LOGINTHEODOSAMy eyes moved sideways before I could stop them, cutting to where Base and Draven stood with their backs to us, barely out of sight. One turn of either heads and they’d have a clear view of everything happening here.Nala and Afnie were watching from further along the shore. I brought my gaze back to Xahen and said nothing.He studied me. Then the corner of his mouth moved and he began turning away. “We’ll arrange rules and a proper—”“I’d like to honor our deal now.”He stopped.The silence lasted two full seconds.Then he turned back, very slowly.“Do you think I will not take you up on your offer?” His voice was even. “Is that why you dared to do it?”I kept my face level, even if my heart wasn’t. “You’ve honored your end. I’m here. I’d like to honor mine.”“You’ll have plenty of time to honor yours.”His eyes moved over my face.“If you think I won’t call your bluff,” he said, “you can make your way to my cabin.”Oh goddess.I looked at him. He looked right back and his j
XAHEN.Three ships sat in the water below the watchtower, two flanking one, all being loaded with men and supplies in the particular organized chaos that preceded any departure from my kingdom. I stood at the stairs and watched it come together.The arrangement was simple. The main ship would carry Binny across the river to Duskmire's shore. The two flanking it would follow at distance, watch him cross the border, and once they did, my guards would abandon ship and make their way back. Binny would stay bound in silver for the entire crossing, wrists and ankles, until he hit Duskmire's shore and someone there had the decency to cut him loose. I was leaving them the ship. I had no interest in it coming back across the river onto my land. Let Duskmire keep it.My councilors had materialized on the shore below in clusters, none of them with any official reason to be there.Base and Hale had positioned themselves near the waterline. Base had his arms crossed and was watching the loading pr
THEODOSA.Nala didn't say anything until we were outside.She walked beside me down the corridor and through the side doors and out into the grey afternoon, and she didn't say a word the whole way, which meant she was either thinking very hard or giving me space to, and with Nala it was usually both at the same time.We were halfway across the grounds before she spoke."How are you feeling.""Fine.""Theo.""I knew he wasn't letting me go." I kept walking, eyes forward. "I've known that for a while. It's not a surprise.""That doesn't mean it doesn't land."I didn't say anything to that.The grounds were quiet at this hour, that particular afternoon stillness where the kingdom had finished its morning and hadn't started its evening yet. The grey sky sat low over everything. Somewhere on the other side of the grounds someone was hammering — probably the crew still working on Nala's ceiling."Binny's going home," I said."He is.""That's what matters."Nala was quiet for a moment. "It's
THEODOSA.Afnie's spare room had a window that faced east and let the morning in whether you wanted it or not.I'd been awake for an hour before the light came through, lying on my back staring at the ceiling and thinking about nothing I wanted to be thinking about. The reconstruction on Nala's cabin had started two days ago and the noise was doing things to everyone's patience, so Nala had relocated us both to Afnie's without much discussion about it, and Afnie had put us in the two spare rooms with the efficiency of someone who had been solving problems for a living long enough that other people's crises barely registered as inconvenient.I liked Afnie's house. It was tidier than Nala's and smelled like cedar and something herbal and the kitchen was better stocked and nobody had put a hole in the ceiling recently.I sat up and pushed my hair back and listened to the house.Quiet. Afnie was already gone, probably to the palace. Nala's door was still closed, which meant she was either
XAHEN. The kingdom was fully awake by the time I came back through it. Markets open, people moving, the ordinary machinery of Obsidian running itself the way it always did. I walked through it without stopping anywhere and thought about nothing useful the entire way back, which was irritating because I had plenty of useful things to think about and my brain had decided Binny Fane’s face was more interesting than all of them. She does things she thinks she has to do. I’d been turning that over since the moment it left his mouth and I was still turning it over now and I was annoyed at myself for it. I cut across the east grounds toward my cabin because I needed a drink and a change of clothes and something to do with my hands that wasn’t this. The morning was grey and cold and the grounds were mostly empty this far from the main path, just the occasional groundskeeper and the birds doing whatever birds did in trees. I heard Kane before I saw him. Not his footsteps. Not his voice.
XAHEN.The ship was nothing impressive.A mid-sized transport vessel, the kind we used for moving cargo between the northern kingdoms. It sat low in the water at the eastern dock with two of my guards already on board and two more waiting on the pier, and it would get Binny Fane back to Duskmire in two days if the current cooperated and in three if it didn’t.I stood at the top of the dock steps with my hands behind my back and watched them bring him up from the cells.He walked without being dragged, which was either cooperation or pride. With Binny it was probably both. The silver shackle was gone from his ankle — I’d had it removed this morning — and he moved like someone reminding himself that his legs still worked the way he remembered. He was thinner than when he’d arrived. Not dangerously so, but enough that I noticed it.He saw me before he reached the steps and his jaw tightened and he kept walking.Good. Very good. I didn’t need the conversation.He stopped anyway.Of course
XAHEN. Of course they fucking noticed. I turned away from them, walked to the window overlooking the dark forest. My forest. Once upon a time, I was grossly unaware of the name they’d given this Kingdom. Obsidian. I liked it. It had a nice ring to it. But I never named my territo
XAHEN.I shoved through Nala's door without knocking.She didn't even look up from whatever the fuck she was grinding in that stone bowl of hers."Took you long enough," she said, her voice dry as dust. "I expected you an hour ago.""I had a council meeting." I let the door slam behind me. "You kno
THEODOSA. Nala half-dragged me up the cellar stairs, my legs wobbling like a newborn deer’s.The cabin was empty when we emerged—just dark wood and shadows and the lingering scent of cedar that I’d come to associate with Xahen.“Where is he?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.“Gone,” Nala
XAHEN. Kane’s estate was too fucking clean. I stood in the entrance hall that morning, staring at marble floors that gleamed like they’d been polished an hour ago. Not a speck of dust. Not a single thing out of place. Everything was pristine. Arranged. Deliberately empty of anything useful.







