“Khalad,” King Rendorvik said reverently. “I did not know the old king’s eldest son was a heartforger until recently, but we hold both your titles in high esteem. Surely your father didn’t deserve this, despite the crimes he committed?”

Khalad bowed. “I speak as a heartforger, Your Majesty, when I say that Kance is a hundred times the king our father had ever hoped to be.”

The king inclined his head as well. “I trust your judgment. As badly as he treated his people and his own sons, I nonetheless hope he finds his peace. May they both find peace.” And you as well, his heartsglass seemed to suggest.

A good-looking boy, only a few years older than Khalad, stepped forward. “My name is Cyran,” he said, clasping his hands around the startled forger’s. Likh was stationed behind me, but I swore I could feel the heat blistering out of his heartsglass without turning around. “The old Heartforger, Master Narel, healed me from the same long illness that His Majesty King Kance suffered from. I am told you were instrumental in the cure as well. I owe you my life. Please tell me how I can repay your kindness.”

“No thanks are needed, milord,” Khalad said politely. “It’s all part of my work.”

“At least permit me to give you a tour around Farsun?”

The blaze Likh was generating behind my back threatened to explode into the fire of a full-fledged sun.

“Perhaps next time? I’m afraid we have pressing duties that we cannot delay.”

“I will hold you to that, milord.”

The azi followed us until we were at Farsun’s gates before taking to the air with one last whoop of farewell. It brushed against my mind, friendly and affectionate, and then was gone.

“Isterans are rather blasé when it comes to daeva, it seems,” Althy noted.

“We have a different way of dealing with them than you Kions, I imagine.”

Despite the trumpets, the procession toward the city lacked the pomp and circumstance I was used to in Kion. There were no crowds cheering us on as we headed to the royal palace. Many citizens bowed to the king and then continued with their work, greeting us briefly and with the same casualness as we passed.

It felt strange to be relatively ignored, but after everything I’d experienced in Daanoris, the Isteran ability to treat their kings like any other Isteran for the most part came as a welcome relief.

“The daeva zarich’s burial mound lies within the Runeswood,” the king said as we walked, “far too close to our city for comfort. But our Dark asha, Sakmeet, tamed it rather well.”

“Tamed it?” Likh echoed from behind us, his emotions more tempered now that Lord Cyran had gone ahead.