Page 128 of Stardust Child

“Leonin, I amnothing,”she whispered. “What am I without my father, without Remin? I don’t knowanything.I only know how to read because my mother taught me before she died. I’ve been pretending, all this time, to hide it from you.”

“But why would you hide it from me?” he asked, bewildered.

“Becauseyouthink I’m important,” she retorted. “But you don’t know me at all. You don’t know anything about me, I’m not special, I’m not important, I’m notanything,and you want toswear your soulto me!”

Leonin drew a breath to protest, if only out of simple manners, but the look on her face stopped him. So naked and despairing, so raw that it might have been the lost cry of his own heart.

“But I want to be,” she said, lifting her eyes to his. “Not…important, I mean. I want to deserve it. I have to do something by myself to make everyone proud. Remin, and his knights, and you and Davi, and everyone. I’ve been trying, but it’s so hard, and there’s so much I have to learn—”

“You can,” Leonin managed. He was so wrong-footed, he hardly knew what to say. “If I have learned nothing else of you, my lady, it is that you can learn. Perhaps faster than Sir Justenin would prefer. And we will help you.Iwill help you. Does His Grace know?”

“No,” she said bleakly. “I will tell him when he comes home. I was going to talk to him about you and Davi, anyway.”

“Then you mean to refuse us,” he said, his heart sinking.

But unexpectedly, she shook her head.

“Maybe…not,” she said. “You said you wanted to set the standard. A hard standard, based on merit, not birth.”

“Yes…” he said, cautious.

“Then apply your standard to me,” she said fiercely. “If you have to follow my soul around the stars for eternity, I should be worth following, shouldn’t I?”

Leonin gaped at her.

“You mean you wantmeto decide whenyouare worthy to swear the oath?” he asked, dumbstruck. She nodded.

“Yes. That will be a hard test for you, won’t it? If you want to set the standard. You can’t be dishonest about it, or go easy on me, or make excuses for me. The best guardsmen in the world should only swear their swords to someone they believe in.”

He wanted to argue. As soon as she put it in those terms, he knew that by his standards, it would be years before he could become her hallow. Perhaps he never would. What would this girl have to do, to earnthe swearing of a soul? Especially when she was standing in the shadow of Remin Grimjaw? And His Grace was sure to disagree, the whole point was to protect her now. But…

What she had said.Someone they believe in.It rang so deep and so true, he could not protest. This was something far greater than he had conceived. A tradition of excellence not just in the hallow, but the one to whom they were bound. Each of them working to deserve the other. They would hold each other to account. They would make each other greater.

Could she do it? Leonin gazed at her, trying to shed the trained blindness he had learned in Segoile, the layers of rank and etiquette. To seeher, the timid young woman who slouched when she sat and fidgeted when she was nervous. There was never a more unlikely hero than this girl.

“I…accept,” he said, and was astonished to find his throat was tight. He stretched out a hand to her and for the first time in his life tried to set aside all courtesies. “Ophele,” he said. “I will help you however I can. Please endeavor to deserve me.”

“I will,” she promised, and took his hand to seal the first oath between them.

* * *

“Our scouts have spotted smoke,” said Sir Edemir a few days later, as he was ushered into the new public end of Ophele’s vast bedchamber. “From the north.”

“So that is from…Meinhem?” Ophele asked, quickly hiding her bit of sewing in her embroidery box. The tests to her new resolve were coming quickly, but she had no choice but to try to meet this challenge.

“Yes. Ortaire, with whatever survivors he found there,” Edemir confirmed, taking a chair at Ophele’s small table. Lady Verr was already pulling out quill and ink. “All of them should be on their way back by now, and we should plan how we will receive them, Your Grace. We’ve built a few outposts to watch for them, but it depends on the devils and the number of survivors as to how quickly they will travel. A couple days, at least. Bram is taking wagons and horses to meet them.”

“The devils won’t get them?”

“It’s not likely, this late in the year. But we should expect wounded, and all of them will be hungry. Women, children, elders. We’ve builtsome cottages on the north side of town…”

It was unclear how much of this was Ophele’s responsibility, in Remin’s absence. Edemir had charge of the town, so most of these practical matters fell to him, but Ophele’s charge was the hospitality of the valley, and most of Remin’s ceremonial duties. Rubbing her head, she tried to think past the ache in her temples. She had not slept in a very long time.

“Has Genon enough help at the hospital?” she asked, remembering the wounded men when Sir Huber had come back from Ferrede.

“Yes, my lady, he’s got a few journeymen to assist him, and squires to help with any heavy work among the wounded.”

“Lady Verr, you have some experience in healing, don’t you?” Ophele remembered. “I thought Duchess Ereguil said so.”

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