If not for the spell Enri cast, I wouldn’t have had any contact with Eumen, Clecia, and Corek.

After their stellar performance in Fera, they were kept on with the personal guard, their training expedited and specialized. Vanli griped about it, but she looked proud. It was no surprise that someone like Corek would excel, but she seemed surprised about Clecia and Eumen. I had once overheard her talking to Sanyr about everyone in the class. I was mostly listening to see what she would say about me, but Sanyr brought them up first.

“What about Corek?” Sanyr asked. He leaned against the obstacle course while everyone was practicing their forms, running through the list of cadets to see what Vanli thought of them. It was my off day from combat, and I was waiting on Iljana to come back from his smoke break. He didn’t smoke, but I was sure it would help calm him during his breaks.

“A solid soldier. Good under pressure and with her peers. I know she’ll go far. Although…”

“Yeah?” Sanyr perked up a bit. He was always one for gossip. “I can’t imagine she has any flaws that can’t be easily fixed.”

“She doesn’t, but Corek seems to like surrounding herself with those far weaker than herself. Eumen has the capacity to grow but lacks conviction. She’s here simply because she was drafted. Going through the motions is no way to grow. And Clecia… Do you know why she’s mute?”

“Hm? No, I never asked. Seemed like something she didn’t want to talk about.”

“Minbu soldiers mutilated her under suspicion of being a spy for His Majesty.” I felt my stomach drop, my eyes finding their way to Clecia on the field. She was grinning at Eumen as Corek flipped her over her shoulder. I never looked closely at her neck, though her scars were obvious.

“She was a child, and knew nothing of the political landscape she found herself in. Her parents were spies and were murdered shortly after being caught, but she was innocent. Despite the mutilation, she can speak. Critni healed her, and Vren oversaw her rehabilitation. She just doesn’t. Her weakness is on display and, coupled with her sentimental personality, there’s not much I can do for her.”

Sanyr was quiet as he surveyed all the trainees. “And what about Kaiya? Corek seems to have taken a liking to her.”

Vanli let out a sigh. If not for the horror of what she’d said about Clecia, I might have laughed. “It’s hard to tell. She clearly has no prior training, but I don’t think there’s another trainee with conviction as strong as hers. Despite her flippant attitude, she feels the weight of her choice acutely. If she keeps applying herself, she may make His Majesty’s personal guard in the next few months. Or she may fail entirely.”

She was mostly right, of course. About us and our weaknesses. But she misjudged us, too. Corek’s iron-clad morals were a double-edged sword in the tangled mess of politics. Clecia was kind and softhearted, but that didn’t take away from how deadly she could be. Eumen joined out of a sense of obligation, but she found her obligation to protect ran deeper than first thought.

Under different circumstances with a just king, the three of them would have done wonders.

As it was, they all had treason to commit.

Since it was no longer safe to rendezvous anywhere in the castle, we relied on the communication spell. There were only three rules. Rule one: the message had to be twenty-five words or less. Rule two: we can only send a message to one person at a time. Rule three: if you send a message and that person doesn’t answer, you can’t send another either until they answer, or an hour has passed. They were simple, but it could get hairy if we weren’t careful.

Enri, of course, had her own set of rules to follow. When I’d asked her about them, she just smiled without answering. If she wasn’t so damn hot, I would have pressed her about it more, but I could hardly think when she smiled like that.

“We’re being put through the ringer,” Eumen said. “Is Madam Enri taking any pity on you, or is it the same?”

Eumen was the first to figure out how the spell worked, having grown up with mages. Magic was innate to Ornus, but not everyone had an innate understanding of it. Corek was slowly getting the hang of it, but I wasn’t sure we’d ever hear Clecia’s voice.

The only downside to the spell was that it didn’t matter what I was doing, I was going to get the message. And right then, Enri was on top of me, holding a knife to my throat.

“There was never any pity to be had. I’m just getting my ass kicked after a hard day’s work. If I die, you’ll know why.”

“Distracted, Kaiya?” Enri was smirking as she tipped my chin up with the tip of the knife. “Tell Eumen you’re busy.”

“She knows.” Enri rocked as she got to her feet, holding out her hand. As much as I didn’t want to wield a weapon, I needed to be able to fight against them, and Enri knew how to handle every weapon the palace had to offer.

I wanted her to handle me like that, but we didn’t have the time or energy for shenanigans.

“Good luck, Kaiya. I’d take Madam Vanli’s training over Madam Enri any day.”

“I can’t believe you’d abandon me like this.”

Eumen laughed. “I think you’re having more fun being tossed around by her than I ever would.”

I grabbed her hand, and she pulled me up. “You got me there.”

Enri took her stance, her eyes scanning me like the enemy she was pretending I was. “Again. And pay attention this time.”

“It’s hard when you’re so pretty.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” She flipped her knife around her fingers with grace. She took her stance as I steadied my feet, her gaze level. “Come.”

Enri moved first. Her reach was shorter than mine, but she was quicker on her feet. Training with Shippa made my limbs heavy, and I barely managed to block her thrust. I grabbed her wrist as she pulled away and twisted. She held onto her knife, gripping my shoulder with her other hand, and bringing her knee up.

I twisted to the side, dodging her knee, and fully turning around to bring my back to her chest as I used my weight and momentum to fling her away. She landed on her back and gasped before flipping back to her feet. I grumbled, noting she used magic to get her breath back.

Charging again, she faked right, grabbing a dagger from her thigh, and swung left. I leaned into a backflip, thrilled I pulled it off first try. Crouching down, I swung my leg out. She jumped, my leg slicing through where hers had been. I pulled myself up, punching to where her stomach would be. My fist hit her leather armor, and I clenched my teeth at the pain.

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Her feet hit the ground before my fist fully connected, and she stumbled back. She threw the dagger and repositioned her knife as her feet hit the ground. The dagger skinned my cheek, and I lifted my hand, but panic flooded me. I couldn’t recover fast enough, and the back of her knife hit my throat. I struggled to breathe as I tried to stay still. Enri wasn’t above drawing blood during our practice fights.

She removed her knife, sheathed it, and walked to get her other dagger. “You can’t let the fear of getting hurt stop you.”

“I’m not afraid of getting hurt.” I rubbed my throat, knowing there was going to be a bruise tomorrow. “My instinct was to use wind to push you, but you would have stabbed yourself if I had.”

“Good,” she nodded. “Magic will be your greatest asset in these fights. If I get hurt, I’ll be okay. I don’t go down easy.”

She continued to not go down easy for the rest of our training. It was as hot as it was frustrating. There had to be a way for us to get on even footing. I just wasn’t seeing it.

I couldn’t tell, as I sat in the carriage with Shippa the next day, if I was sore from the day’s or night’s training. Probably both.

The thing that got my blood moving was when we stopped at the lake Ikae trained me at and Shippa said, “Strip.”

“What?”

She looked annoyed having to repeat herself. “Strip to your underwear. I want you to express your flames and not burn your clothes.”

I thought about fighting, but wasn’t interested in the back and forth. There were too many other things to worry about and I was still tired from yesterday. I stripped off my clothes to my underwear, still regretting the fact that my one and only bra had fallen apart by month two. It just wasn’t made for the harsh conditions I found myself in. It was weird to be tits out in front of Shippa, but she seemed to be unfazed by anything that wasn’t my attitude or flippancy toward royalty.

“Today, I want you to understand the heat and destruction you can bring. Every day we’ll come here to train and once you can cover your body in flames without burning your underwear, we can start further training. Once it’s gone, we’ll head back and start drilling the basics again.”

My feet sank into the mud as I waded into the water. I took a breath, feeling my magic move and roil and flow until the heat bubbled beneath my skin and set it alight. It took less than a second for me to realize my underwear was starting to burn. I let it extinguish and sighed. This was going to take a while.

We stayed there for hours, the water extinguishing me when I couldn’t do it myself. It was frustrating, but I was making better progress than I was with Evada.

“Kaiya, are you busy?”

The fire flared out, steam rising from the lake. Shippa raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“Only a little.”

“Oh.” Sayla sounded disappointed. “I just wanted to ask how you were doing. It can wait until later.”

I wanted to laugh, but sweat was racing down my back and forehead, and it was starting to piss me off. “I love you, too.”

She laughed, and then she was gone. My heart clenched, and fire roared from my chest and stomach, scorching my underwear to ash.

I sighed and sank into the lake up to my nose. There was only so much indignity I was willing to take, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having Shippa see my everything.

The urge to just stay there and float was creeping in. Shippa was already making her way back to the carriage, waiting for me to dry off and get dressed. After I waded to shore, we would go back to the classroom and practice magic concentration and distribution. Shippa would stand and watch my magic flow around my body and critique and tell me I was mediocre at fire magic. I would bite back the urge to bitch and try to glean some information out of whatever she’d told me.

“We need to figure out some time to hang out. If I have to deal with this and can’t even bother y’all, what’s the point?”

It took a moment before Eumen answered. I never knew what she was up to, only that she trained from dawn till dusk like I did. “I agree. This training may just kill me and Clecia. Not Corek, of course. She was built for this.”

I laughed. “Of course, Corek would excel.” She grew up in harsh environments. At least this one was structured. “We’ll figure it out soon, I just need people to bitch with.”

“Hopefully can hang out again soon. And Clecia’s working on learning how to do this so maybe you can talk to her, too.”

Wouldn’t that be something. I wouldn’t blame her if she never did, though. “Okay, I have to leave the lake now. I need new underwear and Shippa is starting to get pissy.”

Eumen’s snorting laughter was all that came through, and I smiled.

I got up and made my way to shore.

° ° °

“I get to have a day off?” It felt like a joke, but Shippa didn’t joke. At least, not with me.

She rolled her eyes. Shippa had taken to resting against a tree and reading while I tried not to burn my underwear to a crisp. Enri had done a marvelous job not laughing her head off when I had to explain why I needed to buy more underwear. She’d given it one hell of a try, though, her eyes wet with tears and falling into a fit of giggles every few minutes.

“In a week, the Festival of Red Moons will be held, and I don’t intend to spend the holiday with you.”

Fire consumed my arms and torso, and I was making steady progress down. It had gotten easier to stand the flames as long as I was focused. The only thing that I couldn’t get the hang of was not burning everything on me.

Red moons. It had been a while since I’d seen a total lunar eclipse, let alone two, and I’d already told Lenris I would hang with her and Kejesi since I was sure it would take place at night. Whether Enri let me off the hook or not, I wanted to make time for them. But if I had the day off, then Enri likely would too. Hmm….

“Focus.” She went back to her book as my underwear began to burn. I brought my thoughts back to training, but they continued to wander as I settled in bed that night. A plan was forming my head, I just needed the time to execute it.

It wouldn’t take that long to do it, but I found myself extra jittery as the day came closer. Enri could tell something distracted me as I got tossed around more than usual, but she didn’t ask. I could only assume she just thought I was stressed. I was, but not for the reasons she thought.

“Hey, Sayla?” I was in bed, wide awake despite being physically exhausted.

“What’s up?”

“Can I get some lesbian advice from you?”

Her laughter filled my head, and I started to relax a bit. “Only if I can get some bisexual advice from you in the future.”

“Only fair. I just wanted to know how you stopped feeling nervous when trying to impress a woman.”

She laughed again; this time it was full of sarcasm. “You don’t. You just try your best and hope that she likes it. Got something planned?”

“I have a surprise for Enri at the festival, since I’ll probably never get to take her on a proper date.” I could feel myself pushing against the word limit and stopped, not wanting to feel like I was taking a dive.

“Well, it’s Enri we’re talking about. She’ll love whatever you do but tell me so I can actually give advice.” She listened dutifully, only replying when I hit twenty-five words so I could continue.

“I just want to know if someone did this for you, would you like it?”

“Kaiya, that’s so goddamned romantic it makes me sad I’m not in a relationship.”

I laughed. “I’m glad it’s not too cheesy.”

“It’s very cheesy, but it’s also very cute. You’ll both have a great time. Let me know how it goes. I wanna live through you.”

I let out a sigh and I could feel my body and mind finally melding together and relaxing. “I will. Talk to you later.”

“Good night, I love you.”

“Love you, too.”