She looked down, saw the burning threads, and laughed. Still holding the sword with one hand, she quenched the flames with the other. “Remember that trick, student. Against a different opponent, it might prove a good distraction.”

She swung the curved sword, a beautiful ornate dance.

I moved to block the attack, failed, watched my sword fall out of alignment, and instead went to kick the duchess. Her leg hooked inside my own.

I ended up on the ground, Xivan’s sword at my throat.

“How can you expect to defeat an enemy when you haven’t even mastered yourself?” Her voice was even, the question serious rather than rhetorical.

“I don’t—” I found myself at a loss for what to say. I’d fought stupidly. I’d turned a practice session into a tantrum. I had no idea how to control the maelstrom of my emotions. I didn’t try to stand. I just lay there, miserable, every eye in the practice yard on me, too numb to even care.

Xivan moved the sword from my neck and knelt beside me. “Don’t tell me you loved him.”

“What? Who?” What she said couldn’t have been more startling than if it had been a slap, but at the same time, I felt remorse stab me. I knew who.

Oreth.

But no, I hadn’t loved him.

I had wanted to love him, though. I had wanted him to love me back too. Neither wish had come true. Instead, his pride had demanded he break me, and my pride—

“The knight. The one I executed.”

“No, I—” I shut my eyes, tears welling at their corners. “I just—” My voice came out as a ragged sob. “I didn’t. It’s all so pointless. So unnecessary. I didn’t mean for him to die. I never mean for any of them to die and—” My grief expressed itself as a jagged exhalation. Somehow his death became conflated with all the others—the citizens of Mereina, everyone at Lonezh, the Hellmarch, my parents, that Marakori man murdered on the bridge to Atrine—

All the people I couldn’t save.

“So it’s yourself you hate, then.” Xivan’s voice sounded sad.

I felt like she’d pulled out the last piece from a tottering foundation. A shudder, an ugly clenching feeling, and then the avalanche. Her words ripped through me, until I felt I would be lost in the tumult. Naturally, I hated myself. How could I not, when I always lived? Lived not because I deserved it, not because I’d earned it, but to serve the false games of demons, the commands of generals, and always those damn prophecies. Lived, but never once made anyone’s life better for it. I had become a stallion to protect the ones I loved, but I couldn’t even protect myself.

What good was it all, then? What purpose did it serve?