Master of Iron (Bladesmith #2)(52)

“You were so injured,” he explains. “You almost didn’t make it. I didn’t know if you could handle learning Ziva was in danger.”

“Oh, so now I’m some delicate thing!” Temra snaps.

“No, no one would ever say that!” Petrik says. “Ziva had just sacrificed herself to save you. I wasn’t about to let that sacrifice be wasted by you plunging yourself into danger to go after her. Ziva wouldn’t have wanted it.”

“You mean you wouldn’t have wanted it,” she spits back at him. “What about what I wanted? I deserved the truth!”

“I know you. You wouldn’t have been able to help yourself. You would have marched across the country and stormed Ravis’s gates. You can’t take on an army alone. You can’t—”

She hits him again before I can react.

“I hate you,” she says before stomping off.

Petrik’s nose is bleeding again. He hunches rather than stands upright.

“Petrik,” I say. “Thank you. Truly. You saved her more than once.” And then I follow after Temra.

I hadn’t seen much of Skiro’s palace the first time I was here. My mind was set on saving Temra and little else.

But now, as I run after my sister, I’m taken through unfamiliar passages. Unlike Ravis’s empty halls, Skiro’s are fit to bursting. Tapestries and carpets insulate the rock. Portraits line the walls, and I wonder eerily if any of them are magic portals to other places in the world. The artist’s signature is the same, a looping mess of letters that I can’t actually read. Any empty space of stone has been painted directly. Animals, sceneries, anything living and flourishing.

Skiro is a lover of all kinds of art, and it shows in every bit of his palace. He has a fondness for creation, not destruction. There’s no way he’ll be prepared for the fight Ravis is bringing to him.

Temra lets herself into a set of rooms, leaving the door open so I can follow.

When we fled Lirasu, we took nothing with us save essentials. No personal trinkets or mementos, so Temra doesn’t have anything from our old lives to decorate her rooms at the palace. But her walls are filled with books—gifts from Petrik, I’d wager—and a weapons rack has been recently mounted to one wall.

She’s too angry to talk right away about what happened, so I bathe in silence while she paces back and forth in her room, mumbling her fury to herself.

As soon as I’m clean and in borrowed clothes, I tell Temra I’m leaving to check on Kellyn. As much as I’d love to stay, I already know she’s safe.

I need to know how Kellyn is doing.



* * *



He’s unconscious but clean when I find him, and the arrow is gone, which has to be a good sign. Serutha stands over him with her fingers held out over the wound.

I don’t say a word, lest I break her concentration.

Instead, I move to Kellyn’s other side and take the hand attached to his uninjured arm.

“He’ll be fine,” the healer says, her eyes closed. “I’ve cleared the infection. All that’s left now is to mend the muscle and skin.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“No, thank you,” she says. “You saved me. This is the least I could do.”

“You also mended my sister. I think I am still in your debt.”

She shakes her head, and her dark eyes flutter open. “This is what I do. It’s what I love. Surely, you can relate? I’ve heard quite a lot about you since I’ve been back. You work with metal the way I work with flesh. I hope you don’t mind Petrik telling me. Once he got to talking—apologizing, really—for revealing who I was to you, I think he felt the need to even the score.”

I shrug. “I don’t care that you know.” I watch as Kellyn’s flesh stitches back together under Serutha’s careful ministrations. “Your ability is far more impressive than mine.”

“It’s not a contest.”

“No, but you save life, whereas I seem to be good only for threatening it.”

Serutha massages her left hand with her right when she’s done. “I would wager there are hundreds out there who would testify otherwise. I’m sure your weapons have saved them in ways you will never hear about. The only difference between you and me is that I get to see the results of my work firsthand.”

The words are kind, and I accept them. For now. “How does it work? Your ability?” I ask. “You’re the only other person with magic I’ve ever met.”

She smiles, takes a seat opposite me. And though she can’t be much older than I am, she feels older, like she’s seen more of life than I have somehow. I suppose she’s witnessed many die while honing her craft and learning. It would age anyone.

“I doubt that’s true. Didn’t you meet Elany while you were trapped with Ravis?”

“Elany. Yes, she followed me practically everywhere I went under Ravis’s orders. She’s gifted with magic?”

“Yes. The carefully crafted camouflage over my prison door? That was her doing.”

It takes me far too long to put it together.

“Elany is the cotton spinner!” I ought to be shocked. Instead, I’m enraged. “How could she betray her own kind!”

“She has her loyalties, just like we have ours.”