He fractured her insides, broke the armor she’d built within herself to guard her heart and her emotions, and he did it without realizing it, offering up kindness on the sharp blade of impossibility. She was young, unsightly and falling hopelessly in love with a man so far beyond her reach he might as well have been standing on the moon instead of in front of her.
Jahna opened her eyes to stare at him and silently despaired.
4
One year later
The Master beguiled, Year 3838
“You’re ready to fight in the Exhibition.” Radimar placed the training sword he used into the rack of similar blades lining the wall and grabbed a nearby towel to wipe the sweat off his face and neck. Today’s lesson had been a grueling one, and he was pleased with his student’s progress. He turned in time to see Sodrin give a celebratory leap in the air and raise a fist to the sky.
He grinned at Radimar, unabashed at his impromptu cheering. “This is good news! Are you sure?”
Radimar began collecting the various weaponry and protective padding scattered around the room. Sodrin copied his actions, working from the opposite side. “You’ve worked hard to reach this point. Your father will be proud. Your sister is.”
Sodrin snorted as he tossed a pair of padded woolen pauldrons into a chest. “She’s harder to please than he is.” He accepted the goblet of water Radimar handed him with a heartfelt thanks. He emptied it of its contents and went to the nearby pitcher for a refill. “These skills may come in handy for more than the Exhibition or my future as a king’s guard, though I hope that won’t be the case.”
Radimar paused in raising his own goblet to his lips. “What do you mean?”
Sodrin’s buoyant expression turned grim. “Delyalda is a celebration for most of us but an ordeal for Jahna. However, Father insists she attend with us every year.”
A year had passed since Radimar joined the Uhlfrida household to train Sodrin. In that time, he learned a great deal about the family members and their relationship to each other. Jahna and Sodrin squabbled like most siblings, but their reciprocal devotion was unmistakable as was Sodrin’s protectiveness toward his sister. He’d seen first-hand what Jahna dealt with at the royal palace during Delyalda. “How often did you use your fists to defend her name?”
Sodrin glanced toward the door, as if to assure himself Jahna didn’t lurk there, unseen and unheard. “More often than she’ll ever know or I’ll ever tell.” He gave Radimar an approving nod. “You’re kind to her.”
It was a compliment, but Radimar didn’t want Sodrin to think a lack of cruelty constituted something special in a man’s character. His own mentor had often impressed upon him that such a trait should always be the rule, not the exception. “There’s no reason not to be kind,” he said. “She’s an admirable girl. The Archives will gain a fine chronicler once she leaves to start her apprenticeship.”
“What you’ve taught her will help her when she has to live in the capital and neither I nor our father is there to shield her. She’s brave to go.”
She was brave. Even knowing she’d likely face a barrage of mockery or shallow pity, Jahna pursued her goal of joining the Archives body of chroniclers with the passion of a zealot.
The previous winter Radimar had said he would teach her to save herself, and he’d made good on that declaration within the limitations of his role and hers. He’d done what he could to teach her basic maneuvers of defense and escape—foundation skills that any person learning a martial art could employ, be they armed or not. He knew from longtime experience, once as a student and now as a teacher, how empowering it was. Jahna might never be the fighter her brother trained to be, but if she had to face adversaries like the ones who pursued her in the palace, she had the choice to run again and hide or face them down. Radimar suspected if forced into such a situation now, she’d choose the second.
He left Sodrin to straighten the rest of the solar while he returned to his rooms to bathe and change. The cold in the hallway stole his breath for a moment after hours spent training in the warmer solar. A pair of shutters had escaped their latch and cleaved to the wall, allowing the brittle winter air inside to tease the torches.
Radimar crossed the corridor to close the panels and paused at the sight of Jahna hurrying across Hollowfell’s courtyard, clutching a satchel to her chest. Her cloak whipped around her legs and strands of her brown hair snaked out of the confines of her hood to flutter in the wind. Delicate snow flurries trailed her progress as if coaxing her to stop and spin as they did in the steady fall of lacy snowflakes that shrouded the yard.
There was a grace to her movements that had been lacking the previous year, along with a confidence Radimar credited to her participation in the morning training lessons as well as her own maturation. The girl was transforming into a woman, one whose intelligence and unquenchable thirst for knowledge gleamed back at him from the depths of her wide brown eyes.
He took his time closing and relatching the shutters. The way to her chambers took her down this corridor. They’d cross paths and he looked forward to conversing with her, as he always did. Her wide smile when she saw him sent a rush of warmth through him, chasing away the gooseflesh that pebbled the skin of his arms and back.
“Sir Radimar, I didn’t think I’d see you until supper. Are you and Sodrin finished for the day?”
She had scraped her concealing hood back, leaving her head bare and her features fully exposed. Even in the hall’s diminished light and half shadow, the purple birthmark staining the right side of her face was easy to see.
Radimar was glad she no longer wore the hood in his presence or pulled her hair forward to obscure the blemish, nor did she offer only her unblemished profile when she spoke to him. His months at Hollowfell and lack of reaction to her birthmark had eased her anxiety. She trusted him now not to mock her appearance, and had she asked, he would readily told her he was blind to it, just as her family and the longtime servants were.
He noticed, instead, the refinement of her face as she grew older, the way her cheeks slimmed and highlighted the curve of her cheekbones. Her jawline and nose were more defined as well, promising an elegance reflected in her own father’s features.
He gave her a brief bow as she drew closer and pointed at the satchel in her arms. “Did you manage to corner the last caravan of the season?”
She had warned him the previous day that she wouldn’t attend this morning’s training in favor of traveling to nearby Osobaris and meeting with a caravan master whose caravan was quartering in the village for a few days before heading for lower elevations to winter until the snows melted.
“I did,” she replied. “They’ve brought goods from as far away as the Idrith Peninsula.”
“And what did you buy?”