"Explain this to me again. Why do we need to wake up before dawn?"

I sighed. It was the third time Eskir had asked the question since I'd shaken him awake. The first time, I had ignored it. He had barely been conscious, his eyes barely managing to squint. Even if I had answered him, there was no guarantee he would register it as actual language, and not the remnants of a dream he wasn't even sure he'd yet escaped.

The second time, I told him it built character, and he responded with a groan while he clenched his head.

This time, I dismissed him by saying, "You signed up for this."

In truth, I wanted to leave before anyone found us.

Jenny and I sat down for breakfast in the restaurant, while Eskir set up his meditation leaves outside. "You'll be hungry later," I had warned.

"We have plenty of food," he reminded me, pointing to the wagon. "And besides, I'm going to be cramped in that thing all day, with an extra passenger too. With a hangover. Let me have a few moments alone."

"Maybe he just wants to sleep," laughed Jenny. I couldn't help myself from a lighthearted chuckle, but I was less concerned about Eskir's hunger or fatigue, and more about his safety. I couldn't watch him constantly. It wasn't practical, and it wasn't exactly conducive of sanity. Still, he'd had too many close calls, and I'd only just met the man.

My consolation was that he'd somehow survived until he met me. However he'd managed, he was managing. It wasn't as if there were some conspiracy to keep the two of us either apart or dead. Eskir might have had a stolen voice, but for all intents and purposes, I was just a random citizen of the capital.

When Jenny came to the table, she brought two mugs of steaming, black coffee. I took a moment to breathe in the smell, and for the first time, noticed just how brown her eyes were. They simmered just like the coffee, glowing in the light of the morning sun through the windows.

My plate of breakfast hit the table with a careless toss from a passing waiter. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back. He eyed my strength with a glimmer of realised panic, as if he'd only now realised that it was a mistake.

"My apologies," he insisted. "I thought, since you're sitting together..."

"Why?" I asked bluntly. "She's done nothing to you."

He paled. I was still gripping his arm, but he managed to keep a firm tone in his voice. "She's not welcome here."

"Why?"

"She's For Peace."

I released the server, and he scurried off apologetically. I turned to look at Jenny again, a knot in my gut from the thought of my invitation. Her expression remained neutral, but I could have sworn there was curiosity hidden in there, wondering how I was going to react. "It wasn't where you were from that you were worried about telling me," I said.

"You're Kindred," she replied, as if in response to my accusation.

"If you don't like my kind," I started, "that's fine. But I was honest with you about that. How do they all know you're For Peace?"

"I've been here before," she said. "Before the incident in Eaden Helm, they were more receptive."

"And you had nothing to do with that," I suggested.

"Of course not!" she spat, suddenly enraged. "We're not all fucking terrorists."

"And I'm to believe you because...?"

"Well, I didn't kill you last night."

Against my best intentions, I had fallen asleep the night prior. Only for a short time, but it had happened.

"I could have let them in," she continued. "Whoever was at the door. I could have moved the cabinet. But their intentions were pretty obvious, and I would never do that."

My breath stopped. "Someone was trying to get into our room?" I nearly got up and rushed out the door to check on Eskir, but the fatigue of it stopped me. What little sleep I had taken wasn't enough, and not for the first night in a row. I wasn't so tired that I'd suffer on a battlefield, but instead of rushing over, I opened up my hearing. The comforting shuffle of Eskir's boots on wet, sloppy ground brought a breath of relief.

"Yeah," said Jenny. The sound of it split my ears open in shock. My fingers rushed to fill my ears, crying out from the sudden pain. I'd almost forgotten I was in the middle of a conversation.

She gave me a weird look, then continued. "It woke me up. I heard some shuffling, and someone tried forcing the door open. Eskir woke up too, but he was so hungover that I'm not even sure if he remembers. He just fell asleep again right away. You were completely out of it."

I looked down at my coffee and saw Jenny's eyes reflected in it.

"Look," she said, "if you don't want me to travel with you, that's just fine with me. It's clear you're trying to protect him, but that's not enough for me to trust you. As far as I'm concerned, you're all killers."

"This coming from a member of the For Peace movement," I remarked.

Jenny rolled her eyes. "It's in the name? For Peace. I want peace."

"Your organisation might disagree with that. They happen to be called For Peace too, you know."

"A small minority," she said.

"A very loud one."

"Fine, a very loud minority. But I'm not one of them." She grabbed my plate, poured the bacon, toast, blood sausage, baked potato, and boiled egg into a small muslin sachet, and left the beans and roasted tomatoes. "Eat mine instead," she snapped, then slammed her chair back and stormed out of the restaurant.

I felt a collective sigh from the staff, as if they had been whispering to themselves, wondering when she would finally leave.

The ground outside was drenched. The spring storm had lasted all night, and Eskir had given up on sitting in the mud for his meditation. Whatever had been left of the snow near the Lakeside had now melted, and the free-flowing water that had not collected into puddles was trickling down the slope to the lake that bordered the southeast edge of the road that would bring us to Bell Haven.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I walked out of the restaurant, my belly full. It was a poor substitute for a lack of sleep, but at least my strength had returned. Eskir was seated in the wagon, waiting in the back with the horses ready.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

He nodded. "I thought Jenny was coming? I saw her walk off east with her pack. That's the direction we're going."

"Not travelling with us," I said. "She's For Peace."

Eskir cursed. "Of all the... and I was asleep in the same room as her!"

"Relax," I chided. "If she wanted you dead, she had plenty of opportunity to kill you."

"And you trusted her!" he continued, ignoring my response. "You brought her in!"

I hoisted myself into the wagon and gripped the reins. "We can't go around refusing to trust anyone," I said. "We do that, nobody will ever trust us. How to you expect me to get any of that information you're unable to share if I treat everyone with suspicion?"

Eskir slumped a bit into his seat with a grumble, preparing for the jolt as the horses broke the wagon free from the caked mud around the wheels. The wagon had been under shelter all night, but from the moment it left its respite shelter, the wheels were near immobile again, and it took the horses a minute to break the friction lock that held it.

"Sorry," he sighed. "I'm a little on edge."

I chuckled, trying to ease his nerves with the laughter. "Look at it this way. How many people can say they've had assassins after them? Consider it a point of pride. You have bragging rights!"

He gave me a semi-bombastic side-eye. "I worry about how you view the world sometimes."

I suppose, that is what I get for growing up a Kindred in the capital.

The city of Senvia was different. More removed from it all. The empire spanned half of Avengard, and in most places, war was at the forefront of culture. Kindred were raised for it. Save for those born in Espara or Eaden Helm, or born to Kindred parents, our kind were taken from families we would never know, and raised nearly from birth to fight.

Human armies still existed. They were the regular force, an army maintained and conscripted for what most nations might otherwise consider normal war preparation and safeguarding. Kindred were, by tradition, mercenaries. There were a few exceptions to this, of course. Elite guards, like me. Other sensitive posts, elite members of more potent militaries, and high ranking individuals who served on the front lines. Human generals did the paperwork. Kindred generals walked through the mud.

But Kindred demanded a high price, far higher than any human. A single trained Kindred soldier in a mercenary guild could command, at minimum, five hundred avens a season. That was twice what an average human would earn in a full year. Even untrained Kindred, as rare as they were, could demand one hundred avens a season.

If I had decided to pursue mercenary work after Senvia's disappearance, I would have valued myself at four thousand avens per season, the same rate as champions like Triton and Nymeria.

Of course, over half of that would have gone to equipment. Armour, weapons, training, arcane items. Most chose to follow a Path, and for the ones who chose it, they also paid a tithe. As a member of the Royal Guard, those expenses didn't exist for me. They were provided to me for free. I never had to find work. I was employed year-round, and made two thousand avens in each year. My food, training, armour, even my housing in the Emperor's Spire, was all free.

It wasn't exactly the noble life most people expected. Not for me. It might have been, if I'd sought it. I was there to do a job, and I acted like it. Most of what I made was banked in institutions located in the city, and as a result, the vast majority of it had vanished with Senvia.

But that didn't bother me. I had five hundred avens on my person as I travelled with Eskir, and more in an account in Bell Haven. I had wealth enough that I never needed to worry about it, and an unwillingness to flaunt it.

The humans on the other hand...

The Emperor's Spire was a palace in a league of its own, with each floor dedicated to its own purpose.

The lower steps were a gathering place for tradesfolk and wealthier merchants. From there, the marble steps led to the legal courts, which had originally been a gallery of war accomplishments until Lyana's rule.

Above there were government offices and passageways and pedways to adjacent structures, most of which either housed the workers of the spire, or the services and infrastructure that nobody wanted to look at.

There were the kitchens near the peak, where the smells of the food would carry themselves upwards and away from the rest of the spire. That was in part, I think, influenced by vanity. It was difficult for some to avoid the temptation if they could smell it all the time. There were a few suites located above it, attracting nobility who wanted the view. Or the smell. But they were a more select few.

Beneath the kitchens lay the royal court. Those rooms, adjacent to the throne room, were where I slept and spent most of my time. My home was a single room underneath the stoves of the kitchens. It was the third location in the spire. My first was as a child, when my services were first sold to Lyana, and I was stationed in the training grounds near the base. After she took a more specific interest in me, I found myself moved to a larger room with too many cupboards, dressers, and seating.

It took time, but when I felt more comfortable speaking to the empress, I asked her to move me to a hideaway storage space I had found, somewhere out of the way.

"Let me pick somewhere better for you than this," she said, staring around the dim corner with a look of aghast. "You'll freeze in the winter and boil in the summer. That window over there doesn't deserve the name, it's too thin and disturbingly tall. And you'll be cramped beyond belief."

I shook my head. "I don't need much."

She gave me a look halfway between pride and disappointment, as though she couldn't decide which one she wanted to feel. "Xera."

"Thank you, Empress."

And it was. Freezing in the winter. Boiling in the summer. Exactly what she predicted. And it was perfect. I rarely spent much time in there to begin with, and it was well-suited to my wants. I didn't want to show off my income or buy fifteen armour sets. I bought weapons, but in modest amounts. If I broke one, as was common with Kindred, I replaced it. I kept a small armoury of what I trained with. A spear, sword, axe, daggers, staff, flail, and logically, a training hammer. It was all to make sure I could use anything I could essentially use anything at my disposal as a weapon, from a broom to a rope, or even a plate.

How long had it been, I wondered, since I had to do that?

Well, how long had it been since I'd fought at all? That ambush had warmed my joints for the first time in a very, very long time. It didn't sit well with me anymore. My muscles fell back into dealing out death far too comfortably.

But by the stars, did it feel right. The splatter of blood, the satisfying crunch of armour and ribs. Bodies launched back as I struck them like a game of whack-a-mole.

It was like I was back with Lyana again. Not travelling for politics, but for war. She was never very fond of war, but when it happened, it happened.

And it happened. Again and again. That was Senvia for you. Every year, a new separation state. Every year, a new province conquered. Often the same ones, cycling. What was left that bordered the empire? Elann? The impenetrable gates under a mountain. Refiriem? The endless grass sea that consumed entire armies, never to be heard from again. The westfjords, too far away to be profitable, and on the other side of Alvenor too. Cinia, the tiny country hidden in the mountains? Senvia in all its might wouldn't have stood a chance.

I hate war. I always have. Even as I sat there in that wagon, my bones relishing the memory of blood, my mind revolted against it.

This is not what I am, I told myself.

This is not what I want to be.

This was never what I was meant to be.

Still, Lyana took me with her in the conquests. She didn't need a guard, not really. She was just a human, and I was never able to lay a finger on her unless she wanted it. A scythe in a field full of briars. I could look up to her as a god, if I believed in deities.

So why did she take me with her?

Was it her fault that my bones craved blood? Or her fault that I hated my longing for it?

It didn't really matter. I'd never resent her for it. It was my joy just to be there with her, to watch her rule, to witness her prove herself again and again to people who demanded it.

She wasn't the first woman to sit on the throne, but that didn't change their thoughts on the matter. She wasn't even Kindred, they kept muttering, as if that make a difference to someone in government.

As if that made a difference to her in battle.

Flawless, I remembered. Absolutely fl—

"Xera," said Eskir, jolting me back to reality.

I shook myself back to awareness. The wagon bumped against a pothole in the roadway.

"You've been talking to yourself."

My face turned beet red. "If you tell anyone, I'll break your kneecaps."

He perked an eyebrow, chuckled, and pulled a thick straw hat over his head. "My lips are sealed," he laughed. "After all, I apparently know how to keep a secret."