Page 34 of Heart of Defiance

Her sharp green eyes pin me in place. Jostein and Iko are watching me too, but I barely feel their gazes compared to hers.

I push my mouth into my best wry smile. “I went to the duke’s estate. I wanted to see?—”

Signy’s stance tenses. “You went to thedukeling? After everything that’s happened, you’re still trying to impress?—”

“No!” I break in. “I don’t give a shit what Rupert thinks of me now. I only thought—I could at least find out exactly where they stand—if there was any hope of persuading them to oppose Dariu?—”

Iko, who doesn’t even know the duke or his son, snorts,and a shamed heat floods my body. The idea didn’t seem so absurd when I first thought of it.

Signy folds her tan arms over her chest. “They already offered their guards up to the Darium army. It’s obvious which side they prefer to be on. How could you still think you could trust them?”

I swallow thickly. “I didn’t, not really. I just wanted to try. To dosomething.”

Jostein studies me with his usual authoritative calm. Whatever he thinks of my attempt, he doesn’t reveal any disdain in his voice. “What did they say?”

“They’re totally committed to supporting the empire,” I admit. “And… Rupert’s the one who pointed the finger at Signy.”

Her eyes flash. “Of course he was. You only just figured that out?”

My words stall in my throat. It was the obvious answer. Maybe there is something wrong with my own loyalties that I didn’t fully believe it, didn’t want to believe it, until I heard it from him directly.

But even when his opinion mattered to me the most, even when it seemed as if all my dreams of getting out of Feldan depended on his good will, I never felt half as desperate as I do right now.

I meet Signy’s piercing gaze, letting it hollow me out. I wanted to do something to help our cause, but all I’ve done is make her questionmyloyalty. My fucking common sense.

And I don’t know if I can tolerate a world in which this woman looks at me with suspicion any longer.

How did I never realize just how spectacular she is before? These two men saw it so quickly.

She’s single-handedly set a revolution in motion, rallied hundreds to the cause, seen the ways to cut through the empire’s bullshit.

All the dreams I once had are nothing but shadows compared to the future she’s aimed us toward.

I don’t really care where in the world I end up or what I’m doing there, as long as I’m at her side seeing what she’ll do next.

So everything I do from here forward, it has to be proving myself to her. Earning her trust, her friendship… I don’t know if I can dare to hope for more than that.

It doesn’t matter. I’ll take as much or as little as I can get as long as I can be here with her.

No resolution has ever felt so right. The decision steadies me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Old habits die hard, but this one couldn’t be more deceased. We don’t need the help of the nobles anyway, not when we’ve got you pointing the way. What’s the best thing I can do for our revolution right now?”

Chapter Thirteen

Signy

“Block, feint, jab,” Jostein calls out, stepping forward with a swing of his sword.

I jerk the short sword I was given this morning through the motions we’ve been practicing. Steel clangs against steel, the impact reverberating through my arms.

I manage not to stumble backward like I did the first few times we practiced this sequence, but my jab isn’t quite fast enough to even nick Jostein’s tunic before he’s smacking my blade aside.

As I grimace in frustration, he lowers his sword and squeezes my shoulder. “You’re doing well. Most of us had years of training and practice battles before we saw real enemy action.” He glances across the field around us. “I’m sure we never expected to find ourselves as the teachers this early in our careers.”

All across the lightly hilly terrain around us, other soldiers are directing the civilians who’ve joined our ranks through similar exercises. The periodic influxes of newsquadrons have brought some extra weapons with them, and some people are still using kitchen and hunting knives, makeshift spears, or whatever else we could scrounge up to arm them.

My gaze drifts farther to the peaks looming in the distance. It’s a strange sensation, looking over and finding the mountains at my flank rather than up ahead.

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