The head looked at him.The ancient eyes, the size of his body, adjusting to find him the way they'd been finding him all night."You killed Rosanora," Xerion said. Inside his skull."Yes," Draven said."She was the most capable of the three.""I know," Draven said. "That's why I went to her first."He blazed his fists up, and threw fire at the head.It was not a good opening. He knew it wasn't a good opening before he did it. The fire was running low and the head was going to take it the way the head took everything.The fire hit the head.The head looked at him through it."Your fire has diminished," Xerion said."Yes," Draven said."You've been fighting for hours.""Yes," Draven said."And you walked up to me anyway.""Yes," Draven said. He moved right and threw fire from the new angle. Same result. The head tracked him with the slow rotation it used…"Why," Xerion asked.Draven used full might of his flames.The detonation hit the head. The head shook. A movement. A single shudder

He stood up. His good arm pushed him up and the broken one hung and he stood up and he looked at the head and the head looked at him and something had changed in the ancient eyes. "What did you take," Xerion asked with a stern look. Draven didn't answer. He stepped back from the head. One step, two. He found a stance that his body knew without him choosing it, the way his body knew fire, the way it had known Black Death after Voss, something settling into muscle and bone that had always been going to be there. Behind him, in the air above the broken arena floor, something appeared. The head saw it before Draven could describe it to himself. The ancient eyes went wide. It was an old weighing balance made with gai. Enormous. "No," Xerion said.. "No," it said again, louder. "That technique is gone. She failed. She failed to use it and it died with her. You cannot have that. You are—" The ancient eyes moved from the balance to Draven and back, rapidly.. “Where did you get that.

Sera picked the spot.A clearing an hour out from the east gate, past where the city lights gave up, where the trees opened onto a flat stretch of grass with a stream running along one edge of it. She'd found it reading the ground weeks ago, she said, and had been saving it, though she wouldn't say what for. Now they knew what for.She built the fire pit herself. Sank her hands into the earth and drew a ring of stone up out of it, waist high, smooth on the inside, and Jin looked at it and said, "You've been able to do that the whole time and you let me carry firewood," and Sera said, "The firewood was good for you," and that was the tone of the whole night.Zephyr brought food. More food than six people could eat, which meant he'd overpaid someone in the market and enjoyed it. Lyra brought a jug of something that turned out to be cider and pretended it was for hydration. Becca came because Sera had asked her, and she sat a little outside the circle at first until Draven moved over and

Elysande brought the summons herself, which told him it mattered.She didn't send it by rider or leave it with the academy office. She came in person, in a plain coat instead of anything with the imperial crest on it, and she found him in the courtyard where he'd been sitting doing nothing, which was still a novelty. She sat down beside him on the low wall without being asked and put the folded paper in his lap."Read it later if you want," she said. "But you should know what's in it before someone else tells you a version that's worse."He unfolded it.He read it twice. The empire's seal at the top, the careful language underneath, the words *ceremony* and *honor* and *title* arranged the way you arrange things when you want them to sound like a gift and not a hook."They want to make me something official," he said."They want to make you theirs," Elysande said. She looked at the courtyard, not at him. "It's not cruelty. It's how the empire works. Something powerful appears and the

The next day it was Lyra’s turn to depart.Lyra took the healers' hall on a Tuesday.There was no ceremony, which was exactly why she liked it. She walked into the eastern hall that morning as the person who ran it instead of the person visiting it, and by midday she'd rearranged the supply room, reassigned two apprentices who'd been standing around looking useful, and told the senior healer who'd run the place for thirty years exactly three things she intended to change. He'd started to argue. Then he'd looked at her face and stopped and written them down.Draven came by in the afternoon and found her at a long table covered in patient records, sleeves pushed up, a pen behind her ear and another in her hand."You've been here six hours," he said. "It already looks like yours.""It is mine," she said, not looking up. "That's the point of the contract." She made a note in a margin. "The whole east wing was running on habit. Nobody had checked whether the habits still made sense in year