Chapter 4
THE RIVAL
Hakan
The welt on my jaw hadn't healed.
Three days and I could still feel it — a raised line of scar tissue where her light had struck, tracing from my chin to the hollow beneath my ear. Light magic always scarred when thrown in anger. I'd learned that in theory lectures. Now I wore the proof of it on my face like a brand.
I pressed my thumb against the mark and hissed through my teeth. Good. Pain was useful. Pain had edges, limits, a shape I could hold in my hands and examine. Everything else in my life right now had none of those qualities.
The training hall was empty before dawn, which was the only reason I was here.
The Academy's eastern wing held three such halls — one for the noble-born students with their gilded equipment and padded floors, one for group instruction, and this one, tucked behind the servants' kitchens where the plumbing groaned and the light-magic lanterns flickered because nobody could be bothered maintaining them for scholarship students.
I preferred it. No gilding. No pretense.
Just wood and stone and the smell of sweat and resin, honest in a way nothing else in this court ever was.
Three practice dummies already destroyed — beaten into splinters with nothing but my fists and the particular breed of fury that came from not sleeping for seventy-two hours.
My knuckles were torn and bleeding, my shoulders screaming from an hour of relentless striking, and still the restless thing coiled beneath my ribs wouldn't settle.
I hit the fourth dummy. Wood cracked. I hit it again. The post snapped sideways and the whole thing crashed to the floor, scattering canvas and sawdust across the boards.
Better.
Through the high windows, I could see the Academy's spires catching the first gray light — all that white marble and crystal, glowing faintly even before dawn as though the building itself couldn't bear to be anything less than radiant.
Beyond the spires, the Palace of Light dominated the skyline, its golden domes throwing halos against the clouds.
Somewhere in that palace, in chambers that smelled of jasmine and divine magic, she was probably sleeping.
Or not sleeping. Probably sitting at her window, staring at the city she loved and couldn't save, with crescent wounds in her palms from her own fingernails.
Not my concern.
I was reaching for a fifth dummy when the door opened.
"You know," my father Milan, said, leaning against the doorframe with that easy grace that made everything look effortless, "most people cope with insomnia by drinking warm milk. Perhaps reading a book. You've chosen violence against inanimate objects. I admire the commitment."
"When did you get back?"
"An hour ago. Rode through the night from the northern territories.” He stepped inside and surveyed the wreckage like he'd seen worse.
Dark coat still dusty from the road, sword at his hip, that crooked smile already in place.
"Your mother told me you haven't been home in two days.
She also told me you've been, and I quote, 'impossible, reckless, and eating like a stray cat. ' Her words."
"My mother exaggerates."
"Your mother has never exaggerated a day in her life and you know it.
" He crossed the hall and gripped the back of my neck the way he'd done since I was a boy — brief, firm, the closest thing to fatherly I'd ever known.
"You need to eat. I brought borek from the northern road. It’s in my saddlebag.
Don't let Sarp find it first." He moved to the weapons rack, selected a practice sword, tossed me one without warning.
I caught it. "Spar with me. You look like you need to hit something that hits back. "
We fell into rhythm. Attack, parry, counter.
My father was better than me — always had been — but I was faster and meaner, and today I had three days of rage sharpening every blow.
Our blades rang through the empty hall, the sound bouncing off stone walls where older students had carved their names and graduating years into the mortar — a tradition the Academy's priests pretended not to notice.
"Nice scar." He nodded at my jaw, deflecting a strike. "Light burn. Recent. Who'd you piss off?"
"Nobody important."
"Nobody important who happens to wield divine light magic." He ducked my swing, came up inside my reach, tapped his blade against my ribs — kill shot, gentle. "Short list, Hakan."
"Drop it, Baba."
"Was it Ada?"
I didn't answer. Drove a combination at him that was harder than any sparring match warranted. He caught every strike. The bastard was barely breathing hard.
"I'll take that as a yes." He reset his stance. "Want to tell me what happened?"
"No."
"Your mother said —"
"My mother doesn't know what she's talking about, and neither do you." I lowered my blade. "Ada and I had words. She couldn't handle it. Lost control of her magic like the overgrown child she is. That's the whole story."
"And you were close enough for her light to reach you because —"
"Because the girl doesn't understand the concept of personal space. She never has. She follows people into corridors and demands emotional conversations and then acts surprised when it doesn't go the way she planned." I returned my blade to the rack. "It's tedious."
Milan watched me with those gray eyes that never missed anything. I hated when he did that — when the warmth dropped from his face and he looked at me like he was reading a language I didn't know I was speaking.
He opened his mouth — probably something wise and infuriating — but the training hall door crashed open and Sarp strolled in like he owned the Academy, the grounds, and possibly the sun itself.
"Gentlemen!" He spread his arms wide, taking in the devastation.
"Beautiful morning, isn't it? Birds singing, dawn breaking, Hakan destroying property worth more than my annual stipend.
" He counted the wrecked dummies. "Four.
Impressive. Though I notice you've left the wall intact this time, which I'd call personal growth. "
"Sarp." My father clasped forearms with him. "You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep. Terrible dreams. There was this enormous creature — all teeth and rage and unresolved emotional issues — stomping around a training hall at four in the morning, making the building shake.” He dropped onto a bench, stretched his legs out, and looked entirely unbothered. "Strangest thing."
"What do you want, Sarp."
"News. Two pieces." He produced an apple from somewhere — Sarp always had food, it was one of life's great mysteries — and bit into it. "You'll hate both of them, but the delivery is free."
"Fucking great."
"First — that girl from Selim's class. The one they took to the purification wing." He chewed, swallowed. His voice stayed light but his eyes didn't. "She died last night. Her name was Elif."
My mother's name. The training hall went very quiet.
Outside, I could hear the distant chime of the Academy's dawn bells — the ones that woke the students for morning prayers, that rang out across the courtyards where fountains sang with blessed water and gardens bloomed with flowers that never wilted, all that holy beauty hiding the rot underneath.
“By mortal reckoning, she was only seventeen years old," Sarp continued, examining his apple.
"Third-generation half-blood. Shadow taint of what, twelve percent?
Doesn't matter. Thorough cleansing, the priests said.
Very thorough. Apparently it took six hours.
" He looked up. "Want to know how I know that?
Because I could hear her from my dormitory.
Six hours of screaming and then silence, and this morning the priests blessed the purification wing and called it mercy. "
Nobody spoke. My father’s jaw had tightened. I said nothing.
"Anyway." Sarp's smile returned — bright, sharp, dangerous. "Second piece of news. Much more cheerful."
"Doubtful."
"I've decided to court Ada."
The words landed in the silence like a blade thrown into a table.
Baba went still beside me. I felt his attention shift — not to Sarp, but to my face. Watching.
I gave them nothing.
"She's brilliant," Sarp said, ticking points on his fingers.
"She's beautiful — devastatingly so. She laughs at my jokes, which shows excellent taste.
My family's respectable enough that the court won't riot.
And unlike certain people —" He waved his apple in my direction.
"I actually know how to speak to a woman without making her want to commit violence. "
"Since when?" I didn't look up from wrapping my knuckles.
"Last I checked, you and I have spent the past three years making Ada's life miserable.
Or have you forgotten the time you told her the Academy rooftop was open to students so she'd get caught by the night patrol?
Or when you bet half the lordlings she'd cry if someone insulted her father's policies at dinner?
She did cry, by the way. You collected your winnings. "
Something shifted in Sarp's expression. Quick, there and gone.
"People change," he said.
"People don't change. They just find better reasons for the same behavior.
" I tossed the bloody wrapping cloth aside.
"But by all means — court her. I'm sure she'll be thrilled to hear that the man who spent years helping me torment her has suddenly developed a conscience and a hard-on at the same time. "
"Charming as always." Sarp bit into his apple, unbothered. "Is that a yes?"
"It's a do whatever you want." I tossed the bloody wrapping cloth aside. "She's a nuisance. Always has been. If you want to make her your problem permanently, that's between you and your poor judgment."
"That's a lot of opinions about a woman who means nothing to you."
"I've known her since we were children. I'm allowed to make observations." A beat. "Doesn't mean I give a shit what happens to her."