Page 61 of Kissed By the Gods
“Leif.”
“Present.”
I’m already sad that Leif is in his last year of ward training before he becomes a sentinel like Faelon. I only have a few months left with him. There’s shockingly few of us—only 6 wards in Stormriven and 41 total in the entire Synod. Faelon told me last night they’ve already lost half of the boys who are in their first year of training. They will lose about another quarter of them before the year is over.
Losethem. Like they’ve been misplaced.
“Leina,” Robias calls out, standing in front of me with the book he’s making notes in.
“Present,” I answer, and I’m proud that my voice doesn’t quaver. I brace for a strike from the whip. The guys warned me they’re aggressive with whipping and a plethora of other physical punishments for even the most minor infractions. They want to desensitize us to the pain, so that when we’re in a battle we’re not immobilized by it.
Robias pauses to look me up and down, and he makes a scribble in his notebook, though I don’t dare move a muscle to see what he’s writing. He taps his quill against the pages, examining me.
I’m not dressed like the other wards. Not quite. Like them, I’m wearing a black tunic, black leather pants, black boots, and a simple chainmail that covers my chest and shoulders. But a silver scrawl crawls down the seams of my tunic and pants, the boots lace up to my knees instead of stopping at my ankles, and the chainmail is a shimmering gold instead of black adamas. But it is as strong as adamas and is much lighter.
“This was gifted to you by Thayana?” Robias asks, using his quill to gesture at my attire.
“Yes.”
“Mmm.” He tries to curl a finger into the chainmail, but it’s too finely woven for him to get a grip. He takes the shredwhip from his side and whips it out. I can’t help the flinch as the whip cracks across my chest, but I don’t feel anything when it strikes. I hiss out a breath of relief.
Robias scribbles in his notebook. “I want you to bring your chainmail to the armorer for examination. I don’t know what this metal is. It’s way too strong to be gold.”
Then he crouches down to examine the boots closer, using the other end of his quill to test the lacings. He even pulls out a dagger to test the strength of the leather. Oh goddess, what ishappening? But I stand there without moving, even as he pokes a dagger at my toes.
When he stands, he starts writing in the book again. “I want you to get an alternate pair of boots made by the cobbler, and a set of training clothes from the tailor,” he says. “Once you have the alternates, I want you to bring these to the archons for us to study.”
My tired brain is struggling to catch up. “Study?”
He nods once, clipped. “The boots appear to be made of simple leather, but it’s possible there’s a design advantage we’ve overlooked in combat. It’s worth analyzing.”
“Yes, Archon Robias.” I answer, though I’m nearly hysterical with exhaustion and … Sweet Thayana, is that humor? In any other setting, I would be laughing right now at Robias wanting to examine my boots for combat efficiency, when I’m pretty sure the goddess designed them this way because she wanted to look pretty.
But I keep that to myself. I love these boots.
He eyes my weapons next. My scythe is strapped to my back diagonally. I have one dagger strapped to my thigh, the other at my waist. He touches the blade of the scythe and whistles, pulling his finger back already bloodied. “And the next time you’re scheduled for hand-to-hand combat, take your weapons to the armorer for the same purpose.”
His eyes land on my new leather wrist cuffs with the Stormriven insignia. I hadn’t even had time to look at them properly during wardcall, not really. But now, under the quiet scrutiny of Robias’s attention, I finally take it all in. Each cuff is made of dark leather but dyed subtly enough that when it catches the light, a pattern emerges—fine, swirling embossments, like wind and water caught mid-chaos. Above the storm, an inscription of our cast’s motto—Rav’eth or all for honor—sheens in painstaking black stitches.
It’s the only piece of my uniform not gifted by Thayana. Ryot handed them to me before Leif, Kiernan, and I left for wardcall.
Robias wings up an eyebrow at the cuffs, tapping them with his quill. “He made those extraordinarily fast.” Robias raises his eyes to mine. “He must’ve started making them when you first arrived.”
At first, I almost askwho?But I realize the answer before I can open my mouth.
Ryot.He said nothing about where they’d come from, just shoved them into my hands and walked away. I assumed he’d ordered them from a tanner after I’d asked him to be my master, that someone else had spent endless hours crafting them.
But Robias’ tone says otherwise.
He walks away without another comment, his inspection complete. He calls the name of the boy behind me, but I don’t catch it.
My eyes drop to the cuffs. The stitching is artwork. They fit perfectly, as if the maker already knew the shape of me. Ryot made these. For me.
My thoughts stumble, trip, spiral into places I don’t have the time—or clarity—to explore. I should be thinking about how to overthrow a king. About what the gods want from me and what it will cost. About faravars and battle formations and blood and survival and the Kher’zenn and rebellions.
But every time I try to push my mind toward those monumental tasks, it slips. Because I’m thinking about soft, storm-marked leather cuffs made by a man who’s supposed to be my master, and might even be my enemy.
“Wardcall is dismissed,” Robias calls from the front of the courtyard. “Report to your masters for training.”
