“I just . . .” Kylar trailed off. “We’re immortal. We’re Night Angels. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know why we’re this way, or what we’re supposed to do with it. Sometimes I feel like a god, and other times I don’t feel like I change anything. If I’m going to live forever, I want it to be for something. I mean, you can’t tell me that your destiny has been to hold the ka’kari for seven hundred years until I came along. That’s ridiculous. Terrible. It’s not good enough. You’re a great man, not a lockbox.” Kylar scowled. Gods, he’d just given Durzo a backhanded compliment—exactly how Durzo gave compliments to him.

Durzo’s little grin told him he’d noticed, but he could also tell that the compliment meant a lot to the man. In all the times Kylar had been irritated that his master never properly appreciated how well Kylar did, he’d never really thought that Durzo might want to be appreciated too. Kylar hadn’t bothered to tell Durzo how excellent he thought he was; he figured it was obvious. Maybe that was another knife that cut both ways.

“Being a lockbox wasn’t the destiny I chose,” Durzo said. “Right or wrong—or right or left—I’ve chosen to seek the ka’kari, take them, and scatter them so those who would use them for evil can’t. I don’t know if that’s what Jorsin foresaw, but it’s what I’ve chosen. Has it been meaningful and satisfying? Sometimes. I’ve had some good lives and some that were just damn awful. Now that you bear the black, I can lay my burden and my destiny down. Now I get different choices. So I’ll train you until spring and see my daughter as much as I can. Then there’s a woman I have to ask to love a man who doesn’t deserve it. Your choices? Well, that’s your shit.” He smirked, acknowledging he was being a bastard.

Kylar sighed. He loved Durzo, but the man sure was a pain in the ass.

62

From an older brother, the compulsion weave is weak, Your Holiness,” Hopper said. “It won’t hold a determined aetheling for long.”

“I know. I was the son who was able to break it when my father used it on me,” Dorian said. He’d had another dream last night, and again couldn’t remember it, but it had left him with a headache again. His Talent for prophecy was healing faster than he’d expected, but for the time being, it was useless to him. He couldn’t remember his dreams, and the only thing that banished the pain was using the vir. It put him in a foul mood.

“I’m sorry, Your Holiness. I’d forgotten.”