Yarima was absolutely shaken by everything that had been happening over the last day. She and Oretski had mostly hidden out of the way while the people of Kyr-Toryl fought with the guards and sometimes each other.

There had mostly just been brawls, nothing more than a few broken bones, but it was surreal to see this happening in person.

Yarima had never seen protests like this. Whoever dared to question the queen disappeared, and her soldiers and guards were well paid enough to keep in line, so no one ever dared.

She was currently waiting in a dark alley for Oretski to return. They never dared to investigating the situation together, so instead they tended to go in different directions and then regroup again. Wearing hoods was suspicious as it was. They didn’t need to make that worse by staying together.

Yarima herself hadn’t managed to find out much despite having followed one of the main people organizing the anti-war protests for hours. The woman had just gone around checking on people’s wellbeing. Which was admirable, Yarima supposed, but wholly useless.

This chaos was the perfect chance for to take the Daybreaker’s powers, especially when he was injured, but he’d gone somewhere and they had no idea where. And they were wasting time.

“I know where Tyr-Naralyn is,” said Oretski from behind her, making her flinch a little and turn around. The man was so sundering silent it made Yarima wonder if he somehow used the air to muffle his movements.

“Okay, great. Let’s go then.”

Yarima was already walking the way Oretski had appeared from, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“We cannot just march over there and take him.”

Yarima narrowly resisted a joke about how Oretski would love to take the Daybreaker. The rivalry he and Tyr-Naralyn had had always been very peculiar to her. It didn’t really come across as entirely hate-based, and maybe they should just get it out of their system.

But without knowing how her brother would feel about it, Yarima couldn’t encourage anything.

“I already defeated him twice. I was just always stopped by the shadowforger from actually taking his power,” Yarima argued, shaking his hand off her shoulder.

Oretski’s eyes widened. It was just by a fraction, but it made his usually stony face look horrified anyway. “You…tried to take his power?”

Yarima frowned, pausing before nodding slowly. “Yeah? That is the thing that I do.”

“You have not been primed to take on the power of a svetlokriv,” Oretski explained, calm but also clearly still very concerned judging by the look in his eyes. “It will kill you.”

Yarima stared at him in utter confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Oretski frowned harder. “Your mother never told you how it all works, did she?”

“No. What are you talking about?” Yarima repeated, getting annoyed and raising her voice.

Oretski took a deep breath. “Well, to be given priori powers, one must have their blood be neutralized to accept them without dying. You’ve been primed for all the priori powers that were available, from what I’ve heard.”

Oretski sighed, shaking his head. “I’m not sure why you can take them from others. The kralevna has not managed to replicate it. But the point is that if you try to take Tyr-Naralyn’s power, you will die because your body is not ready for it.”

Yarima blinked at him, unable to say anything for a moment, just thinking about how she had apparently avoided death twice, and how the one who had stopped her from dying was the shadowforger, despite the fact that neither of them had known that.

“I…didn’t know this. You aren’t just saying this to stop me, are you?” Yarima was immediately suspicious now. “Did my mother put you up to this?”

Oretski sighed. “No, it is simply a fact. I went through a similar process to you. Therefore, if I were injected with any other priori power, I know I would die.”

Yarima decided not to get annoyed with him for comparing his very voluntary suffering of a few months at most to her situation of being tortured by her mother for two decades. That would get them nowhere.

“Okay. You don’t seem to be lying. But Svytlani does want us to bring Tyr-Naralyn to Orinovo. What does she want to do? Give his power to someone?”

It was a rather logical assumption. Yarima wasn’t sure if the queen had figured out how to create priori powers or if it was still just a transfer to her most loyal, brainwashed subjects, but she didn’t like either possibility.

Yarima hadn’t even bothered considering this because she’d been operating under the assumption that she’d simply take the Daybreaker’s power for herself the moment they managed to capture him.

This was a problem.

“I do not know what the kralevna means to do with him,” Oretski said finally. “But that is not something we should concern ourselves with.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Yarima scowled. “Yes, because you are a good little soldier, just following orders. I know.”

Oretski snorted, shaking his head. “I will not dignify that with a response. The important part is that we need to try to capture Tyr-Naralyn. And ideally do so without being recognized.”

Yarima narrowed her eyes. “Do you truly wish to put him through the experimentation that my mother will put him through?” She took a step closer, staring him right in the eye. “You went through it. You know what it’s like.”

Oretski avoided her gaze. “What I want is irrelevant. I am simply here to do as I am told.”

Yarima shook her head. He really did seem like a lost cause. But his love for her brother just didn’t fit into that. A lost cause wouldn’t be going against the queen’s wishes like this.

“Have you never thought about taking Deni and leaving? You can fly.”

Oretski blinked at her, his mouth a little open in surprise. So the answer to that seemed to be no.

“I…cannot leave Orinovo. A coward would do that. The country needs me to protect it. And it needs Denir to be its king when his time comes,” he finally said after a moment, sighing. He didn’t seem all that convinced himself.

“I am next in the royal line,” Yarima reminded him. She would be the new queen. That was the one thing she was determined to accomplish, not for power, but for the good of their people.

“I do not trust you to lead our country,” Oretski replied, his tone flat.

Yarima had to laugh. “And I do not care what you think, soldier. You do as you’re told and that’s it, no? For queen and country?”

Oretski gritted his teeth. “We should focus on the mission at hand. If we bring Tyr-Naralyn to Orinovo, traveling here will be worth it even more than it already has been.”

“Do you truly think Svytlani will make you be kapetan again?” Yarima asked, knowing that was the part Oretski was leaving unsaid. He just threw her a withering glance.

“Let’s go. But do not rush in. We need to be careful.”

Yarima wanted to point out that she now commanded nearly all the priory powers and had very few people who could match her.

She was however trying to decide if purposely messing this up would be worth it now that she knew she couldn’t just take his power. She didn’t really want to put the Daybreaker through such suffering. The man was a complete, arrogant vo, but no one deserved this.

But if she were to do this, it would have to look subtle, convincing enough that Oretski couldn’t outright prove anything.

She followed Oretski silently, pulling her hood up a bit more when she noticed a strand of her white hair was sticking out from beneath it.

They walked around a few people, but no one was paying attention to them, but that didn’t put her at ease at all. The guard had gotten very intense with their patrolling now after what had happened.

They still seemed to be mostly focused on protecting the palace district, but it seemed the High Herald had changed his tactic a little after what had happened because now everyone was terrified of the shadowforger randomly popping up out of the shadows.

Yarima had no doubt that it had been happening. And that it was on purpose, to make people scared and constantly look over their shoulder, even though as far as Yarima knew there was no way to tell if the Nightrazer was in a shadow or not.

It did put her on edge as well, even though she hadn’t seen him since the whipping incident. But there was no use worrying about this. There would be no avoiding him anyway.

Oretski led her through the local web of narrow alleys made up of older, somewhat rundown houses.

They were in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Kyr-Toryl, not that Yarima was surprised this was where the anti-war protesters had taken up residence.

It was the farthest place from the palace, so it was much less often patrolled by guards, and there seemed to be quite a few abandoned buildings. Not to mention that poorer people tended to oppose wars on general principle of it costing tax money—their money.

It took quite a while, but eventually they reached a streetcorner where Oretski ducked into an alley. Yarima followed, stopping behind him when he paused at the end of the alley.

“That,” Oretski said, pointing at what looked like an old wood-and-stone warehouse with no windows. “That is where he and his allies are staying. We will have to fight our way through, which will no doubt alert him. Injured as he is, he should be easy for you to defeat.”

Yarima was really not liking this anymore. But before she could even try to convince Oretski that maybe this wasn’t worth it, someone spoke behind her.

“Thank you for leading me here.”

Yarima wanted to turn around, but she found out she couldn’t move. Oh by the sun, not this again.

Oretski made a grunt of effort, but he was as stuck as she was. For a second Yarima felt like the shadowforger’s power was slipping from her, but then he appeared out of a shadow right in front of them, his hold on them as strong as before.

So he couldn’t use his powers much when he was a shadow. Interesting.

Yarima only wished she had had an actual opportunity to use that information instead of no doubt dying within the next few moments.

“So you wish to take Ainreth’s power again?” Fennrin asked Yarima, glaring at her. “I should kill you where you stand.”

“Look at you getting all protective about your boyfriend. Too bad you didn’t protect him from the lashing,” Yarima said, deciding to make him angry immediately.

That was the best bet they could get to make Fennrin lose concentration. Holding two people in place must have been difficult.

And as predicted, the shadowforger’s eyes darkened with fury, Yarima gasping as the pressure holding her body in place got so much worse and painful.

“How did you get here?” the shadowforger snarled at her. “The border is heavily guarded.”

Yarima grinned even through the pain. “It was embarrassingly easy to get here. And you only now noticed us.”

The alley got a whole lot darker as the Nightrazer gritted his teeth. He was a much angrier man than when Yarima had seen him last. He was probably stressed from all that had been happening, which was good.

“I’ve been following you the entire day. I wanted to know where you would go and what you would do.”

Yarima grinned some more because he was just constantly giving her material to throw back at him. Make him angrier. “And you didn’t know where our dear Daybreaker is either? Did we miss the divorce?”

The shadowforger grabbed her by her tunic, his eyes ablaze with rage. Yarima was shocked that he was actually sort of terrifying like this.

Maybe he would end up killing her. But there wasn’t much else Yarima could think of doing right now. At least the Nightrazer was fully focused on her and not Oretski.

His hold on her increased, making it hard for her to breathe. But she didn’t stop. “Y-you just exchanged him for Varilik, hm?” she forced out, laughing breathlessly. “Moving up in the world.”

“Shut up!” Fennrin yelled her right in the face. He raised his hand, his bared teeth promising a painful death.

But the next moment the shadowforger was flying hard into the house opposite the alley, crashing into the wall with a cry. And at last Yarima was free.

She flexed her arms as she looked at Oretski who still had his hand raised. For a split second, Fennrin must have truly lost control over him.

“We are leaving. Immediately,” Oretski said, already flying up. And Yarima eagerly followed, glad that she didn’t have to argue with him about giving up on capturing Tyr-Naralyn.

They had barely escaped death or imprisonment and then most likely execution. And she wasn’t going to look back.