“Is there anything I can get you?” she asked. “Tea? Something stronger?”

“I messed up back there, didn’t I?”

She smiled. “Messed up? Hardly.” She turned back the furs on the bed. “You’re grieving. Let yourself. I’m still not over my—” Talea must have seen my expression, the question in my eyes. “I had a sister. She was murdered.”

Two sentences, thrown out like idle trivia, but the pain in her voice ripped at my heart. “And—” I returned her smile with a much more pallid version. “You’re going to kill the one responsible.”

She’d always approached her lessons with a rage I’d suspected was personal, as though she pictured a special someone on the other end of every sword swing.

She scoffed and turned around, sitting down on the bed. “I wish. Darzin D’Mon murdered her.”

I blinked as the declaration cut through my own numbness. “The royal? The same one who—” I’d almost said, “The same one who’d tried to have me killed,” but I didn’t think that was true anymore.

“That’s what Thurvishar says.” She shook her head. “I don’t think Darzin even realizes what he did. It was just bad luck. She happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and his assassin didn’t want witnesses. Just another bystander caught up in the royal games of empire. And Darzin’s done so much worse—” She looked away. “His list of crimes is long.”

I moved from my chair and sat next to her, took her hands in mine. “I’m so sorry. Are you going to kill him? Do you want help?”

She laughed and squeezed my hands back. “I appreciate the offer. Ask me again in a few years. I’m told he’s phenomenal with a sword, so I suspect I’ll need a little more than eight months training, no matter how amazing Xivan might be.”

“When the time comes, it would be my pleasure to help.”

Talea grinned. “Thank you. One of these days, I’ll be good enough with a sword and Darzin will stop being useful to Duke Kaen, and I just hope I’m there. Or Thurvishar is. I think he might try to fight me for the honor of killing Darzin.”

“How can you be friends with a royal? With the D’Lorus Lord Heir?”

She swallowed. “He bought me from Darzin.” Talea saw the expression on my face and added, “But Thurvishar freed me. Right away, he freed me. He asked me what I wanted to do with myself, said he’d grant any wish I had. I felt like I was in a god-king tale where the peasant girl frees an injured lion from a trap—only the lion is a goddess who can grant any wish.” Talea cleared her throat. “Well, I told him I wanted revenge.”