Chapter 6
CHAPTER
Azrian
Azrian had trained Shadow-affinity younglings by the dozens. He’d taught them to fight, to spy, to survive the blood vows that would one day chain them to the Empire. Never, though, had he felt the cold, empty ache that lingered as Caelen Thornevail sent another opponent stumbling from the beam.
“Try again,” Azrian said. His voice didn’t need to rise; the order sliced through the Imperial Crown’s training arena. “If it weren’t clear, the purpose of this exercise is not to fall from the beam.”
The six younglings scrambled back onto the beam, staffs raised, feet thudding hollowly against lacquered wood—a hard counterpoint to the quick, soft shuffle of their bodies settling into stance.
“And… go.”
His order had barely left his lips, and already, staffs clunked.
Azrian catalogued each movement, whose footwork lagged, whose strikes threw them off balance, and whose dodging was timed incorrectly.
Sweat and beeswax polish drifted together in the air, tangled with the metallic bite of blood he’d come to expect whenever the training got serious.
Five out of the six still had quite a ways to go before they could join the ranks of his spies. And threads be thanked for that. They were all too young, too inexperienced in life, to be forced into a blood vow simply so they could serve the Empire with their Shadow affinity.
But the last one…
No other trainee had the same agility, precision, or strength Caelen possessed.
And with good reason, since Azrian had personally overseen his training for the past nine cycles.
Most of his Shadow spies never got that long.
Azrian had managed to hold Caelen back from bonding only because of his temper, that reckless edge that made him unpredictable.
Today, as Caelen dispatched his opponents one by one, the hollow sound of staff on staff filling the room, Azrian felt the certainty settle in his bones: he couldn’t shield him any longer. Caelen was past the proper age for bonding and the most promising recruit by far.
The Hand dismissed the tightening in his chest. Such sentimentalities had no place in his role. Instead, he tossed a silk sash to his charge.
“Blindfolded now.”
Caelen crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s hardly fair—”
“It’s not about fairness, Thornevail, it’s an order. If you wish for fairness, perhaps I should point you to the finishing school? I hear the tea-making classes are quite enthralling.”
Caelen grimaced, but tied the sash around his head, making a show of waving his arms to prove his blindness. “Hand me my staff. Surely I can’t do it myself blindfolded.”
Azrian ought to have reprimanded him, but truthfully, he’d always liked how Caelen never seemed to fear him.
“Shall I bring you some biscuits, too?” He swept Caelen’s staff from the ground and threw it.
Caelen snatched it without flinching, a smirk on his lips. “If you’re offering… though I’d prefer tea cakes.”
Azrian almost smiled. Almost. Good thing Caelen couldn’t see it, or he’d never let Azrian live it down. “Go again.”
Blindfolded, Caelen took only a minute longer to send the other students tumbling off the beam. Azrian watched the result with a sigh. No more postponing indeed.
This would be the Season Caelen bonded. The Emperor would not let such a promising Shadow slip through his grasp, and Azrian knew it as well as he knew the feel of a blade.
But for now, he let himself focus on the work. Beam days were brutal. When he finally called the session early, ten minutes before the bell, he didn’t feel magnanimous.
He was simply ensuring none of his trainees would break before they’d served their purpose to the Empire. After all, most of them were of Gilt lineage, dropped at his door like unwanted parcels by families afraid of a socially-inconvenient affinity they did not understand.
The gentry of Velyar would not have taken kindly to Azrian breaking their children before they could reap the benefits of their conscription.
On the beams, the students collapsed in loose circles, passing water between them, sweat and blood streaking their skin.
Caelen, per usual, was the first to recover. “I heard the Registry’s got a new game for this Season,” he said, glancing at the two beside him.
Azrian usually tuned out the chatter. But something in the way Caelen said Registry and game and Season, all in one breath, sharpened his attention.
“Do tell,” one of the others said.
“They’re putting marks on people—supposedly, to help them find a match.”
Azrian’s body went rigid, every muscle taut and ready to strike. His own mark itched at his neck, begging for notice. Azrian ignored it.
The other student snorted. “What a ridiculous notion. As if the Season was not difficult enough, now they wish us to play some kind of magical hide-and-seek?”
Caelen arched a brow. “What would you know about the challenges of the Season? You’re barely seventeen. Aren’t you still drinking milk from your mother’s teat?”
The boy shoved at him, trying to tip him off the beam, but Caelen bent with the motion, flexible like bamboo: never yielding, never breaking. Azrian’s teaching, through and through.
“My sister has been on the marriage mart for three Seasons, now. I’ve heard all kinds of stories.”
“Well, maybe your sister will get a mark, this Season,” Caelen said, wryly. “That ought to improve her chances at a match.”
“Or ruin them,” the girl beside him muttered. “What if your mark ties you to someone horrid? Or worse yet, someone old?”
“I don’t know,” Caelen said. “I find it rather… poetic. Knowing that, if you have a mark, someone’s out there who’ll be your perfect match. It reminds me of the fairytales my gran—”
That was Azrian’s cue to step in, before Caelen made the grave mistake of saying anything that sounded too close to the heretics’ ruminations. “Thornevail.”
Caelen’s sentence died mid-word, his ruddy skin turning ashen. “I’m sorry, sir, I—”
“I do not wish to hear your excuses. Truly, if you’re so inclined to speak of fairytales and romance, maybe you do belong in finishing school.”
He paused, squaring Caelen, who dared not rebut. “But since you’re here, under my watch, I’d recommend you leave the gossip to the Gilt’s mamas—unless a night stuck standing on the beam is what you’re after.”
“Yessir,” Caelen muttered, chastened.
Azrian scrubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head. “Go wash up.
All of you. This arena reeks with you lot in it.”
The six students jolted to their feet and rushed to the lavatories. “And Thornevail,” Azrian boomed to Caelen’s back.
The young man stilled, but did not turn. “Sir?” “Come see me when you’re done.”
Azrian recognized Caelen’s footsteps by the way they landed on the terrace. Light, whisper-soft, more befitting of a lady in satin slippers than a warrior in heavy boots.
Once bonded and able to finally weave his Shadow affinity, Caelen would be a force to reckon with, a spy like few others. Azrian should’ve been pleased at the thought, proud of the work he’d done. But the feeling never quite arrived.
“At ease, Thornevail,” he said before Caelen could salute him.
“How’d you reckon it was me?” Caelen asked in his clipped, steady Northern tone. “For all you know, I might be an assassin sent from Kireveth.”
“Then Kireveth has grown lazy in its recruitment.” Azrian’s hands traced the iron balustrade, the metal cold and unforgiving beneath his calloused fingertips. “I would not be doing my job properly if I could not tell the lot of you apart. You carry your uncertainty in your hips.”
His job . It always came back to that.
The task the Emperor had given him snuck, unwelcome, into his thoughts. Azrian had promised to see the task through on his own. He had not, however, promised to keep it entirely to himself. “The Emperor entrusted me with a… singular assignment.”
Caelen joined him at the edge of the terrace, leaning over the railing. “Oh?”
Azrian sighed. “It involves… the social Season.” The words were laced with enough contempt to be venomous.
“That’s curious indeed. What could the Emperor’s Hand need to do at balls and glittering salons?”
Azrian studied Caelen. The boy—no, man—slouched, arms draped casually and posture relaxed. Beneath them, the lake of the Imperial Gardens glowed with firefly-like sparks of Light affinity, the distant scent of jasmine carried upward on the cool evening breeze. The effect was almost peaceful.
“Remember those marks you mentioned during training?” Caelen’s posture sharpened. He nodded.
“The Emperor is invested in their… outcome, you could say.” Caelen’s throat bobbed. “Outcome? In what way?”
Azrian hesitated, choosing how much to share.
He trusted Caelen—he trusted all of Shadow spies, of course, but Caelen especially.
But too much trust could be a weapon turned against them.
So Azrian settled on, “He doesn’t trust them.
Or rather, he doesn’t trust the Registry to manage them…
properly. To ensure they do not pose a threat. ”
Caelen folded his arms, tucking his hands under his elbows. “A threat to what?”
“To everything. The Registry claims there’s a system, but no one knows what it is. And that puts the Emperor on edge, because he needs the marks to succeed, to cripple the Children.”
Caelen’s brows pinched. “So the Emperor fears the Registry’s work may not be as faultless as they claim?”
“Exactly.”
And could anyone truly blame him for that? It was not as though the Registry hadn’t failed before, and called it design.
Though he would not say that.
“I need you to be vigilant. More than ever,” he said instead. “If you see anything odd about the marks, if you hear anything among the others, even whispers from the Gilt, I want to know it.”
“Of course. I always tell you everything, don’t I?”
“You have a tendency toward selective truth, but it’s a virtue in our line of work. Still, if you ever wish to tell me more, you know I will listen.”
Though he nodded, Caelen said nothing. Instead, his slate-grey eyes focused on the lake below, tracking the movement of the magical fireflies. The minutes stretched.
Then, finally: “There’s something I must show you.”
Caelen undid the strings of his tunic. The fabric gaped open, exposing his chest. He swept the fabric aside, baring his left side. Azrian went utterly still. The terrace seemed to tilt beneath him, the balustrade the only thing keeping him upright.
Above Caelen’s heart and half-hidden in tufts of chestnut hair, a mark shimmered faintly.
It sprawled across his skin, a study in contrast and incompletion.
On one side, darkness unfurled in perfect clouds, edges so deliberate they could have been inked with a master’s hand.
Where the shadows ended, a starburst of thin lines radiated outward like frozen light.
They held no color or glow—a mere suggestion, transparent and waiting like pathways meticulously carved but not yet traveled.
The mark was unmistakable. Azrian had been staring at a very similar one for days, now.
“How long have you…” Azrian trailed off.
“A few days. At first, I feared I’d been cursed. Then I heard the rumors about the marks, and it made sense.”
Azrian couldn’t look away. The skin of his neck itched something fierce.
His fingers twitched once on the railing before he mastered them.
“If this isn’t a sign from the threads that I’ll find a bond, then I don’t know what is.”
Azrian tasted iron. He swallowed, rough. “You wish to bond this Season?”
He’d known he couldn’t protect his charge from the brutish practice of blood vows, but he never figured Caelen might actually want it.
“I am four-and-twenty, Az. I’m no longer a boy, and frankly, I’m tired of training camp.” He paused, a sheepish grin on his lips. “No offense, of course.”
Az. It’d been his own brother’s nickname for him, but Caelen was the only one who called him that nowadays. “None taken. You are ready for the field, no doubt. I just figured you would not look forward to taking a blood vow.”
Caelen shrugged. “The end justifies the means.” His fingers traced his mark absentmindedly.
“I hadn’t dared wish it…” He drew a breath, wistful.
“I’m well aware most soldiers don’t enter a blood vow out of love.
But this mark may change things. I might make a match that may do more than awaken my affinity. I may find a life companion.”
The anticipation splintered something in Azrian. Caelen dreamed of luxuries most soldiers were not afforded. And the larger the dreams, the ruder the awakening.
“I need you to do something for me.” “Anything.”
Azrian believed him. That made the next words taste all the more bitter. “Keep the mark a secret.”
Caelen’s eyes widened. “I don’t…”
“It is not for you to understand. Just trust me. Enter the Season, if you so wish, though I’d rather you didn’t. But keep the mark hidden. Don’t let the Empire or the Registry know you harbor one.”
For a long minute, they were quiet. Azrian wondered if this would be the first time Caelen would defy him.
Finally, his charge nodded. “If it’d been anyone else, I’d never entertain such a request. You ought to know that.”
Azrian squeezed Caelen’s shoulder. “Your trust means the world to me.
Believe it’s not misplaced.”
Caelen’s lips pursed. “I’ll keep the mark to myself, for now, but you can’t keep me out of the Season. Especially if you’ll be there yourself. I wish to find a match.”
Azrian inclined his head. He’d known this day would come.
The Hand was still unsure what secrets the High Binder and their cronies had woven into those marks. But he’d ensure his people wouldn’t pay the price for them.