Mather turned to Henn. “This is too soon.”
Henn leaned forward from where he propped against the wall, observing the training in William’s stead. “We’ve only been at it for a few weeks.” He nodded Mather along. “Spar.”
An order. Mather growled, the sound bubbling in his throat. Orders were all he had now. Orders from William, orders from Henn. Orders from his queen.
A jostling near the door tugged at Mather’s awareness again, but it wasn’t Cordellan armor. Boots, the rustle of fabric, and a voice Mather knew by heart.
“We’ve returned.”
William.
No one seemed to notice the way Mather darkened at William’s arrival, an event that should have made him fake a smile, at the very least.
Henn launched away from the wall, closing the space between him and William like a man intoxicated. “You’re all back?”
Mather saw the unspoken questions ripple across Henn’s face—Is Dendera safe? Is she well?—because similar questions filled him.
If you’ve returned, William, it means Meira is back too—is she safe? Is she well?
Does she miss me at all?
Blotches of red covered William’s cheeks, telling of the cold winds that had chased their party all the way from the mines. He smiled at Henn, dusting snow from his sleeves. It scratched at Mather wrong whenever William looked like that. After sixteen years of William being stoic and hard and unrelenting, happiness looked awkward on him.
“Yes,” William started, one eyebrow rising. After a pause, he waved at the door behind him. “Dismissed. Go to Dendera. She’s just as eager to see you.”
Henn slapped William on the shoulder and darted outside. Which left Mather as the sole person to report on the trainees’ progress, and when William turned to him, Mather found his mouth had dried more violently than the Rania Plains at noon.
“Report,” William coaxed, taking in the Winterians standing behind them.
What did he have to report? The most notable thing the Winterian trainees had done since they had begun was toeat a full breakfast and keep it all down.
“They’re not physically ready for this,” Mather stated, his voice level.
William’s smile didn’t flutter. “They will be. Training will help.”
“They need to heal first.” Mather angled his shoulders forward, all-too aware of how the subjects of their argument stood behind them, watching, listening. “They need to work through what happened. They need tounderstandwhat happened—”
Mather cut his words short. William’s veil fluttered, a crack that showed whenever Mather pushed too far. Like when William had tried to explain his reasoning for keeping Mather’s parentage a secret as a “necessary sacrifice for Winter,” and instead of accepting that explanation, Mather had demanded why. Because it made sense, yet it didn’t make sense, and while Mather had wept on the floor of the ruined cottage the Loren family had claimed, William had simply stood, told him it was in the past, and left.
But all William said now was, “No, they need this. They need to get into a routine.”
Which felt exactly like:It’s in the past, Mather. Look only to the future.
Mather panted. He couldn’t breathe, damn it . . .
He shouted a warning cry and dove at Philip. The boy launched backward with a shocked yelp and caught a few of Mather’s rapid blows before he tripped on a lump of strawand smacked onto the floor in an explosion of dust.
Mather wrapped both hands around the hilt of his sword. In one solid push of movement he leapt into the air, dropped down, straddled the boy, and slammed the wooden sword into a crack in the floorboard a finger’s width from Philip’s head.
Everyone in the barn held silent. Not a gasp, not a cry of concern. Just dozens of eyes watching Mather and Philip and the wooden sword wobbling vertically in the barn’s floor.
Philip’s eyes wandered down Mather’s sword, to the crack in the floor, and back.
“So.” His lips relaxed in a smile. “This means I lost, right?”
Mather spit out a laugh. The sound released the tension, and a few of the men waiting in line chuckled as Mather helped Philip to his feet.
But Philip’s eyes flicked over Mather’s shoulder and the laughter died, an absence of sound that ignited all of Mather’s senses.
