Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The crushed petals in my palm unnerve me. They remind me of Leo’s broken arm—and the scream that tore from his throat the last time I touched him.
Touched him.
Like Leo’s arm, the bloom is ruined. The parchment-thin petals of the buttercup are torn, their silky softness bruised.
The delicate pink is already turning gray at the edges, darkening toward black.
What was once a perfect flower squelches under the pressure of my fist. With a low growl, I open my hand and let the mangled remains fall to the ground.
They land among the others I’ve already destroyed.
I don’t look up. I don’t need to. I can feel the weight of Caius’ gaze. He’s watching me with that quiet understanding only fathers carry, tempered by the sharp edge of a commander who can’t quite afford sentiment.
“Try again, Leina,” he says, endlessly patient. “Temperance training isn’t about walling off your emotions. It’s about facing them. Meeting them head-on and accepting the danger that simmers inside you. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to control yourself.”
Beside me, Kiernan hums softly, as if he understands perfectly. He may not be very good at masking his emotions, but he certainly excels at meeting them. He lifts the next blossom with careful fingers and begins separating each petal from the corolla. His hands are steady.
“Don’t worry, Leina. It’s like folding silk.” Kiernan’s voice is gentle. “You just have to let it fall into place.”
He is trying to be helpful, to soothe. But his words land wrong. Silk. I’ve never folded silk in my life. I’ve never even touched it. I grew up stitching old burlap sacks into underwear.
My hands twitch around the bloom. I don’t want metaphors soaked in privilege. I want this to be easier . I want to be good at it already.
Each buttercup holds hundreds of petals. Every ward must collect thousands of them in pristine condition and sew them together with gossamer thread to create a veil that stretches to the floor. When it’s complete, we’ve passed temperance training.
We’ve been at this for hours and I don’t have a single unbruised petal.
I flex my fingers, willing them to obey. I breathe in slowly, trying to soften the tension threading through my body. Then I reach down and pick up another buttercup.
They’re from Elowen’s garden, these perfect flowers that have the most delicate blooms.
My fingers tremble as I reach for the first petal. I try to still them. I try to still myself .
But my control slips. My hand spasms. And the flower crumples in my palm.
Leo’s screams echo in my ear.
“Fuck!” I whisper, but it doesn’t matter.
Not here. These men hear my whispered frustrations as if I’d stood up on the table, danced around, and sang them.
Kiernan fumbles on his bloom at my whispered shout.
He drops his damaged flower and starts over.
Faelon, reading a book in the corner, flips to the next page without looking up.
He acts like he didn’t notice, but he did.
It’s only the four of us in this little room.
Caius comes to sit down next to me. His large, calloused hand settles over mine. I close my eyes against the wave of grief that reminds me of my father. “Leina?—”
I shove back from the table with enough force to topple my chair. The crack of the wood against stone is satisfying in a way the petals falling silently to the floor never could be.
Just two weeks ago, I would’ve given this training everything I had. But that was before.
I’ll never see Leo again. What’s the point?
I stab a finger at the curling petals on the ground. “Why is this even important?” I demand. “I don’t gently stab the Kher’zenn to death, do I?”
Faelon snorts a little in the corner but doesn’t look up from his book. I don’t know what he’s reading. The smooth leather binding doesn’t have a title, but he occasionally scratches out a note on the parchment.
“It’s about control, Leina. You want to have control over your emotions, don’t you?” Caius’ voice is steady, the kind that won’t rise to meet my anger. Instead, he’ll wait for me to bring it back down.
I cross my arms over my chest. A little flicker of embarrassment flames to life, but I squash it.
“I do have control. I haven’t thrown anyone across the room, have I?”
“Yet,” Faelon mutters from the corner, turning another page.
I shoot him a glare even as Caius rubs an exasperated hand over his face. “Not helping, son,” he mutters to Faelon. “You’re supposed to be learning to train a ward today, not hiding in the corner with your poems. This isn’t ‘Faelon’s free hour.’”
His tone carries a reprimand, but it’s softened with a hint of apology. Like he wishes he had more free hours to give him.
Faelon slaps his book closed and pushes himself out of the simple wooden chair he plopped himself in at dawn. He bends over to set the book on the ground, next to an open crate of buttercup blossoms. “You want to throw me across the room, Leina?”
Caius’ eyes go sharp, but I heave out a relieved breath and crack my neck, releasing some of the pressure of sitting for so long. Finally . “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Faelon grins, but it’s the kind that says you just walked into something, sister . It’s a look I know well. It’s a look Levvi shot my way dozens or even hundreds of times.
“Great. Come try,” he says as he rises from dealing with his book. “I’ll even fight you one handed.”
His posture is loose, casual, with one hand tucked behind his back. I’ve seen Faelon fight, though. He only looks lazy when he’s planning to make someone regret underestimating him.
Caius groans a little, but he doesn’t stop us. He steps back, arms crossed, watching like he already knows how this ends. Kiernan stops peeling petals to watch with wide eyes and a slight grin.
“You’ve got this, Leina!” Kiernan shouts.
I don’t think I do, actually. I roll my shoulders anyway. Anything is better than one more minute in that chair. “You sure?” I ask Faelon. “I’ve been known to punch above my weight.”
Faelon tilts his head. “You’ve also been known to punch first, think second.”
I lunge, trying to grab his arm, maybe sweep his legs. But he moves too fast, sidestepping me with an infuriating lack of effort. I spin to face him, and he just raises an eyebrow.
“Is that it?” he asks.
I growl and lunge at him again, more forcefully this time. He ducks, spins me around, and taps two fingers to the back of my neck before stepping neatly out of reach.
“Dead,” he says matter-of-factly. “Twice.”
“Shut up.”
“Nope.” He flashes me a grin. But then he holds up the hand he’d kept tucked behind his back. In it rests a perfect buttercup blossom, its petals open and unbruised. “You see this?”
I roll my eyes. “The flower? Yes.”
“This isn’t a flower,” he says. “It’s a baby. A Kher’zenn is holding it by the blanket, dangling it high in the air. It’s taunting you with the baby, Leina. The baby is crying. His arms are pumping, his legs kicking frantically. You have seconds to act. What do you do?”
I freeze. My mouth opens, but no words come out.
Because I see it. Not in this room, not with the table and petals littering the floor, Caius standing in front of me and Kiernan watching without blinking—but in Faelon’s eyes. Faelon’s not teasing anymore.
He’s there, in that moment. One with a baby dangling by a blanket.
Caius shifts. Not a word, not a sound, but tension radiates off him like heat. The way his jaw is clenched, the way he looks at that buttercup—he’s not watching a lesson. He’s watching a memory walk back into the room.
Faelon lets the flower drop.
My knees scrape stone. My palms slide. My hands form a cup in midair, like a prayer I didn’t know I was whispering.
I catch it. Of course I do. I’m as fast as the gods.
But the petals curl in on themselves from the pressure. I crushed it trying to save it.
And in the silence that follows, I can’t breathe. Faelon turns away. All I see are his boots returning to the corner, and his hands as he scoops up his book off the floor. Still, I don’t look up.
Caius crouches beside me. His voice is barely more than breath, but I know we all hear it. “It’s not about the flower, Leina. We’re trying to make sure that when something like that happens—and it will—you don’t crush the very thing you came to save.”
I don’t want to look at Caius. I don’t want to look at Faelon, either, once more on his uncomfortable wooden chair, one foot crossed over another on an unopened crate, immersed in his book.
I don’t want to look because I already know what’s there. It’s thick in the room.
Loss.
I stare down at the crushed petals in my hands and, for the first time all day, acknowledge that I’m not angry. Or at least, not only angry.
I’m terrified. I raise my eyes, and Caius is still crouching next to me. He offers me a fresh buttercup. Its petals are open like it still has faith in this awful, terrible world it bloomed into.
I don’t take it.
“Strength without control is just destruction, Leina,” Caius says. “Try again.”
I swallow hard.
My hands are still shaking. But I reach out anyway.
He transfers the bloom with shocking gentleness—for one so large, one so strong, one so capable of devastation.
It lands in my palms with a whisper. This time, I don’t crush it.
I don’t let fear command my fingers, and I don’t let shame tighten my grip.
I stand slowly, careful not to jostle the delicate petals in my hands. Then I walk back to the table and take my place beside Kiernan, who’s begun sewing his petals. He’s pinching a gossamer strand between his teeth as he works to thread the impossibly tiny needle.
I swallow the dryness from my mouth. This time, I don’t think of Leo’s screams.
I think about what would happen if I’m ever sent to save him.
And what failure would look like if all I can create is destruction. I peel a single petal back from the bloom with a shuddering breath, but my fingers are shockingly steady. I deposit the one petal in my otherwise empty basket and just stare at it. It’s whole.
Caius claps a hand on my shoulder.
“Well done, Leina,” he says, and the pride in his voice fills the room.
Faelon looks up briefly from his book, that saucy grin back in place. “Let’s get that veil done so I can beat you up in the ring.”
I scoff, but it sounds weak, even to my ears. “I’ll put you on the floor someday.”
Faelon’s grin widens, but it’s not quite so arrogant this time. The teasing is still there, but so is something else. Something that reminds me so much of Levvi it makes me ache.
“I expect nothing less,” he replies.