Thorda released his chin. Cyrus shivered, a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding leaking out his nostrils. There was something so intense about the older man, something raw and dangerous beneath the controlling veneer, that left Cyrus deeply unsettled. Thorda headed into his forge, and he spoke while his back was turned.

“I will not send you back to Vallessau, and put into motion our entire plan, until you are ready.”

“So how will I know when am I ready?” Cyrus asked from his spot in the dirt. “When I can beat Stasia?”

His master laughed.

“I’ve been training her for twenty years. I doubt you will ever surpass her.”

Cyrus’s cheeks flushed. Stasia offered him a hand, and he took it. When she pulled him up, their bodies bumped into each other, and she used the opportunity to lean in close for a whisper.

“Don’t listen to him. Keep at it. You’ll beat me yet.”

He wiped at his trousers, head bobbing up and down slightly.

“Hopefully,” he said, and grinned to show his pride was not so terribly wounded. His attention turned to his master. “If not Stasia, then who is my final test?”

Instead of immediately answering, Thorda returned from his forge carrying two long metal poles that would be his own swords for the upcoming practice session.

“Your former tutor, Rayan Vayisa,” his teacher said. He clacked the metal together and slowly tensed into a crouch. Despite Cyrus’s many bruises, the day’s training had only begun. “Your daily spars with Stasia and myself will build a familiarity too intimate for fair judgment. Instead I would have you test your strength against a foe blessed with divine strength akin to a paragon. Hold your own with a paladin of Lycaena, and I shall deem you ready to become the hero of Thanet.”

CHAPTER 12

CYRUS

Has it really only been a year?” Rayan asked as he stepped out of the mud-covered carriage. Cyrus stood tall and puffed out his chest as the paladin got a good look at him. They’d not seen each other since his lone visit a few months into the start of Cyrus’s training. He was stronger now, and brimming with confidence after his daily sparring with Thorda.

“A year and six months,” Cyrus said. “But who is counting?”

“All of Thanet is,” Rayan said, and he smiled. “You’re taller, I see. If you take after your father, it won’t be long before you tower over me as well.”

The casual familiarity pricked a tiny welt of pain in Cyrus’s chest. Rayan had been friends with his father, and had known the man far longer than Cyrus did. That realization hit him with a sense of loss painfully fresh despite the years that had passed since the island’s invasion.