Behind the Frozen Keep, and outside the spiral walls that dominated the Korongorod, was a wide expanse of lawn enclosed by a half-circle of white verandas. It was lined in stone walkways, silver planters of blushing roses, and icy fountains of mounted warriors from legend, all lit by massive braziers. But the far side of the lawns held no decorations, no buildings. For the greens were situated right at the Korongorod's outer border, and so they fell away abruptly to open sky like a cliff's edge. Perhaps another day, the greens would be hosting lavish garden parties or noble sport. In today’s case, they would demonstrate a bonded’s capabilities.

Andiya strode onto the field in front of me in full Eon regalia. She found her place in the centre, turned, and bowed low.

The balcony above the verandas dripped with hulking icicles. Irina stared down at us, her diadem bright like a star. Behind her was a retinue of bored-looking dignitaries. I wondered how many of them believed the rumours of a High Order, and what the deniers thought the archon had really died from. I took my place on the left side of the field, level with Andiya. Across, Jawahir took the right.

“Set!” barked Jawahir, and Andiya and I stood at attention. “Release!”

I raised my hand open palmed to indicate that I was giving my bonded its magic.

The bond remained tight.

“Release!” Jawahir repeated, more insistent this time.

I tried. I pulled on the bond, and Andiya’s muscles tautened. Come on. Come on, Rozin. Let go.

But my neck grew hot from the staring, I’d already taken too long, and I looked up to see Irina white-knuckled on the balcony railing with rage. Her dignitaries tittered amongst themselves.

A figure waved from the side of the greens. Blonde hair, grey uniform. Yulia.

“Let’s go, Rozin!” she cheered, and I saw more people shoving in behind her. Rafiq, Shokarov, some of our riders. My squad was here to watch me fail.

“Release!”

Irina began to have an argument with the man beside her, and I almost ditched the field in panic.

He was a towering, simply-clothed man with narrow, cruel eyes—one of them a solid, unforgiving black. His bald head was shaped like a bird’s skull, papery white and cracked with fine dark lines from some mishandled magic years ago. I didn’t need to be on that balcony to hear the echo of Seylas’s sandpaper rasp.

“This will end when I say it does.”

My hold slipped, and Andiya’s magic surged into her. Her head dropped back as power swirled between us, thick and head-spinning as liquor.

“Rozin Kain of the Eon Guard,” said Jawahir with relief. “First display of bonded Andiya, High Order, Fire Elemental class.”

I began to motion as I’d seen Yulia do. The Canavar military had a standard set of signals for bonders, so that their comrades knew what the daemon was being ordered to do. The trick was to make Irina believe my signals meant something. Yulia controlled Artem as an extension of herself, but the same was not possible for Andiya and I. So we had to fake it.

My hand curled into a fist above my head in the battle-ready indicator.

Andiya planted her feet. She swept her hands open palmed against her shaved head, and a murmur swept through the spectators. Where Andiya’s fingers passed, crimson hair flowed in a shimmering cascade. It tumbled against her back in loose curls, bright against the morning sun like a river of blood. She threw me a grin, and I found myself lingering on the sight. Power hummed from her, buzzing my skin. She was once again so solid, so real, drawing every eye with an electrifying magnetism. This was who Andiya was meant to be. Not some beaten prisoner. But ferocious. Dangerous. Heart-stopping.

I flicked my wrist out, and a ring of flames swirled about Andiya’s feet. We moved. Andiya’s flames intensified as we advanced on a line of stone dummies on the other side of the field.

“Animate!” called the sage, and two Animator class bonded beside the dummies began to glow with indigo magic. One by one, the dummies cracked to life. The bonded infused them with their own magic, and their masters puppeteered them into a battle formation. The two bonded managed about eight dummies in total before their magic hit its limit. Together, they rushed Andiya.

She seemed unconcerned. Andiya toyed at a tiny ball of flame, moulding it like clay. The dummies came within striking distance—30 feet, she had told me. I clapped my palms. Andy’s fireball swelled and lengthened, screaming up to the sky in the vague form of a dragon. It had a long serpentine body and a gaping jaw, but its outline was fuzzy, as though squinted at through glass. It twisted in the sky and slammed back down. The dummies disintegrated.

We bowed to the balcony. The dignitaries had gone still with shock. Only Irina smiled.

I closed my palm, and I felt Andiya agree through the bond. The dragon lay at my feet, crackling flame as it bowed its blurry head.

“Set two!” shouted Jawahir, and a new cluster of dummies entered the field.

“More,” Andiya’s voice whispered against my mind. I flinched. It felt spoken right into my ear, and I could almost feel her breath on my neck. That was new.

I cleared my throat and waved to an assistant in the wings. “More targets.”

“Fill the field,” said Andiya.

“Fill the field.”

We waited patiently as more bonded were brought to the green. More, Andiya kept demanding, until the dummies numbered some two hundred. A small army of Animator class bonded hung at the edges of the field. Probably the majority of the Canavar’s reserves. Irina’s hungry smile gave me the chills.

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Andiya’s voice purred up the bond. “Let’s have some fun, Rozin.”

The chill melted away, and I felt my face grow hot. Creators save me.

The bond flicked, and as we’d planned, I moved from my position to stand only a few feet behind Andiya.

“As an Eon Guard,” Jawahir announced to the balcony, “Eon Kain will perform her demonstration as a realistic depiction of her duty to protect the archon.”

“Don’t burn me,” I said up the bond, and smirked when Andiya flinched in surprise.

“I won’t, if you do as I said.”

Jawahir announced the advance, and two hundred dummies began to cross the field.

“Raise your hand.”

As I moved, Andiya mirrored me.

A tiny ball of blame grew in the palm over her head. The dragon flew towards us and absorbed into the ball. It became too bright to look at.

“Spin your wrist.”

A ring of fire snaked around us, burning as high as my waist.

The air grew too hot. But it wasn’t just inside the ring. The lawns were yellowing, and up on the balcony, the dignitaries were fanning themselves. Leaves on the decorative hedgerows behind us began to curl.

“Andiya …”

“Trust me. Isn’t that what your sage told you?”

“This seems more than a demonstration.”

“You’ve never heard of pageantry?”

I plucked the bond in warning, and without turning, Andiya nodded. Understood.

The horde of dummies was almost upon us. Lazily, Andiya blew on the little ball of fire, and it floated from her hand like a dandelion seed.

I could feel the world hold its breath as the ball breezed gently into the horde.

It exploded.

Brightness burned my eyes. I threw up my hands to shield myself, just as the ring of fire around us shot upwards into a protective dome. The Korongorod quaked under my feet.

“The princess!” I shouted with my real voice. “What the hell did you—”

“She’s fine, everyone’s fine.” Andiya turned to look at me with a sly smirk. “Let’s leave the magic to those trained for an immortal battlefield, hm?”

The fire raged around us. Andiya seemed too drunk on her magic to realise what she’d said. Immortal battlefield. Fighting what, exactly? Other daemons?

The dome of fire petered out, and I found myself on a field of ashes. The planters and pillars were charred black, all hint of greenery up in smoke. The damage reached up to the balcony, stopping only feet below Irina. And at the far end of the field, where there had once been an army of dummies, was now a hole where an entire chunk of the Korongorod had been blown to oblivion. Andiya had carved through the floor, the stone, anything in the explosion’s path, leaving only a smoking scar.

Faintly, I heard the dignitaries quarrelling above. Irina never looked away from Andiya with a smile that could freeze the sun.

“Bow, Rozin.”

My heart slammed as I dipped low. What had we just done? How could one daemon have enough power to level a city?

I met Jawahir’s gaze when we came up.

He did not look happy.

*

No one called on me for several days. I had no princess to guard, no sage to see, and the last time I’d left my apartment, a wall of Eons said Irina would prefer I didn’t wander. Should she need me on short notice, was the excuse.

But Andiya and I knew better. Our demonstration had been a success—far too much of one. We were too dangerous to walk free. Not when Andiya could tear the Korongorod right out of the sky with a single blow.

Better for us to relax, stay calm.

I drank tea on the balcony, finding that I did not handle captivity well. I’d been a soldier for so long I’d forgotten what the words “spare time” meant. Being bored made my memories far too loud. They leapt back to Kamala, as they always did, and to the redwyr, and to the way Seylas’s voice had echoed through the town hall. The memory quickened my heartbeat, made my ears whine. I had to shove it away, before the panic set in. I wasn’t safe here, I wasn’t safe anywhere …

A chess set slammed on the table, and Andiya dropped onto the opposite chair.

“Play with me.”

“Uh. No.”

“Rozin,” Andiya ground between her teeth. “Your stupid miserable brain is driving me up the wall. Play, or find some way to shut it up.”

“I’m sorry, but when exactly did we transition from the silent treatment to board games? Because I liked the old arrangement.”

Andiya began to set the chess pieces. I saw her frown at the pawns, which were carved in the shape of cloaked bonded.

“Seems about right,” she grumbled.

“Where did you even get this?”

“Told one of the maids you wanted it. I am just a faithful bonded serving her beloved master, after all. There. I’ve played. Your turn.”

“I said I’m not—”

“I swear. Is everything always so difficult with you? It’s a damn game. Yes, you hate me, I get it, and yes, I still hate you. Blah blah blah. Get over yourself. I’m bored. You are too, and I’m sick to death of feeling your depression through the bond. Play.”

I scowled at her, and she rolled her eyes mockingly back. I liked Andiya better when she was injured. At least then all she did was sleep. I shoved a pawn forward.

We played wordlessly. Andiya’s turns took twice as long as mine. And they were terrible.

“King and Crown,” I said, and knocked over her archon piece.

“How did you—I had a strategy! Two more moves, and I had you. Again.”

I didn’t agree, but when Andiya reset the game, I took my turn after her.

“King and Crown,” I said again after a time.

Furiously, Andiya set the next game.

I leaned over the board, tracing paths to victory in my mind. Ah. There it was.

“King and Crown.”

Andiya’s scarlet eyes flared with magic. I held her power back, finding it easier to control after our demonstration. In defiance, Andiya forced her way through two more games and won neither. A servant brought dinner, and we let it get cold.

“Why can’t I win?” Andiya whispered more to herself than to me.

“Shokarov carried a set everywhere we went. I was his favourite opponent. I’d like to think I picked up a few of his tricks.”

“Well. You’ve surprised me, Rozin Kain. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“And why not?”

“Took you for more of the brawn over brain sort of type.”

“I can’t tell if that’s an insult.”

“Only half of one. It’s because you’re so …” She waved at my body vaguely.

“So?”

Andiya’s eyes flicked to my arms. I’d not bothered with my uniform today. Instead, I’d chosen a simple training shirt and breast band, the shirt’s material baggy enough for movement. But Andiya was looking at the fact that it was both sleeveless and split-sided, exposing my arms and parts of my ribcage. The gold tattoos she had given me wrapped around my arm, glinting subtly when I moved.

“Brawny,” she said with a leer.

I knew she was only trying to get a rise of me, to have something to entertain herself with. But I really didn’t like the direction this conversation headed towards.

“This is what it looks like when you spend a few years running through the mountains bonding daemons,” I reminded her. “Including your friend Khalid.”

Pain—impossibly real pain—flashed across her face. “Right.” She gazed over the balcony. We were passing over a lush forest. “Where is he?”

“With Rafiq.”

“So out with your captain. Capturing daemons.”

I considered lying to her. I would be easier in the long run, if she never saw Khalid again. One less thing I had to deal with.

“Here on the Korongorod,” I found myself saying instead. “Rafiq watched our demonstration.”

The shocked rolled over Andiya first, and then a sorrowful ache shot up our bond so powerfully that my own eyes pricked. Andiya didn’t even bother to shut it out.

“Please let me see him.”

I tried to shove my guilt away in favour of what I’d known my entire life. Daemons couldn’t love, didn’t feel real sorrow or pain, they only imitated it—because if they could love, then what had I done?

My thoughts betrayed me. What if it were Yulia?

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Andiya didn’t need to reply. I felt her gratitude, her relief, her fear of who she would meet when she again saw Khalid.

There was no reason to let her see him at all. I could have lied and my life would have been easier. But I’d wanted to say yes. Not only from guilt. I’d wanted it for Andiya, because I would have wanted the same for me.

Our door crashed open, and Yulia came sprinting onto the balcony like a frightened hare.

“Rozin! Rozin, you need to come with me. The princess is leaving the Korongorod.”