Then again, I’d already done it once.

I turned my attention to the rest of the cave, lifting my lamp high. My father had hidden this place for a reason. It might have been for the memory flasks, but somehow I knew there were other secrets. I scanned the dark, damp walls.

And found a sword.

It hung opposite the shelves in a sheath, a chain suspending it from a metal spike in the cavern wall. It seemed out of place here – a sword among my father’s things? He was a scholar of bone shard magic and of history, a shrewd-gazed and ill-tempered old man. I couldn’t imagine him wielding a sword, even when he’d been younger. The only thing he’d wielded was a cane.

In the play Phoenix Rise, the first Sukai had used a magical sword to defeat the Alanga. The actors always played the scenes so dramatically. Ylan Sukai lifted his sword and the Alanga were all struck down. Easy enough. Too easy, I’d always thought.

Now, in the cavern beneath the cavern beneath the palace, my single lamp shining the way ahead, I wasn’t so sure. If Jovis was right, and we were Alanga, what did that mean for me? I approached cautiously. Perhaps I shouldn’t have approached at all, but what was the sword going to do? Leap off the wall and attack me? Then again, what did I know of this Alanga-defeating magic? The play wasn’t very explanatory. It was meant to glorify the reign of the Sukais and emphasize the danger of the Alanga, not to serve as an instruction manual on how to kill them.

I heard Thrana’s footsteps pacing the cavern.

This close, I could see the wear and tear on the leather scabbard, the scratches, the frayed cord wrapped around the hilt. The scabbard was embossed in flames, a phoenix near the hilt. It was just an old sword. I had nothing to be afraid of. I reached out, hardly daring to breathe, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

The leather was cool to the touch. No fires from the heavens, no pain of sudden death, not even so much as a tingle. I wanted to laugh. Of course a sword wouldn’t work like that. The play was ridiculous – a fiction invented by a long-dead writer. Maybe it was an heirloom, a piece of the Sukai family past.

I walked my fingers up the scabbard to the hilt. Nothing changed. Feeling bolder, I lifted the sword and brought it down from the wall. It was lighter than I’d expected. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting: I’d never held a sword before. But I’d held knives, and they certainly had heft. This felt… different. I pulled the blade loose from the scabbard.