Rush let a few breaths pass before he moved.

  He slipped into the Veil like shrugging on a second skin. Color thinned to pewter, sound to a muffled hum. Lanterns dulled, flames going flat and coin-bright. The square became a painted scene he could walk through without stirring the paint. He stopped in the deep shadow of a food stall’s awning and looked.

  There.

  Kylar and Kairi turned slowly with the music, her hand resting light at his shoulder, his at the small of her back. Rush watched the exact moment she tipped her head back and laughed at something the boy said, watched how Kylar’s mouth eased, the whole line of him loosening like he’d just found something he hadn’t realized he’d been searching for.

  No interference.

  He’d decided that before he left the house. One night. One dance. Her choice.

  He kept it even when Kylar leaned in and kissed her, brief and careful. Even when Kylar’s hand went to his own throat and then to hers. Rush’s first thoughts tugged, instincts wanting to lunge. He stayed where he was, shoulders against cold stone, eyes tracking every small movement until he saw it:

  The glint of a Lyon ring settling at Kairi’s collarbone.

  Given, not seized. Offered, not forced. Her fingers closed around it, weighing it, then she smiled and tucked it under her dress, metal vanishing against her skin.

  Good, Rush thought. Choice.

  He let the Veil slip away as he stepped back into the mouth of a side alley. Color rushed in like breath. The music sharpened, laughter and fiddle bright against the night. Before he’d fully solidified, something dropped from the roof above, landing in a soundless crouch.

  The man unfolded from the impact, all in black, hood up, blades glinting on bandoliers and thigh straps. His grin flashed white under the mask.

  “Majesty,” Shade said quietly.

  Rush exhaled, half annoyance, half relief. “You made it.”

  Shade rolled his shoulders, loosening muscles that preferred rooftops to cobbles. Up close, the years sat strangely on him: a Tearian face that should have looked older, pinned in place by slow blood and a faint, scaled mark along his throat that caught and swallowed light.

  “You made it clear you were leaving,” Shade said. “I’m not letting you wander off into a gorge full of foreigners without at least one competent man watching your back.”

  Rush’s mouth twitched. His gaze had already gone back to the square. Kairi and Kylar were still within sight, caught in the eddy of the dance, lanternlight painting them in warm strokes.

  Shade followed his line of sight. “You’re letting her have one night to be normal?” he asked, tone lighter than his eyes.

  “I’m letting her enjoy the company of a prince,” Rush muttered.

  Shade squinted. “Doesn’t look like Ryder.”

  “Not Ryder,” Rush said. “His youngest brother.”

  “Huh.” Shade studied the boy for a long moment. “He’s got the look.”

  “What look.”

  “The ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve this but I’ll die before I drop it’ look.” Shade said matter of fact.

  Rush rolled his eyes. "He gave her his ring just a little bit ago." Shade’s eyes narrowed. “He has a shadow on him?”

  “Yes,” Rush said. “And he’s Shadowguard himself. Don’t let on I actually think he’s decent.”

  Shade’s grin sharpened. “Oh, I won’t. I should test that, though.” Rush cut him a sidelong look. “Don’t cause a scene.”

  Shade set a hand to his chest. “Have I ever caused a scene?” Rush just stared.

  “Shade,” he said eventually, voice dry as ground bone, “you caused all the scenes. That’s why you got the job you got. And why you kept me mostly sane through our campaigns.”

  Shade snorted and let his head rest back against the wall. “I was just trying to impress your general,” he said. “Hoped he’d put in a word with a certain phoenix-blessed terror about my many fine qualities.” The old memory put a fine crack through the moment. For a while they just stood together in the alley’s mouth, watching Kairi and Kylar move through the lanternlit crowd.

  “Does it hurt?” Shade asked eventually, quiet now. “Seeing her dance with a foreign prince. Like…Trin.”

  Rush’s shoulders sagged a fraction. The Dragon coiled low, unhappy but contained. “I should have done more,” he said. “Asked more questions. Paid attention on the nights that didn’t feel wrong enough.”

  Shade’s jaw worked. “Raven didn’t give anyone a reason to doubt him,” he said. “He bled where we bled, drank where we drank. Madmen don’t usually laugh that well.” His mouth twisted. “That’s what made it easy.”

  Rush nodded once. “I kept my rules back then,” he said. “No mind diving then."

  “And now?” Shade asked. Rush huffed air that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Now I break my rules whenever someone looks at her too long."

  “Even our Prince here?” Shade said. Rush simply nodded. Another stretch of silence. Music swelled and shifted, the dance changing patterns.

  “So,” Shade said eventually, pushing off the wall, “am I still just your pet assassin, or do I get my position back?”

  “You’ve always been my Draggoon,” Rush said without looking away from the square. “That hasn’t changed.”

  Something eased in Shade’s stance, a tension uncoiling under the leather and black cloth. “Good,” he said, almost lightly. “I was getting tired of haunting taverns for rumors. The undercooked stew is a war crime.”

  Rush’s eyes tracked the lines of Kylar’s hands as they shifted with the new dance, steady at Kairi’s waist, respectful but sure. “I had you check on those names I sent,” he said. “The ones in the palace circles.”

  Shade’s expression cooled. “Traitors,” he confirmed. “Men who smiled about Mylain in private. Who liked the idea of tearing a god-beast out of someone like meat off a bone. The Saebrian experiments still tempt the desperate.” His lip curled. “They called them ‘gifts.’ Like grafted magic is anything but rot.”

  “They’re abominations,” Rush said, the word grinding out from low in his chest.

  Shade dipped his head. “Agreed. I ended the ones we could confirm. The rest got a warning they won’t forget.” He flicked his gaze back to the dance. “You know the beasts are choosing fewer and fewer. Every decade, the marks get rarer. More acknowledged, fewer vessels. Makes the cowards hungrier.”

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  Rush knew. He’d been the Dragon’s for most of his life. He heard the gossip in every court that would have him. “There’s concern a Lyon won’t be chosen at all this time,” he said, low. “The Wolf and the Griffin already claimed the older two. Ryder and Damon have their marks. We’re waiting on the Lion. Or whatever decides to get clever.”

  Shade’s brows rose. “Concerned the bloodline won’t take?” He tipped his head. “Because of her?”

  Rush’s gaze flicked to the faint impression of the ring under Kairi’s dress, where it rested against the Phoenix’s brand. “Because he’s tied to her,” Rush said. “To the Phoenix. To the dream bond. Beasts are…particular. They may feel her in him and turn aside.”

  Shade hummed, thinking. “What if the Dragon claims him?” he said finally. “Phoenix and Dragon have been tangling their claws in each other’s business for ages. Wouldn’t be the first time they both took an interest in the same soul.”

  Rush had never let that thought finish forming before. It landed now and went still. A Naberian prince with a Tearian beast coiled in his ribs. Kairi’s dream-companion carrying Dragon and Phoenix both.

  “We’ll see what the beasts want,” he said at last. “They rarely ask permission.”

  He straightened from the wall and turned away from the square. Shade fell into step beside him as they left the noise behind. Cobblestones gave way to narrower streets, lanterns thinning to the odd doorway candle and the wash of moonlight over rooftops. For a while they walked without speaking.

  “Let me present myself to her,” Shade said finally, tone deceptively mild.

  “No,” Rush said at once.

  Shade snorted. “Fast answer.”

  Rush’s jaw tightened. “You told me to keep you dead,” he said. “To let her grow up without another ghost dragging behind her.”

  “I told you that the night I found you alive while my whole house was a graveyard,” Shade said. “I also told you I was drunk and stupid and full of survivor’s guilt.” He glanced sideways. “I didn’t mean ‘keep me dead forever, even when she’s a grown woman dancing with foreign princes’.”

  “You think she needs to see what you’ve turned into?” Rush snapped. “You’ve slit throats in alleys because men said her name too loudly over dice. You’ve killed people we used to call friend.”

  Shade’s mouth flattened. “Who told me to.”

  Rush looked away. The street ahead blurred briefly into corridors of Mylain, into stone and fire and screaming.

  “She already carries enough guilt for surviving,” he said. “Every life put in her hands, every wound she can’t heal, every time I leave her behind to be ‘normal.’ You really want to add, ‘by the way, your childhood co-conspirator has been murdering his way through the continent on your behalf’?”

  “I want,” Shade said, and the brittle humor fell clean away, “to stop pretending she’s still ten and barefoot in the herb courtyard. She’s the Phoenix now. She took a ring from a foreign prince and she’s riding into a new kingdom under someone else’s banner. She deserves to decide if she still wants the man who climbed trees with her. Or if she wants nothing to do with what I’ve become.”

  Rush studied him. Shade’s amber eyes were steady, but Rush could see the tightness at the corners, the way his gloved hand flexed by his thigh.

  “She’s going to look at you and see the boy who let her paint your bracer red for luck,” Rush said quietly. “And then she’s going to ask what you’ve done with that boy.”

  “Then I tell her the parts she can bear,” Shade said. “And you can fill in the rest when you’re ready.” A faint, crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “You’re getting soft, you know. You used to be the one telling me to drag truths out by the teeth.”

  Rush huffed a humorless breath. “I got old.”

  Shade side-eyed him. “You got…attached. No, not attached. You learned fear.”

  They rounded another corner. The house Branson had lent them showed ahead, lights low behind drawn curtains.

  “I’ll wait for her tonight,” Shade said, quieter now. “On the roof opposite. No scenes. I watch how the prince brings her home. How his guard moves. A test.” His jaw worked. “And when she’s at the door, when you’re there, I step down where she can see me. We stop lying by omission.”

  Rush’s steps slowed. “And after that?” he asked.

  “After that, I go with you,” Shade said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “To the ravine. To Carlbrin. You really think I’m staying behind while you walk into a narrow pass with Saebrian blades sniffing around the borders?”

  “You’ll slow us down,” Rush said automatically.

  Shade lifted both brows. “You teleport,” he said. “I climb and jump. Between the Dragon’s mark and my good knees, I’ll manage. Besides, someone needs to keep an eye on your Ash Guard candidates.”

  “Candidates?” Rush echoed.

  Shade ticked them off on his fingers. “The prince. His shadow. The quiet broad-shouldered one you’re trusting with her daily life. Darius.” His tone went edged. “You’re really going to let a foreign soldier stand closer to her than any Tearian man?”

  “If he earns it,” Rush said. “If he fails her, he answers to me. And to you.”

  Shade’s smile came back, knife-thin. “Poor man.”

  Rush gave him a sideways look. “Jayce says he’s steady. Kylar trusts him.”

  “Jayce. Ryder's man.” Shade said. “Forgive me if I’d like my own look at the man who’s supposed to be her wall.” He nudged Rush’s shoulder. “Let me spar him first night out. See what he’s made of.”

  Rush thought about Darius: serious, quiet, all angles and focus. About the way Jayce had described him standing between doors and threats without fanfare.

  “First camp,” Rush said. “You can test them, but if she says stop, you listen."

  “She is scarier than you.” Shade said, unbothered. They walked in companionable quiet for a few beats. The noise of the square was only a distant echo now.

  “Does the prince know?” Shade asked suddenly. “That she’s a vessel, not just blessed. That the Phoenix lives in her, not around her.”

  Rush thought about Kylar’s careful thoughts about seeing the mark in the dreams. “He’s seen the mark,” he said. “I don’t know if he understands the difference.”

  “And the exploding problem?” Shade asked. “She’s holding a god-beast in a body that hasn’t had a priesthood teaching her for thirty years.”

  Rush’s mouth went tight. “I think the bond helps,” he said. “The dreamscape. It siphons some of the pressure. There’s…balance there.”

  Shade’s brows rose. “Bond,” he repeated. “You keep dropping that word like a rock and then walking away.”

  Rush didn’t answer. Shade let it go, for now.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll ask him myself once I’m done throwing him around a training ring.”

  “Shade,” Rush warned.

  “What?” Shade spread his hands. “If I like him, that’s good for her. Bad for him. Means he’ll have me in his ear as well as you. I’m very difficult to ignore.”

  “He already has people who never stop talking at him,” Rush said. “He’s used to it.”

  Shade hummed. “Then I’ll have to be…innovative. Embarrassing childhood stories, perhaps.”

  “He’ll repeat them to her,” Rush said. “And she’ll kill you.”

  Shade grinned, teeth flashing in the gloom. “Then I’ll just be myself. Infuriating.”

  “You’re good at that,” Rush said, dry.

  “I’m good at a lot of things.” Shade stepped ahead of him suddenly, walking backward with the easy, predatory grace of someone who knew exactly where every loose stone was without looking. His amber eyes caught Rush’s blue. “Including catching dragons when they fall.”

  Rush snorted, but there was warmth under it. “If you want to stay attached to my hip for eternity, you should have thought more carefully before letting a god mark you.”

  Shade flung an arm companionably around his shoulders as he turned and fell back into step beside him. “I’ll settle for the next few centuries,” he said. “If you die, I’ll have your sister drag you back.”

  “She can’t do that,” Rush said automatically.

  “You don’t know that,” Shade countered, cheerful. “Phoenixes are tricky.”

  They reached the door. Rush set his hand to the latch.

  “You’re sure about the roof?” he asked, one last time.

  Shade nodded once. “I’ll see how your shadows walk,” he said. “And how their prince lets go of her hand when he thinks no one’s watching.” He tipped two fingers to his brow. “Then we decide what I am to her. Monster, memory, or something in between.”

  Rush held his gaze for a moment, then opened the door and stepped inside.

  “You didn’t make a scene,” he called over his shoulder as the door shut between them. “How thoughtful of you.” In the street, Shade laughed under his breath, already looking at the nearest wall for the best handhold up into the dark. He found some with ease and climbed up and waited. He laid down on the roof and looked up at the stars.

  Two vessels, and he was the last knight. The Ash guard Draggoon, it had a nice ring to it. He should get it tattooed on his arm or something. He let his chest expand with a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Here is to the first day of the rest of my existence. Cheers."