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‘ YOU DAMNED FOOL OF A MAN ,’ SNARLED ELOGAST, FOLLOWING Arren through the gates of his shattered Reach.

The blood of the coup had been washed from the Regnas’ ancestral palace, but some evidence remained: a scratch of sword in stone, a dark space where a carpet had once been, a cracked panel of wood.

Outside, the walls and gardens were a shattered mess, the bones of the old catacombs exposed to the salt air.

‘You cannot speak to me that way, Ser Elogast,’ Arren bit back as they reached the inner keep.

Though he had dismissed his guards, the palace was still filled with people.

Stewards, builders, engineers, all trying to clear the mess that had been made.

Nobles, or their emissaries, and their trains of hangers-on, record keepers, lawmakers and guards.

They muttered about the cloisters, staring.

Elo held his tongue. Barely. Arren led him up into the citadel proper, and along a cool and draughty corridor that still smelled faintly of blood and smoke. Back to the war room, with its dented brass door and blackened ceiling.

As they entered past the guards who kept station at the door, they disturbed two archivists in grey who looked aghast at the sight of the king in their midst. They were carefully separating the pieces of Arren’s detailed map of Middren, unpicking the threads that bound each piece of vellum to the whole, and then rolling each one and packing it into labelled scrolls that would follow the king on their journey north.

Elo had to admit the genius of Arren’s work; in using the notation and drawing skills they had whipped into them as squires, he had given them one of their few advantages against the Talicians: knowledge of their own lands.

‘May I address you now?’ said Elo through gritted teeth. He had left Inara behind, grieving once more, and Kissen, with hurried and rough goodbyes so he could follow the king back up from the mayhem and blood of the shore, and the ship could set sail. He might never see them again.

‘Sunbringer,’ murmured one of the guards at the door. ‘I can have him removed?’

‘No,’ said Arren quicky before Elo rounded on the man. ‘Leave us.’

The knight cast Elo a filthy look but did as he was bidden. The archivists followed and the door was closed behind them.

‘You as good as killed that woman,’ said Elo when they were alone. ‘We’re losing control of our own citizens before we’ve even made it onto the field.’

‘I did no such thing,’ said Arren.

‘You should not have come to the harbour, showing your arrogance to the masses. You knew this was their first sighting of you in weeks. You knew there could be blood. You should have stayed where you were put.’

Arren’s expression flashed with anger, his jaw setting in a hard line. ‘How dare you?’ he said. ‘She is the one to blame for the knife’s edge this city walks. And so are you.’

‘What did you expect?’ said Elo. ‘That you could burn noble families and take no consequences? Waste a fortune marching on a peaceful city to show your might? You are exactly the fool-boy you were. Sword first, head later.’

‘You have no idea,’ Arren said, and laughed hollowly. ‘When I came to power this land had lost wealth, gods and faith. I held it together when the gods would have torn us apart. And they are still trying. I am still fighting for our freedom from their madness.’

‘Yet you desire to be one of them,’ growled Elo. ‘What does that make you?’

Arren scoffed, flushed with fury. Elo, too, felt the anger within him, burning up his flesh, his throat, his skin.

He wanted to throttle Arren, wanted to fight him again, beat him into the ground.

He wanted to ask why, of all the things he could have said to hurt him, had he chosen to tell him he loved him?

‘I desire to be the greatest king that Middren has ever known,’ said Arren in a low voice, putting his hand on his chest. ‘To break our reliance on gods and their games. Like that girl you have been harbouring.’

For a moment, Elo saw Inara, her face twisted with rage, her hand outstretched towards Arren, choking the life from his heart.

He had seen Inara do terrifying things: summon gods through a city, acting as their shrine, kill a man in the dark with an arrow.

But he shook the images away. He would speak none of it to Arren, who might use her whatever it cost her.

‘Inara did not choose her birth,’ he said. ‘It is you who wants to burn like a god, demand like a god, sacrifice like a god.’

‘I know all the sides of my own story, Elogast,’ said Arren. ‘I had to be ruthless to secure this throne.’

‘The throne you all but lost weeks ago?’ He laughed without humour. He could not hold it in. He wanted to lay every accusation at the altar of their broken trust and wound him as deeply as he had been wounded. ‘Whatever you think you gain, Arren, you leave only blood and chaos in your wake.’

Arren winced as the blow landed. Elo recognised the expression of quiet, inward shattering he so often wore after facing his mother.

What had happened to the man who said he had run out of tears at the first death her own pridefulness had caused?

How had he seen the path she had walked blindly and then followed her, knowing that blood would be at its end?

Arren took in a breath, clearly willing himself to be calm. The fire in his heart was quiescent. Elo wondered if the god listened to their conversations, if she had used her will and power to turn him cruel. Perhaps he had wished it. But no. Every step Arren had taken had been his own.

‘Elogast, I didn’t know what would happen at the harbour,’ he said. ‘It would do me no good now to have Lady Craier dead. I’d lose the other Houses that sided with her, Vittosk, Graiis, Yesef … and any potential for Irisian aid.’

‘If you didn’t know you’d stoked madness enough in your followers that they’d kill for you, then you are stupider than I thought.’

They stood, staring at each other. The afternoon sun, casting light through the glass trellis doors, was briefly scattered by a cloud of swifts wheeling past, screaming.

There was too much said and unsaid between them, and the silence was full of embers and dying flame.

‘I mean to name you commander of the standing army,’ said Arren at last. He reached up and lifted the circlet from his head, then placed it on the table by his map.

‘You …’ Elo floundered. ‘What?’

‘You are to be reinstated, since our previous commander general failed in his duties.’

Failed in his duties? Arren had killed him when Elo made a laughing stock of him.

‘You will receive a commander’s pay,’ added Arren, as if that was incentive. ‘And join my war council when we gather mornings and evenings on the trail.’

‘You can’t buy me.’

‘Your country needs you,’ Arren growled, then he paused, his voice lowering, softening. ‘And so do I.’

‘You have plenty of nobles to choose from.’

‘I don’t want a noble who’s been tilting at fixed targets since they were five years old,’ said Arren.

‘I need the boy who read every strategic treatise because he could. The one who worked to be better than everyone even though he started fighting later. The one who helped me win the God War, recruited a whole country to my side. I need your strategic mind, your level head, and your ability to challenge me.’ He grimaced. ‘Though perhaps not quite so fiercely.’

Elo wouldn’t let Arren sway him. ‘I made my stance clear years ago,’ he said, hoping his voice wouldn’t shake.

‘I no longer work for you. I will not kiss the ground you walk on: you have Knight Commander Peta for that, and the generals she deigns to promote. There are plenty of those you can fetch from Lesscia.’

Arren leaned back against the table. The room was warm, despite the breeze across the courtyard outside the window, too warm. Elo could feel heat creeping down the back of his neck, across the burn scars on his chest.

‘You’re still in communication with your rebel factions,’ said Arren, looking casually over the remains of his map. ‘I am aware your pacifist rebel, Naiala, remains in custody in Lesscia.’

Elo narrowed his eyes. ‘Is that a threat?’

Arren frowned. ‘No, Elo, of course not. I just know that the new Lord Yether has little loyalty amongst this guard. His sisters in Daesmouth have requisitioned most of them.’

‘Is it any surprise they do not trust a son who killed his father at your instruction?’

Arren’s mouth twitched, but then something in his face hardened.

‘If you’re expecting me to apologise, you will be waiting forever,’ he said. ‘I don’t desire forgiveness. I desire victory. And victory we can claim with you at my side.’ He offered his hand. ‘The rebel and the king.’

Elo moved back, away from Arren. There was still a part of him that wanted to go to him, to hold him and tell him he would fix it all.

‘I will fight for you,’ he replied hoarsely, ‘because I love this land, and the people in it. You can give me any title you want, but what I do is not for you any more.’

Arren withdrew his hand. He looked tired. The face he showed to the world, the lightness, the charm, was not the one he showed to Elo. They stood in silence for a long moment.

‘Do you even think about it?’ the king said quietly, not breaking their gaze. ‘What I said to you in Lesscia?’

‘You were never in Lesscia,’ Elo reminded him.

Arren stepped towards him, lowering his voice. ‘I told you I loved you,’ he said. ‘I meant it.’

Kissen’s words echoed in his head. Love and pain are not so different.

No. Elo wouldn’t go down that road and open the vault of his own heart. He had locked Arren’s space in it away long ago. Instead, he remembered what Hseth the fire god had said, when she had tried to rip out his heart. For Arren. Because of Arren.

You are the last thing he loves, and he has chosen to lose you.

Elo shook his head. ‘You chose to lose me, Sunbringer,’ he said, flinging the name like the insult he intended and turning for the door. ‘You cannot wish me back.’