Max
“Your private combat instruction starts now.”
Marco had found me on a supply crate at the edge of camp, hands clasped behind his back, his pale face giving away nothing. Aelindor’s orders—accelerated weapons training, because the battlefield had proved I couldn’t always hide behind Coldiron and ranged attacks.
He was right. I’d survived the fight inside a moving pocket of protection, throwing chakrams from behind the backs of the princes and a platoon of elite soldiers. If a mutant got inside my guard, I’d die with a weapon I couldn’t use in my hand.
Marco tossed me a short sword. The weight surprised me. It was heavier than a pickaxe by half. I adjusted my grip.
Footwork first. Pivots, lateral shifts, the angled retreats that kept you out of a mutant’s charge lane. My boots scuffed the dirt in clumsy patterns while Marco circled me, correcting my stance the way you’d correct a crooked picture frame.
Then he came at me.
Not full speed. At full speed, I’d be dead before my brain registered the vampire’s movement.
But fast enough that every block was a scramble and every parry left my forearms ringing.
His training blade nicked my wrist. Then the soft spot below my collarbone.
Each cut a lesson: Here is where you’re slow. Here. And here.
He corrected my guard three dozen times.
“You have reach,” he said. “Use it. Stop fighting like a short person.”
Everyone had to point out my height.
I trained until the light turned amber and my arms hung dead at my sides. My calves had knotted into cables. Sweat stung the bruises Marco’s practice sword had left on my skin.
Near dusk, a jeep halted by the training ring. Frost sat behind the wheel, impeccable as always.
“Come with me, Max. You’ll dine with Prince Aelindor, Prince Drakken, and Prince Caspian at Greyhold tonight.”
I stared at him. Then I lifted my arm, caught one whiff, and put it back down swiftly. I’d been sparring with a vampire for six hours, and he hadn’t gone easy on me. And now I smelled like a salt mine in July.
“But I’m… I’m sweating, Major. A lot.”
“Good thing you’ve got an hour.” The faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “You can shower at Greyhold.”
He drove me to a low, stone-walled house set apart from the barracks—the officers’ quarters. Down a corridor, through a door, and into a suite with a large bed, a wooden wardrobe, and a window that faced east, away from the DarkVeil.
The scent hit me before my eyes adjusted. Winter. Wind. Pine. It was Aelindor’s room. I stood in the doorway, breathing his scent in, and the longing hit me square in the chest.
The shower was lukewarm. I scrubbed six hours of dried sweat from my skin, worked the tangles from my hair, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that I was naked in Aelindor’s bathroom, using his soap, surrounded by his intoxicating scent.
I failed completely.
When I stepped out, a stack of folded clothes sat on the counter. A soft cotton shirt, dark blue, flat collar. Trousers in a charcoal fabric with actual give. Both in my size, which was a minor miracle.
Then I found a pair of panties, folded neatly at the bottom. My face flushed so hot it reached my ears. I’d been wearing men’s briefs since I’d arrived at the fortress, the only option in a barracks designed for male cadets.
Either Aelindor or Caspian had noticed and cared enough to source women’s undergarments for me at a frontier outpost.
In the mine, I learned that small things were the difference between surviving and living. A cup of relatively clean water when you expected rust. An extra ration of bread from a friend who had nothing to spare. Mom taught me to be grateful for every drop of kindness and to pay it forward.
All the care, the kindness, the protection from the heirs felt enormous. I didn’t know how to carry that weight without it cracking something open inside me.
I dressed and stood before the clouded mirror above the sink.
The woman staring back was a stranger.
I hadn’t looked—really looked—at myself for a very long time. But now, in the soft light of the washroom, I couldn’t look away.
My hair fell to my shoulders in a dark midnight-blue cascade, a single streak of radiant white cutting through the crown. No more cropped cut dusted with ore.
My face had changed as well. The gauntness was gone—the hollowed cheeks, the sharp jaw that had made it easy to pass as a boy.
Real food and weeks of rest had filled the angles into high cheekbones.
My lips were fuller now, flushed with color instead of cracked.
My long lashes, the one feature that had nearly blown my disguise a dozen times in the mine, framed eyes that had changed most of all.
The midnight dark hue was the same, but the hunger behind them was no longer feral.
The edges remained with me though, and they would never vanish. Toughness was my spine, and it held the rest of me upright—the curves that had appeared in the right places, the height that put me above every woman and man, except for three heirs.
I looked like someone worth fighting for, and the thought embarrassed me. I shoved it down, smoothed the shirt over my hips, and turned away from the mirror before the woman in it could make me feel anything else.
I was going to dine with all three heirs. Nervousness coiled in my stomach, and my heartbeat refused to get under control.
I stepped out, and Frost led me to the end of the hall. He paused outside the room, gave me a nod that carried something like encouragement, and withdrew.
The door clicked closed behind me.
The dining room was simple. A wood table, four chairs, Stormglass lamps casting a warm glow that softened the concrete walls. No war maps. Just food and three men who made the air change weight.
Aelindor sat at the far side of the table in a white linen tunic, open at the collar. Without his silver coat, he looked lighter. Less armored. The kind of beautiful that made you forget how lethal he was.
Drakken sat to his right. Dark shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, collar undone, the fabric pulled tight across his chest in a way that mapped the hard terrain of his body with a specificity I resented. His gray eyes found me the moment I walked through the door. They didn’t let go.
Caspian sat closest to the door, an empty chair at his side—mine. His wine-red hair was pushed back, still damp at the temples. He wore a fitted black T-shirt that hid nothing. Broad shoulders, thick arms, the kind of build that came from centuries of shifting into forms designed to hunt and kill.
Three men. Three kinds of devastating.
They weren’t in uniform. They’d called it quits on duty, and their evening was for this.
For me. The concept of being a woman was still strange after a lifetime spent pretending to be a boy.
But standing in that doorway in soft cotton, with three princes looking at me as if I were the only thing worth seeing, the pretending felt very far away.
Heat climbed my neck. My pulse kicked against my throat. Every nerve I owned pulled taut, and the breath I’d been holding came out unsteady, giving me away.
Their power felt different tonight. On the battlefield, their presence commanded. Here, with the curtains drawn and the lamps low, their power relaxed.
Aelindor’s magic caressed my cheeks like a warm current. Caspian’s heat radiated in waves I felt in my belly. And Drakken’s banked fire slithered up my spine.
My toes curled. Desire rolled through me so suddenly I nearly swayed on my feet.
So I lowered my gaze and fixed it on the food.
Thick burgers on dark bread. A pot of stew that smelled like root vegetables and salt beef. Roasted potatoes. A basket of rolls with actual butter. Not a feast. The heirs never took more than enough, aware that half the continent scraped by on foraged roots and dirty water.
“You look stunning, Max.” Caspian pulled out the empty chair and stood beside it, one hand on the back, beaming at me with the open admiration of a man who felt no reason to disguise what he wanted.
My pulse spiked, but the catastrophic part was that my body didn’t just hum for Caspian. It hummed for Aelindor, whose winter-blue eyes held mine across the table with a warmth that made the air between us feel charged. It hummed for Drakken, who sat rigid, tension radiating off him.
All three. At the same time. More than desire. Closer to gravity.
Guilt sat on my chest like a stone. They’d walked into the DarkVeil for me. They were planning to cross a continent for my sister. And I couldn’t choose. Wouldn’t choose.
You really have no idea, do you, girl? The demon’s voice dripped with amusement.
“Thank you, Your Highnesses.” My voice was steady. I deserved a medal for that.
“Just call us by our names, Max,” Caspian said.
“Sit, Max.” Aelindor smiled, and no one smiled more beautifully than the Fae prince. My mind went straight to how he’d kissed me, the controlled intensity, the way his hands cupped my face as if I were something worth holding still for.
“You’ll get used to dining with us,” he added. “In the future.”
In the future. As if he’d already decided I belonged at this table, at his side.
If Nikolai joined them when we returned to the fortress—Nikolai, whose mouth I could still feel between my thighs—then dining with all four would be a catastrophe.
I’d find excuses. I knew I wouldn’t use them.
The heirs made me weak in a way no enemy ever had, and the weakness felt like the most honest thing about me.
“Help yourself, Max,” Caspian said.
I reached for a roll and split it in half. The bread was warm, the butter real, and for one second the simple pleasure of food cut through everything else.
Dinner settled into something almost normal. Caspian told a joke about a Spartan, a grease trap, and a very angry badger, and I giggled.
Shit. I only knew how to do it by mimicking my little sister’s sound.
Drakken hadn’t touched his food but watched me with an expression that looked like pain. His gray eyes tracked my mouth when I spoke, my hands when I reached for food, my throat when I swallowed.
“Excuse me.” He shoved his chair back, the scrape making everyone flinch, and stood. “I have a duty to see to.”
“Come on, man.” Caspian’s tone sharpened. “That’s not cool.”
“Let him go.” Aelindor sighed. “At least grab a burger while you see to your duty, Drakken.”
But Drakken didn’t take a burger. He walked out with rigid shoulders, his stride too fast to be casual, and the door closed with a controlled force that was worse than a slam.
The air thinned. Something in my chest tightened, the ache of wanting a man who couldn’t stay in the same room with me long enough to finish a meal.
I stared at his empty chair. His untouched plate.
Aelindor met my eyes. No judgment, only a quiet sadness that told me the Fae heir understood something about Drakken’s departure that neither Caspian nor I did.
The dinner continued.
Life went on.
I ate my burger, smiled at Aelindor, and laughed at Caspian’s jokes.