Krayson slid off from Saveen's back and drew a relieved breath. That had been every bit as harrowing as when he'd ridden on Kimpo. If the Sapphire Knights had needed to ride on their dragons often, Krayson had all the evidence he needed to prove he wasn't cut out to be one.

    He watched Saveen out of the corner of his eye. She was poking her snout into a decrepit lean-to built against the supporting walls of one of the spires. One of the destitute residents must have cobbled it together at some point. It was abandoned now, but it looked sturdy enough for at least one more night.

    "What do you think?" Krayson asked.

    "I've slept in dirtier," Saveen said. "Not in much dirtier, but there are worse options."

    "Your glowing recommendation leaves me speechless."

    "That sort of talk makes you sound like Garret. Sarcasm denotes an insincere mind."

    Krayson scoffed. "You watch your mouth."

    Saveen became a blue human again and stepped into the shelter. Krayson frowned as he followed her inside. His fingers worked through a somatic and he drew forth the bundle of clothes. When he pushed them into Saveen's arms, she looked confused.

    "What are these?" she asked.

    "I said I was getting them, didn't I?" Krayson pulled the top blouse from the bundle. "When you wear these, you can't just do your polymorphy without thinking, understand? Take a second to remove them properly before you triple in size."

    Saveen ran her hand over the silk blouse. "I see. Thank you, Krayson. I'll be careful with them."

    "You should try an outfit on," Krayson said. He knelt next to a fire pit someone had dug in here and checked if it was safe to use. "I could only give the shopkeeper vague measurements. They might need to get adjusted."

    Saveen hummed in affirmation. She walked into a corner and sorted through the bundle. Holding a skirt up to get a look at it. "How did you know where to find me?"

    "I didn't." Krayson scraped a few partially-burned scraps of wood together into a pile. A single-point somatic sent out a spark, and a few tongues of flame rose from the fire pit. "I know that saloon by reputation, and I've purchased information from Cardin before. I used it to complete the contract that first brought me to Elise. When I decided to find you, I thought Cardin might be able to point me in the right direction."

    "Then, I just happened to be there?"

    "Fortunate for me," Krayson said. "I wasn't sure how I'd pay him for word of a naked girl wandering Eastrun. Or how to explain it. I might have ended up owing him a favor, and I'd rather not be in debt to a ruffer gang." He grunted as he remembered something. "Right, there were some other things."

    Saveen buttoned up her blouse as she watched his somatic. A pair of mist goggles came out of the holding spell, and he tossed them to her.

    "These let you see a little better in the mist," Krayson said. "I don't know if they'll help a dragon much, but people might think it's strange if you don't have them."

    Saveen turned the goggles over in her hands before putting them on. She peered around the shelter, then slid the eyepieces up to her forehead. "You don't want to stick out in anyone's mind at all, do you?"

    "Anyone who notices us could tell others where we are. I want to minimize that risk." Krayson brought out the next items. Saveen had dropped them in the scuffle with Trell. He assumed she'd had them because they would be of some use to her. Before he jumped onto her back, he'd tucked these into his holding spell.

    Saveen accepted the coat and fedora. She bit her lip as she looked at them, curiously pensive.

    "It would be a good idea to wear the coat over your clothes," Krayson said. "The hat, too. Nobody will look twice at you."

    Saveen nodded sadly. "I don't want the empress to find me again."

    "She won't. They'll be coming for us, but we'll keep ahead of them." He turned away to give Saveen a semblance of privacy. He stared into the little fire and wished he had something to cook over it. When had he eaten last? Krayson frowned while trying to remember and decided that needing to think about it meant it had been too long.

    Going hungry might've been tolerable if not for the scent of fried noodles that kept wafting past Krayson's nose. Where in the Five Kingdoms was that coming from?

    "How does this look?" Saveen asked.

    Krayson looked over his shoulder at her. He didn't think any further adjustments to Saveen's clothes were strictly necessary. A little tight around the middle, but otherwise serviceable. "Lovely," he said.

    "Really?"

    "I said so, did I not?"

    Saveen glared at him. "This thing you do, complimenting me then acting like you didn't, it's getting tiresome."

    Krayson opened his mouth to argue that nothing he'd said was meant as a compliment, but he realized he'd only be playing to her hand. Better to keep quiet.

    She did look nice, to be honest. Convincingly human when she tried to be. In fact, if he grabbed someone off the street and told them that this girl was merely a construct of redistributed mass and ether concealing a giant reptile, they'd call him a madman.

    He found a stick and poked at the bits of burning wood. As he played around with the embers to coax a larger flame, he drew his lips into a line. A great number of things weighed on his mind, and he wasn't certain how to broach these subjects or if he even had a right to. He cast a furtive glance towards the dragon before letting it out. "What Trell was saying, it was... disturbing."

    "In what way?"

    "In the way that made it sound like he raised you for the purpose of grooming you to be his mate."

    "Is that wrong?" Saveen didn't ask the question as she normally asked things. Her tone wasn't flippant or overtly curious. It was resigned. She asked as if she already knew the answer.

    "Some cultures do similar things," he said. "Noble houses promise infant girls to men old enough to be their fathers. Grandfathers, even, in some cases. The Althandi are fond of arranged marriages. It's the way of the Five Kingdoms that if the Althandi are fond of something, the rest of the Continent falls in line."

    Saveen didn't respond.

    "But even the Althandi would call Trell a sick bastard," Krayson said. "What he did to you was wrong, and I'm pleased you bit his arm off."

    Krayson heard a soft sound coming from her direction. He glanced her way and saw that she was smiling. Her shoulders shook as she held back from laughing out loud.

    "It'll grow back, you know," she said.

    "Drat."

    Krayson felt his expression soften, unsure of why. He lowered himself to crouch over the fire and absorbed the warmth like a sponge. His stomach growled, and he ignored it. His throat was parched, but he could easily see to that. He whispered "Amika" to the night and let the mist coalesce and condense in the air. A sphere of water formed in front of his face. Krayson cupped it in his hands and drew it to his lips to drink.

    He was conjuring his third sphere of water when he became aware of Saveen watching. "Thirsty?" he asked.

    She shook her head. "Not really. I was just... I'm sorry."

    He narrowed his eyes at her. She hadn't been watching him, but the water. Come to think of it, he often caught sight of her observing his spellcraft. "Saveen, you're a dragon."

    "Figured that out on your own, eh?"

    "Amusing. No, you're a dragon, a creature as much of magic as of the physical. Can you not...? Saveen, could it be that you're not an arcanist?"

    The shy manner in which she rocked from side to side gave him his answer.

    "How can that be? You use polymorphy. Quite skillfully, at that."

    "Changing forms isn't a spell," she said.

    "It is."

    "It really isn't," she insisted. "Not for the mighty, it isn't. It's like... You could take a new form if you wanted, couldn't you? Only, it would be a spell and cost you a lot of ether."

    Krayson didn't say that his own attempts at polymorphy were usually disastrous. He simply took her meaning and nodded in reply.

    "For dragons, changing forms is like you walking. You needed to learn how, but it was second nature as soon as you learned."

    Krayson furrowed his brow. "But it's still magic. Using it would tie your ether to one of the five pathways."

    "But it doesn't. Just like with elder magic, because it's an ability we're born with as a part of our bodies. An aspect of our nature. It's like you asking me why a fish doesn't climb trees. It just doesn't."

    "That's only because you haven't seen the tree-climbing trout in Gaulatia."

    Saveen gasped. "What? That's a thing?"

    Krayson kept his face neutral.

    "Ugh, blazing man. I'm within my rights to eat you for that. I nearly believed it." Her eyes flickered towards him. "There aren't really tree-climbing trout, are there?"

    "Of course not, Saveen. Don't be ridiculous." Krayson quickly changed the subject before she could hurl that rock she just grabbed. "If you're not an arcanist, would you like to be?"

    She balked in mid-throw, and her eyes went startlingly wide. "Are you saying you'd teach me?"

    Krayson looked back into the fire and chewed his lip. "If you want me to."

    A quick glance revealed that Saveen was wringing her hands. "You barely know me," she whispered. "Would you really let me be your apprentice?"

    He nodded solemnly. "I meant what I said before. I don't want you to be alone like I was."

    She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, then looked up and smiled. "Should I have you teach me to be a witch or wizard? What did you become first?"

    "Before I answer that, can I ask you something?"

    "Of course."

    "Are you a Teulite? Like me?"

    Saveen looked away, anxious. "What are you talking about?"

    "You became a fangblade. Your human form is a Teulite girl. If I'm right, Elise found you and Trell in Teularon."

    Saveen came and sat next to him by the fire. She looked into the flames as she spoke. "We made our lair in the mountains that lie on the border between Teularon and Gaulatia. We lived on the highest peak, and from that high up, I could see over the scarlet steppes and past the eastern coast. When Trell allowed me to fly out on my own, I would go as far as my wings could carry me, to the islands your people call The Sisters. I loved it there— the strange, green grass and the herds of wild aurochs without a single fangblade to compete with for the hunt."

    "My father took me to those islands," Krayson whispered. "Once, with my mother when I was young. That was the only time I've ever traveled by sea."

    She turned her head to look at him. "Why did you leave Teularon? Why did you come here, to the capital of your enemy?"

    "I wasn't given a choice." Krayson held up his right hand and stared at it, recalling how it had once betrayed him. "The Horde has a tradition of witches. I wasn't as big or strong as the other boys, so my father said I should learn incantations to serve the Jak'm. When the next war with the Althandi came, our people would need arcanists to face the hierarchs."

    Saveen shifted her legs beneath her. She leaned on an arm as she listened.

    "I learned quickly," Krayson continued. "Very quickly. It was perhaps one of the few times I could look my father in the eye. I was so proud, because I knew he was, too. My mother kept telling me that I would become the pride of all the Jak'm, that I must have inherited this gift from her family. Her grandfather had been a hierarch before he betrayed the Algaras, and she said I was stronger than he had been at my age."

    Saveen furrowed her brow. "How old were you?"

    "Six. A thundering whelp, or near enough. Can you imagine a little brat like that being able to call lightning?" Krayson chuckled mirthlessly. "I feel like I spent half my time with the shaman's sealing spell locked over my ether to keep me from invoking spirits. When I wasn't doing chores or roughhousing with the other boys, I was learning the Aeldenn Tones. Young minds take to languages easier, you see, and that's why they train the witches young.

    "But it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to become stronger— the strongest witch that ever lived. I boasted that I would one day face King Adeyemi himself in battle and strike him down. That I would one day be Tiger King of the Horde. I wanted to become powerful, break the spears of the Althandi, and plunder the Spired City."

    Krayson watched the smoke from their fire curl around the slats of the roof. Once, he'd believed— he'd known— that the Horde was his place in the world. It was the only life he knew or wanted.

    "And then," he continued softly, "I decided that being a witch just wasn't enough. My witch sight can pierce shadows and find ether, but it can't perceive the Weave as a sorcerer's ethersight can. Transmutation spells were forbidden to me, and my greatest strengths lay in wards and divination. I wished to be a warlord, not a seer. A witch could fight and become strong, but there was so much to magic that was closed off to me because of the Law of Five. And so, I looked to wizardry."

    "You thought you could?" Saveen asked.

    "My witch sight saw that strands of my ether remained untethered. The shaman said it was merely because I was stronger than most, but I suspected different. I began studying wizardry and training my hands to form somatics. My tribe laughed at me, called me a fool. Their jeers turned to anger when I stood in front of them all and used a somatic to call forth a flame." He grit his teeth. "I thought they would be amazed at what I could do. I was seven years old, and I had broken the Law of Five. Witch and wizard both.

    "The Order says I am twinborn, but the Horde called it something different. Abomination. Blasphemy. And the Jak'm couldn't allow something like me to remain among them. The shaman said I would drive away the spirits or draw the attention of demons. Thunders, they all but accused me of being a demon. The Jak'm were a hair's breadth from tearing apart over it. Towards the end, the tribe came together and begged my father to build a pyre and place me upon it."

    Saveen gasped. "You were a child. Flames, you were the tiger lord's son. Didn't he protect you?"

    He shook his head. "It was my mother. She shielded me, but she'd been deathly ill for a long time at that point. On her deathbed, she made my father promise to spare me. He did, in a fashion. After she died, I was given a knife and a sack of apples, then banished from Teularon."

    "Then you found the Order," Saveen murmured. "They took you in and taught you."

    "Blood magic," Krayson said. "When being twinborn wasn't enough for me, I looked for something even greater. If I could master blood magic, I would be powerful enough to..." Krayson's voice trailed off.

    "To what?" Saveen asked.

    Good question, Krayson thought. With enough power, I could do anything, but I can't say that I ever really thought of what that would be. Make them pay? Take my revenge on Joshuan Jak'm for casting me out? Or something else. Is it enough just to live?

    He could still hear what his father had told him the morning before his banishment, as they burned Vilas Krayson on her pyre.

    "Live, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Survive, and you've won."

    Thunders take the man. Krayson had survived. He'd survived as a lone child journeying across half the Continent, he'd survived his initiation into the Sanguine Fraternal Order, and he'd survived more contracts than he could remember. Never, in all that time, did Krayson feel like he had won.

    At every turn, someone had more power than him. The brothers of the Order, the hierarchs, the assassins. Now, Dragon Empresses and murderers.

    Maybe he'd once known the answer to Saveen's question, and now that answer was just a ghost. Finding a new one would take a miracle, and those didn't exist.

    "If you still want to become powerful," Saveen ventured, "there's our bond."

    He shook his head. "It wouldn't be my power."

    "No, it would be ours. That's what Kimpo said a true bond is like. Two bodies sharing a single soul. When dragon and knight trust each other enough..."

    "Trust?" Krayson interrupted. He looked at her direct, and he felt an inexplicable tremor in his voice. A desperation. "I can't feel trust, Saveen! I barely remember what the word even means. Did I ever?"

    Saveen drew back, startled by his sudden display.

    "I can't even name the parts of me I no longer feel," he said. Krayson clutched at his chest and the void inside him that housed nothing but ghosts. "When I remember my mother, I know I should feel something. Grief, love, something. But I don't. I had a mother once, and she loved me. It's a fact I can recall and nothing more. Blood magic took these things away, piece by piece, and it did it so gradually— so insidiously— that I didn't realize it was happening until it was already done."

    His fingers dug into his skin, like he was trying to claw out his heart to determine if it was really there or just another specter.

    "If I can't even mourn the woman who bore me and saved me, how can I trust?"

    Saveen swallowed. "Well," she said, "there it is. You might be my teacher, but you are not going to be my Sapphire Knight when all this is over and done."

    Krayson turned away from her.

    "Don't be like that," she admonished. "It's not like I'm disappointed. You wouldn't have been my choice if I was given one."

    Krayson snorted.

    She put a finger to her lips in a thoughtful posture. "Hmm... I probably won't be allowed to bond with the empress. Kimpo's empress, mind you, not Elise. The Storyteller is her dragon. And I wouldn't dream of bonding with Kimpo's Ruby. I wonder if this King Sasha that she spoke so highly of would consent to be my Sapphire. Ooh, no! She told me of an Altieri scout named Grellin, and Kimpo confided in me that if she were of a mind to romance a human male, she'd have chosen him."

    Krayson rounded on her, his expression horrified. "A dragon and... a human?"

    Saveen shrugged. "It's not like she seriously considered it. Kimpo's heart belongs to the Storyteller, but it wouldn't be so odd, would it?"

    He eyed her up and down.

    "Oh, please. Don't flatter yourself, Blood Runner." Saveen flipped her hair in a haughty manner. "My tastes are for... Well, I'm not sure. Not for scrawny arcanists, I can say that much."

    "And I have none at all," Krayson said wryly. "So bury those notions forever. And I'm not scrawny." He gestured to himself. "Lean, thundering lizard, and stronger than I look."

    "Fair enough," she said lightly. "So, you won't share your soul and blood magic chips away at it. What's a power-hungry Teulite to do? You could always defy Cathis and take that bloodsong you're carrying for yourself."

    Krayson almost choked on his own breath. He rose to his feet and strode two paces away. A moment was needed before he could speak without his voice cracking. "Please, Saveen, I beg you. Never suggest that again."

    "Oh? Why not?"

    Wiping his brow clean of the sweat that appeared, Krayson took a long, shaking breath. She obviously didn't realize, so he tried not to get angry with her. There was no way Saveen could know how fiercely he fought— fought every moment he carried a bloodsong within him— to forget that the temptation existed.

    But now that the thought was there...

    The Merovech's bloodsong, pounding, pulsating, and coursing through his veins. So much power, enough to expand his stores of ether a dozen fold. With a hierarch's power, he could cast spells to sunder mountains and shatter the sky. There'd be spare little he couldn't accomplish, and all that was required of him was to...

    Stop it.

    ...draw the bloodsong into his own blood. Make it a part of him, inseparable. Claim it as his own.

    It belongs to another.

    Krayson wanted it. He wanted it so badly. Everything he had dreamed of as a child, that he still dreamed of, it could be his. What did it matter if Cathis had his blood? With a bloodsong as powerful as the Merovech's, he could destroy the Highest King.

    Don't be daft. Cathis is as strong as a hierarch. His bloodsong goes all the way back to Algara herself, the first assassin. I could never challenge him before he broke me.

    But wasn't the chance worth the risk? With that much power, Krayson could give himself the miracle he'd been searching for.

    Even if Cathis didn't kill me, the Order would.

    His skin felt like it turned to ice. Fear. That, at least, was something Krayson still knew. He was grateful for it. It stopped him from making the last mistake he would ever make.

    The Order had its ways of keeping blood runners on task.

    "Krayson?" Saveen called gently. Her voice had an edge of worry.

    He cleared his throat and banished all thoughts of taking what he carried for himself. "Never again. Promise me?"

    Saveen nodded slowly, catching on to his discomfort. She watched him with a guarded look as he returned to the fire. "I promise. Just so long as you promise to get some rest. Don't think I can't tell how exhausted you are."

    "I'm fine," he said, "and we can't afford much of a delay. We can rest here until dawn, but I need to get to the Sanguine Tower as soon as possible."

    "And me?" Saveen asked.

    "You'll come with me. At least as far as the front door. You can blend in with the petitioners while I sort things out on my end. After that... I will see about sending you to your empress."

    She bit her lip. "The last person to say that to me ended up being Elise's long-lost apprentice or something."

    "I wager they didn't offer to teach you a few spells along the way."

    Saveen's shoulders shook again, and she didn't hold herself back from laughing out loud this time.

    Krayson narrowed his eyes. "What's so funny?"

    "After all that," she giggled, "I'm still going to be calling you master."

    Krayson harrumphed, then looked for a spot on the floor relatively free of filth he could bed down on. Dawn was several hours away, and he meant to spend that time replenishing his ether. He formed and locked a ward to conceal the bloodsong, then placed a few minor sigils around the shelter to strengthen it further. With the additional spellcraft bolstering it, he believed the ward should hold out until morning.

    He explained what he was doing to Saveen as he worked— best to begin the lessons now— and she might have understood a portion of it. The task complete, Krayson lay down using his bundled up half-robe as a pillow, and fell asleep.

    The next thing he saw was the face of the Highest King.