Kingsbane

—Lost writings of the angel Aryava

In a shabby apartment in the heart of Festival, sitting before a bay window framed in curtains of faded violet brocade, Jessamyn sharpened her second-favorite sword.

It was long and slender, the obsidian handle worn smooth as a river-washed pebble, and with each stroke of her whetting stone against the blade, Jessamyn ruminated not on the mission that would begin the next day, but rather on how deeply she hated her name.

Jessamyn. It was a crude name, a human name. It had belonged to her for each of her nineteen years, and she had hated it from the moment she had first understood, at age four, that it was not an angelic name. It had been given to her by her human parents, whom she did not remember and did not care to remember. All she knew of them was that they had offered her to the teachers at the lyceum in order to gain entrance to the Emperor’s city. Varos had told her as much, once he had chosen her as his student. They had left her there, he said, on the grand marble steps, in the pouring rain—a small girl with freckled brown skin and brown braids, with no possessions save the clothes on her back.

That, and a name she hated so deeply she could hardly bear to open her mouth long enough to tell the lyceum headmaster for his records.

Jessamyn. It carried none of the weight of the angelic languages. Every time she thought it, every time someone uttered it, she felt herself shrinking within its confines like an animal in a narrow cage.

Jessamyn. Once, she had begged Varos to call her the name she had chosen for herself—the name she would someday earn by serving His Holy Majesty the Emperor of the Undying as an agent of Invictus. It was a word so precious to her that she let herself think of it only on rare occasion, for fear of wearing the shine off its syllables.

But Varos had refused. After watching her coldly for a moment, he had even struck her across the face, which had sent Jessamyn sobbing into her pillow that night like some kind of child—not because she was angry at him, or because of the welt his hand had left on her cheek, but out of sheer, vicious shame.

She had deserved that violence. She had, frankly, deserved much worse. That she had dared to ask such a thing of him was insolence deserving of far greater punishment.

Varos had told her as much the next day, watching her across the table in his apartment as she ate her breakfast in silence. The welt on her cheek had felt like a shining beacon, announcing her shame to the world. One glance at her cheek, and her classmates would know the truth—that she was inadequate, insubordinate, unworthy.

“I should have killed you for asking me what you did,” Varos had told her.

Jessamyn had swallowed her food and bowed her head. “Yes, kaeshana.”

“But I didn’t,” Varos said, his voice flat, “because I love you.”

At those words—so unexpected, so longed for!—Jessamyn’s entire body had tensed. She hadn’t had the slightest notion of how to respond. Was she to thank him? Was she to tell him that she would die for him, that learning from him was an even greater honor than the true name she so desired?

Was she to tell him that she loved him in return?

Varos wiped his mouth with his napkin, then moved back from the table to consider her. “Come here.”

Jessamyn nearly tripped over herself in her haste to obey. She knelt at his side, lowering her head.

But Varos lifted her chin, forcing her gaze up to his and inspecting her face. His beauty robbed Jessamyn of all sense—his sculpted, slender body; his smooth skin, tan and golden from their recent trip to the Vespers, and free of scars, because he was too skilled for that, too careful and cunning; his honey-gold eyes—incongruously soft and beautiful for such a ferocious killer.

Jessamyn trembled under his scrutiny. She had heard of Invictus kaeshani taking their students to bed, but not once had Varos ever indicated that he was interested in her in that way—not, at least, until that morning at the breakfast table, his soft eyes roaming over her as if noticing at last that she was nearly a woman grown.

Jessamyn had never been keen on the idea of sex. Her love for Varos was that of a child for its father. But if he chose her, if he wanted her, she would muster up the desire.

“Tell me, Jessamyn,” Varos had said smoothly, “who we are.”

Jessamyn’s pulse jumped in her throat. He was asking her to recite the oath of Invictus—the words she would someday recite before the Emperor himself, when Varos deemed her ready.

“‘He has chosen me to guard His works,’” she said at once.

Expressionless, Varos caressed her cheek. “Continue, virashta.”

The way Varos pronounced virashta drew a delicious chill down Jessamyn’s spine. Virashta, a ceremonial angelic word, meant “student,” but also “cherished” and “terrible,” and Varos only uttered it when he felt Jessamyn had done something to deserve it.

“‘He has chosen me to receive His glory,’” Jessamyn recited, fighting to keep her voice steady.

Varos’s expression softened. He kissed her brow. “‘I am the blade that cuts at night.’”

And suddenly, Jessamyn’s senses—sharpened for years under his tutelage—told her that she was in danger.

Varos was reaching for the knife in his belt, and he was fast, but Jessamyn was faster. It was why Varos had chosen her for his student all those years ago. Even as a child, she had been hawk-swift.

She grabbed her own knife from her left boot, knocked the weapon out of his hand, and held her blade to his throat. Blazing with triumph, she glared down at him and declared the oath’s final line.

“‘I am the guardian of His story.’”

Varos had smiled broadly, sending Jessamyn’s head spinning. “You’ll earn your name yet, virashta.”

• • •

Now, in the apartment where they waited for the Admiral’s Jubilee to begin, Jessamyn heard the door open and shut, and looked up to see Varos enter. He wore common traveling clothes, just as she did. Their Invictus uniforms awaited them on the Admiral’s ship.

She stood, bowed her head. “Kaeshana.”

He blew past her in silence, reeking of alcohol and smoke.

Jessamyn tried not to care. He had come from the city; he had been performing reconnaissance work. Obviously said work would take him into drinking establishments, gambling parlors, brothels.

And yet, care she did.

She wondered: Had he enjoyed someone’s bed during his day in the city? She wouldn’t have blamed him for that. Theirs was a demanding, often brutal life, and though they gloried in it, if Varos needed release in the form of sex, then it was not her place, as his student, to judge him.

Still, the thought of him finding comfort with someone other than her rankled deeply. She needed no one else but Varos to feel content and whole. That it might be different for him dredged up the old, skittering fear that she would never be enough for him. That he would never present her to the Emperor and that her desired name would die a silent death inside her.