Page 27 of A Shattered Kingdom of Steel

How many times had I put on a brave face, only to break down once I’d reached the privacy of my bedroom, replaying those five words over and over again? How many times had I wished, for once, to hear something different?

To hear she was proud of me?

“I expected more from you.”

Well, perhaps, she’d always expected too much from me.

A stark contrast to my mother’s, Viridian’s words echo in my mind.

“We need someone we can trust. We need you, Lymseia.”

I let out a long sigh.

“I’m not meant for this,” I murmur to myself. “I’ll only let you down.”

The weight of my fear?my failure?swells in my chest and overflows. Tears threaten to well in my eyes, and my throat burns. A horrible knot forms in my stomach, rising to choke me. I slow my breathing, aiming to bury my emotions deep within me. Emotions, like anything else, are deadly in battle.

Ceren taught me that, too.

“Bladesinger?” Asheros asks softly.

Frantically, I wipe my eyes, inadvertently pulling at the rope binding. I curse under my breath. My control—my focus—slipped away.

Again.

“What’s wrong?” Asheros presses, his expression pinched with worry.

“Nothing.” Hardening my expression, I lock my vulnerability behind a wall as durable as the steel of my twin blades.

“Bladesinger,” he says. Though it retains its tenderness, his voice is firm. “Something—someone—hurt you, didn’t they.”

It’s not a question.

“Didn’t they?” he repeats.

“You’re my kidnapper,” I say, my voice hard. “Why would I tell you who hurt me?”

A lethal calm settles into his crystal-blue eyes, making them colder than ice. “So, someone did hurt you.”

Without meaning to, I’d said too much.

“Who, Bladesinger?” Asheros’s voice is barely above a simmer, full of deadly purpose. “Who should I bring to their knees before you?”

Tightening my jaw, I ignore him.

Before he has the chance to argue with me, the horses’ shrieks ring out, splitting the silence.

Chapter Eight

“This discussion is not over,” Asheros promises, eyes blazing.

“Yes, it is,” I counter, matching his scowl with one of my own. It never should have begun, I think to myself dryly. Letting him, my enemy, see my weakness…

I can only imagine what Ceren would say.

He growls in protest, nostrils flaring. “Bladesinger—”

I shove past him and out of the tent, using the rope that binds us together to drag him out with me. I expect him to keep arguing with me, but then I see what’s riling up the horses and completely forget what Asheros and I were arguing about.

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