“Sometimes. I struggle with consistency, but on my good days, I can give him quite a challenge.”

“Then we must spar! I’d love to see a glimpse of this fierce, imperial-slaying woman that was fighting wars while I was still an untrained princeling brat being held hostage.”

“I don’t know, Vagrant, that could be dangerous. How might you react if I win?”

“I’d demand a rematch,” he said, and he beamed her a grin. “And if you win that one, I would demand another, and another.”

Keles laughed.

“That sounds miserable.”

“Does it?” he asked. “It sounds instead like I’d have found myself a perfect training partner.”

She leaned in close, and his entire body stiffened. His heart leaped high up into his throat. Her lips were close, so close, and it seemed they would brush his cheek, but they veered away at the last second so she might whisper warmth into his ear.

“As I said… it sounds miserable.”

Keles flashed him a smile before she left, so playful, so mischievous, that when he slept that night, he dreamed of it instead of burning ships.

CHAPTER 37

MARI

Please, God, please, stop!” Mari’s claws sank deeper into the priest’s chest. His arm was locked in her jaws. Bones crunched between her teeth. “Please, it hurts, it hurts, it—”

The rest of his sentence ended in a scream of pain as she savagely twisted her head. The arm dislocated in its socket, then tore completely. His cry pitched in scale as new pain hit him.

“Mari?” She turned, arm still in her mouth. Stasia stood in the doorway of the priest’s home, her face hidden behind her cloth mask. Fresh gore dripped from her twin axes. There was no reading the expression in her eyes. “Everything good?”

Mari looked back to the sobbing priest. Her jaw relaxed, and the arm plopped to the wood floor and rolled twice before coming to a halt. The man reached for it. She couldn’t guess why. Was in he shock? Did he think he could reattach it? As if she would let him live. As if her prey would ever survive a hunt.

Her prey…

With a thought, her wings simultaneously stabbed the man’s throat and then pulled, tearing it open. His pained screams became a gargle that quickly ended in death. Mari padded toward the door, her paws leaving bloody prints in her wake. The word-lace about her throat shimmered a soft blue, translating her tired growl.

“I’m fine.”

“If you insist,” Stasia said. She tilted her head toward the room she’d come from. “The priest is dead. Time to go.”