything I’ve experienced after that moment has only deepened my certainty that the Savasci know far more than they’ve shared so far.

“I’ve seen the fortifications of the Eighth, I’ve met…

well, I’ve met the ghost of Lord Daggar, anyway.

There’s no way that Daggar in any form would’ve allowed you to live, suffered you to exist unless you had some advantage that he couldn’t combat.

At first, I thought you’d simply entered into some arrangement to ensure his protection, but if so, you didn’t do a very good job? ”

She snorts. “Lord Daggar would have sooner died than accept the protection of the Savasci, but as it turns out, we couldn’t have saved him from his doom.

It was put into motion twenty years ago and more when he opened his doors to a new lord protector, one who had him preening with pride and spilling his secrets like a child.

I had already left the Eighth House by then, joining ranks with the Savasci.

We are a house unto ourselves, Lady Talia, as I suspect you’ve figured out.

We, alone, hold the sacred story of the Protectorate’s birth. ”

I shift on my pallet, staring at her. “You’re talking about the warrior Ehlyn. The woman who stood with Mirador.”

Her brows drift up, her eyes cool and inscrutable in the dark. “So you saw the truth when you put on the winged crown.”

“I saw something, for sure. I don’t even begin to understand it. Explain it to me.”

Syril settles more comfortably on her ledge, like a woman setting down a heavy burden. She’s quiet for so long that I begin to wonder if she’s drifted to sleep.

Then she speaks. “The tale of warrior Ehlyn is something every woman of the Savasci is told and commanded to memorize, for we can’t dare allow any record of it to be found.

We can’t dare allow any suspicion of it to be formed.

And we can’t share it unless we are directly and specifically asked by a friend who may never be a foe. ”

I grimace, shifting my gaze back to Fortiss.

“Then I’m not sure that you can tell me, Syril.

I don’t know what will come of the darkness that still dogs our heels.

I’ve worn the winged crown; I’ve touched the energy of the skrill and the aching depths of the Sahktar.

How has that damaged me? What might happen if I get captured and am interrogated?

Maybe it’s better if you don’t tell me what you know, not yet. ”

She chuckles softly.

“You should have thought of that before the skrill erected a statue in your honor, and Lord Protector Fortiss gave you the keys to what will now be the Thirteenth House. The Savasci are your people, Lady Talia, whether you wish to command us or not, whether you’re able to protect us or not.

We will protect you. You are the sign we have awaited after nearly five hundred years of darkness.

You command both the darkness and the light. ”

“Well, maybe, but I’ve lost connection with Gent, with all the Divhs who promised themselves to me.” My words are stony, and they hover in the air before me, damning and stark. “I may never recover it.”

She smiles. “All the more reason why you should know the story of your house, the house that has waited for you all these long years. Light willing, you’ll one day be able to share the full story in peace with the rest of the Protectorate—but for now, what you need to know is…

you’re right. The great, exalted Mirador didn’t stand alone as leader of the Imperial delegation that faced down the skrill and commanded the Divh to their aid.

A second warrior also bore a winged crown that day—Ehlyn the bow mistress.

Though a woman and smaller than most of the men in the delegation, she had grown up apprenticing under her father, who shaped, strung, and maintained bows for the Imperial army.

She was a skilled marksman and a master fletcher.

Those skills kept the company fed when food ran low, earning her the respect of all.

The history goes that Mirador discovered two crowns, not one, in some abandoned holding as the delegation pushed their way west. A wise tactician, he had no interest in stoking a competition between him and the other warriors in the troop.

He gave the second crown to Ehlyn for safekeeping, swearing her to secrecy.

As a skilled fighter, she would keep it safe. As a woman, she was no threat.”

I make a face. “Of course she wasn’t.”

“When Mirador breeched the borders of the Unlit Pass and drew the skrill into the Protectorate, Mirador beseeched the Light for aid. Nothing happened. The skrill were attacking, the delegation was overrun by snakes of every description, and Ehlyn did the only thing she could think of. She pulled the crown out of her pack, slammed it onto her head, and added her voice to Mirador’s.

That’s when the sky opened and the Divhs appeared.

Her connection was simply stronger with the Divhs until they banded with warriors on their own.

” She smiles, a little bitterly, and doesn’t say anything more for a moment.

“Before that day was done, she rode a falcon and shot flaming brands into the heart of the skrill.”

“So she saved us,” I fill in for her. “But?—”

“Ah, but did she?” Syril lifts a hand to stop me.

“Remember, it was chaos that day. No one saw what she did but Mirador and a few of the women in the troop who were fighting off a pocket of skrill nearby, hidden from Mirador’s view.

In the midst of that chaos, with the Divhs holding strong and victory certain, Ehlyn was struck down. ”

I stare at her. “By Mirador?”

She shrugs. “That’s never been proven, but by all accounts, the skrill attacked neither Mirador nor Ehlyn directly—they gave them both wide berth.

So who attacked her? Confusing matters more, by the time the serpents left this plain, a several foot-thick layer of ash covered the earth.

We believe Ehlyn and her crown were buried in that ash—or perhaps carried off by the skrill.

Either way, no one ever mentioned the second crown again, while Ehlyn was hailed a martyr for the cause—honored by Mirador and quickly forgotten.

The women who knew the truth never betrayed it to any but their own daughters, who in turn told it to their daughters from that point forward. And so, the Savasci were born.”

“But…”

“There’s more,” Syril says, lifting a hand. “All the warriors but Mirador successfully banded to Divhs that day until he took off the crown. Only then could he band to a Divh, and he understood that the crown gave him rule, but not connection. For reasons of his own, he chose connection.”

I stare at her. “That’s why he gave his crown to the First House.

And why no warrior—ever—has worn that crown since…

if it even still exists. But how is it that no one knows any of this, how is it…

” I fall silent then, once again answering my own question.

While Mirador had managed to call the skrill to him, it was Ehlyn, not Mirador, who’d successfully summoned the Divhs.

By all accounts, it was the Divhs who saved the Protectorate.

Whether another man could have summoned them doesn’t matter—a woman had.

Syril nods as she sees awareness darken my expression. “So now you understand. This is a story only outcasts can tell, Lady Talia. And even then…we whisper.”

Before she can continue, her gaze sharpens. Without another word, she nods to me, then dissolves into the shadows.

“Lady Talia.” I look up to see Fortiss striding toward me, concern etched over his face. “You should be sleeping. Above all the others, you need to conserve your strength.”

I smile as he hunkers down beside me. “How’s Tennet? His burns are healed, but he doesn’t seem to be improving as fast as he should.”

“He’s…getting there. But Tennet’s connection with Ayne is more powerful than mine with Szonja.

In many ways, I’ve made a study of it, as I hope to achieve that same link with Szonja one day.

For now, however, it’s serving to keep him in a constant loop of fury and fire, as he fights to save those who are already dead.

Not only those who died the night of this most-recent attack, but all who have died at the mercy of the skrill and the Sahktar, all the waves of darkness that have tumbled over the mountains for centuries.

The site of the Eighth House is an ancient, ancient place.

A city reborn on itself time over time, swallowed by the mountains and reborn again.

Something is tying Tennet to it as a protector, and with Ayne as his Divh, he sees not only the failed protections of the moment, but of centuries. ”

He eyes me with a bemused smile. “If I didn’t know better, I would say it was because you and he were fated mates, with a tie that binds you both to protect this great land.

But, as I’ve already said, I don’t want to accept that, Talia.

I really don’t.” He sighs, glancing away from me, as if making an admission to the Light itself. “I can’t.”

His possessiveness stirs something warm in my chest, a feeling I’d never expected to welcome. With most men, such a claim would feel stifling, but with Fortiss…it simply feels honest and true.

The firelight catches on his features, illuminating a strength that isn’t just physical, and that doesn’t need to diminish others to prove itself. When Fortiss looks at me, I don’t feel like a trophy to be won or a position to be claimed. I feel seen—simply seen—for exactly who I am.

What a wonder that is.

Still, I regard him with a bald, hopeful curiosity I work hard to hide.

Something has shifted in Fortiss. The man I met a month ago wouldn’t have laid claim so boldly over anything—least of all me.

And I want that claim, I realize. I want him.

I want this, and only this. Nothing and no one else matters.

A warrior should make her decision in seven breaths.