The eastern gallery was Lucan's favorite hiding place.
Not favorite—safest. The word mattered. At ten years old, Class S manifested, Second Prince of Verdantis, he had learned to be precise with language. Favorite implied enjoyment. Safety was survival.
He crouched behind the tapestry of the First Battle, his knees drawn to his chest, his breath shallow. The wool was rough against his back, the space narrow—barely wide enough for a boy his size—but he had grown adept at making himself small. Feet tucked. Head down. Counting breaths. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Don't move. Don't make a sound.
His glasses slipped slightly on his nose. He pushed them back with a finger, careful not to rustle the fabric. Gold-rimmed, new after Aldric had smashed the old pair three days ago. The bruise on his jaw had faded to yellow, but his ribs still ached with every breath. He had eighteen minutes until the guard rotation passed this corridor. Eighteen minutes of safety, if he was lucky.
Then he heard it.
A voice—male, adult, cultured in the way of someone who had never been told no—raised in anger. "You worthless little shit! You think you can hide behind your books forever?"
Then a sound like meat hitting stone.
Lucan flinched, curled tighter, but no second blow came. Instead, he heard something impossible—a crack like thunder, a body hitting marble, and then silence.
He opened his eyes, blinking against the light, and saw the tapestry ripped aside. A girl stood there, small, red-haired, breathing hard, her fist still clenched. Behind her, Aldric lay crumpled on the marble, unconscious.
Time seemed to slow. Each second stretching into crystalline clarity as his mind catalogued details: the blue carpet, the white walls, the vase that had fallen and shattered, his brother's purpled jaw already forming, the girl's bloody knuckles, her jade green eyes finding his across the five feet of carnage.
"Your Highness!"
The voice came from the corner—Althea, his assigned maid, standing frozen where she had been hiding. Waiting. Watching. Doing nothing while the Crown Prince assaulted him, her hands twisting her apron in a white-knuckled grip, her eyes darting toward the exits like a trapped animal calculating flight.
The girl turned on her, rage burning.
"You," she snarled, pointing with a finger that shook not from fear but from fury. "You were supposed to be watching him!"
"I—I tried to—" Althea's voice broke, her eyes darting to the unconscious Aldric, to Lucan, to the girl's bloody knuckles.
"Tried?" The girl's voice rose, carrying the full weight of authority in a four-foot-eight package. "Your duty is to protect your charge! One job! You had one fucking job, and you let that bastard kick him while you stood there like a fucking statue?"
Althea crumpled, weeping, her hands covering her face.
Lucan stared. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. His ribs ached, his lip throbbed, and a girl he didn't know—a common-born girl with wild hair and bloody knuckles—had just knocked the Crown Prince unconscious with a single punch.
The girl turned back to him, her anger draining into something gentler as she looked at him. He was shaking, he realized, fine tremors running through his thin frame, and his eyes were wide behind the cracked lenses of his glasses.
"You okay?" she asked, her voice rough-soft, the accent of Sovringard creeping in. "Can you move? Anything broken?"
"I—" He touched his lip, came away with blood on his fingers, and stared at it like he couldn't understand where it had come from. "You hit him. You hit the Crown Prince."
"Yeah," she said. "And I'd do it again. You got a handkerchief? You're bleeding on the nice floor."
He laughed—a wet, broken sound—and fumbled for a cloth. "Who are you?"
"Hallah," she said. "Your new Paladin. Apparently."
She chose me, he thought, the wonder of it breaking something open in his chest. She looked at Aldric and chose me.
They had perhaps ten minutes before the guards arrived. Hallah spent them checking his injuries—split lip, bruised ribs, nothing broken—and ignoring her father's attempts to explain why assaulting royalty was generally considered poor etiquette.
"She had to," Lucan said suddenly, his voice small but firm. "Althea. She was afraid. He's—he's done this before. She tried to stop him once, and he had her... punished."
Hallah felt something cold in her chest. "Punished how?"
Lucan didn't answer, but his silence was eloquent.
She looked at the unconscious Aldric, at the purpled bruise already forming on his jaw, and she didn't feel sorry for him. But she felt something complicated about Althea, about the maid who had failed because she had been broken before, who had chosen survival over righteousness because survival was all she had left.
The guards came in force: twenty men in gold-trimmed armor, spears lowered, faces grim. Their captain was a tall man with a scar that ran from his left eye to his chin, and he looked from the unconscious Crown Prince to Hallah, to Lucan, with the expression of a man who had just stepped into a play without knowing his lines.
"The King summons you," he said carefully. "All of you. Immediately."
Aldric was stirring as they lifted him, groaning, his hand pressed to his jaw. His eyes found Hallah, and the hatred there was pure and uncomplicated, the look of a man who had never been denied and would not forgive.
"You're dead," he mumbled through swelling flesh, the words slurred. "Common-born trash. I'll have you—"
"Your Highness," the captain interrupted, his voice firm, "the King commands your presence as well. And your silence."
They half-carried Aldric, his legs unsteady, his eyes never leaving Hallah's face. She stared back, unflinching, her hand resting on Gold Rush's grip.
The throne room of Valeris was designed to intimidate, and it had always succeeded. Lucan had grown up in its shadow, learning to make himself small against its vastness. Today, he walked into its center.
Hallah strode beside him, her hand resting on the grip of her sword—a massive blade, hand-and-a-half, that she wore like it weighed nothing. She didn't look at the throne, at the courtiers gathering like vultures, at the ancient history carved into every stone. She looked at his father, and she didn't flinch.
"Kneel," a herald whispered urgently. "At the sun-mark, there, before the steps."
Lucan found the spot—a disk of gold inlaid in the marble—and knelt. Brant and Eira knelt beside Hallah, slightly behind. He stood to her right, trembling. Aldric stood to her left, supported by guards, his jaw purpled with bruising.
"Rise," the King said.
Lucan rose. His legs felt weak, his ribs ached, his lip throbbed. But he stood, because Hallah stood.
"Girl," the King said. "Do you know the significance of what you have just done?"
"Bound my life to your son," Hallah answered. "Swore to protect him. Die for him if it comes to that."
The words hit Lucan like physical blows. She'd sworn? Already? But they'd only just met.
"I cannot let you take up your post right away," the King continued. "You are still untrained. Untested. Ignorant of the ways of the royal court."
"I'd ask if he deserved it," Hallah said, when asked what she would do if Lucan ordered her to kill a man.
The throne room went silent. Lucan stared at her. She would question a royal command rather than obey blindly?
"Not 'I would obey immediately'?" the King asked.
"No, Your Majesty. I'm your son's shield, not his sword. If he wants someone dead, he better have a damn good reason." She caught herself. "A good reason. Or I'm not doing it."
"Honest," the King said. "Moral. Unwise." He nodded slowly. "You will do, Paladin. You will do."
He offered them quarters. Training. Education. Lucan watched Hallah glance at him, and he tried to stand straighter, to look less like the battered spare and more like someone worth protecting.
"We're amenable," Hallah said. "Damn straight we are. Thank you, Your Majesty."
While they waited for the court to assemble, the King asked questions. About Hallah's childhood in Sovringard, about her training, about the bandits at Thornwick Cut. She answered honestly—her foul mouth slipping through occasionally, making Brant wince.
"What will happen to Mistress Althea?" Hallah asked, the question escaping before she could stop it.
The King's expression went grim. "She will be judged. Betrayal of duty is not forgiven in Verdantis."
Hallah nodded, but Lucan saw the doubt in her eyes, the stone in her gut.
The court began to arrive. Nobles in their finery, ministers with their ledgers, guards in perfect ranks. They filled the throne room, whispering, staring at the four-foot-eight girl with the sword and the tabard.
When the room was full, the King nodded. "You may proceed."
Hallah turned. She drew Gold Rush, the blade singing against the scabbard, and held it horizontally across her palms. She walked to Lucan and knelt before him.
"I, Hallah Sovringard," she said, her voice carrying to every corner, "do swear to you Lucan, my blade and my shield. I shall be your Paladin, your blade that cuts down your foes, foreign or domestic. I shall be your shield to defend you against all attacks that would bring you to harm. I shall be your guiding light should your path go astray, for I am your Paladin."
She held out the sword, offering it to him.
Prove it to me.
The voice filled his mind like light, like the sun itself speaking. Syltherion. The Weaver. He knew that voice, knew it from forbidden texts, from secret histories, from the true nature of the cosmos that the priests hid from common folk. The Weaver was not a god. The Weaver was above gods—a Cosmic Dragon of Universe Four, who wove fate itself across realities. The Six were but threads in His pattern, small gods of a small world, while Syltherion bound souls across lifetimes, weaving threads through the vastness of creation.
Speak them in the tongue of magic. Prove your words. I shall give you the words.
Hallah's mouth moved without her conscious thought, the syllables rising from somewhere deeper than memory.
"Egomoi ligier Lucan-ae fortfort! Ferfrappe hostennemi et protegéger amicami! Sancte impermand egomoi Paladin! Ferfrappe hostennemi brûlant frangbrise! Protegéger omnous contré morsmort! Luxmière ducere si terrater tordu! Car egomoi sancsaint Paladin aeternel!"
The LINGUA ARCANUM rang through the throne room like struck crystal, each phrase landing like a bell strike.
And the sun moved.
A single beam, impossibly precise, pierced the high windows and fell upon Hallah and Lucan alone. The rest of the court fell into shadow. The two of them stood illuminated in a column of golden light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, that warmed without burning, that witnessed.
Not Valerian gold, Lucan thought, his scholar's mind piercing through his wonder. Beneath the gold, silver-white threads. Cosmic light. The Weaver's own radiance, not the Six—Syltherion Himself, reaching through from Universe Four to witness this oath.
Lucan's small hand closed around the blade of Gold Rush, accepting the oath.
"I accept," he whispered.
The light faded slowly, reluctantly.
Hallah rose, sheathed her sword, and turned to face a court that stared at her with expressions ranging from awe to terror to hatred.
"Well," she said, her voice rough in the silence. "That's done."
Margarethe led them through servants' corridors. Lucan walked unsteadily, his hand finding Hallah's. She didn't pull away. Her palm was warm and calloused and real.
"Your sword," he heard himself say. "Is it... is it heavy?"
"Not to me," she said. "Paladin strength. But it'd be heavy to you. Want to see?"
He nodded, eyes wide.
She drew the blade carefully, held it out horizontally. "Gold Rush," she said. "Named her myself. She's a bastard sword—hand-and-a-half. Longer than a normal blade, but I can use her one-handed because of the strength."
"It's beautiful," he whispered. He reached out, brushed his fingertips against the wire-wrapped hilt—feather-light, reverent. "I've only ever read about swords. In books. I've never... I've never seen one up close. Not like this."
"You'll see plenty now," Hallah said. "I'm gonna be around. And I'm gonna teach you, if you want. Not the sword—don't think your father would like that—but how to hold one. How to stand. So you're not afraid."
"I'm always afraid," he admitted.
"Yeah," Hallah said. "Me too. But I do it anyway."
They walked in silence until the sounds of the throne room faded. Margarethe stopped at a corner, glanced both ways, then turned to Brant.
"I shouldn't say this," she whispered, her voice barely audible over her wheezing breath. "But your daughter... she's done something significant. Something dangerous."
She turned to Hallah. "You did the one thing that could earn you the King's true favor. You stood up for his timid son. Protected him when no one else would."
Her hand shot out, gripping Hallah's wrist. "You should know—the maid was executed for treason an hour ago. Althea. They found she'd been passing information to the Crown Prince's faction for months. She didn't just stand by out of fear... she was complicit. She was paid to look away, to report when the Second Prince was alone. Vulnerable."
The blood drained from Lucan's face. Althea—gentle Althea—had been working with Aldric? Had told them he was afraid of the dark?
He made a small sound, a wounded noise, and pressed closer to Hallah's side. He felt tears soaking through her tabard, his frame shaking. But even through his fear, his hand found hers again, lacing their fingers together.
She's warm, he thought. She's warm and she smells like the forge and she's real and she chose me.
They walked the rest of the way in silence. The corridors grew wider, the stonework finer, the air smelling of lavender and beeswax. Lucan barely noticed. He was watching Hallah, memorizing the way she moved, the way she scanned every corner for threats.
"Here," Margarethe said finally, stopping before a heavy oak door. "The Paladin's quarters."
She pushed it open, revealing a suite of rooms. Lucan had seen luxury before, but this was different. This was compensation.
Hallah stood in the doorway, her hand clutching his, and looked at him.
"Well," she said, her voice rough in the quiet hallway. She squeezed his hand once, hard enough to feel the bones. "I chose. And I will ensure you're never seen as the spare again."
She met his eyes—wide, terrified, adoring.
"You should be king."
The words hung in the air like smoke, like blood, like a promise written in the language of revolutions. Behind her, Brant stopped moving. Eira's eyes fixed on her back. But Hallah didn't look away from Lucan, didn't take back the words.
The treason was spoken.
And Lucan, ten years old and chosen for the first time in his life, felt the weight of her faith settle on his shoulders like a crown he had never expected to wear. He thought of his brother's fists, of his father's distant kindness, of ten years of being the spare, the backup, the mistake.
I will become worthy of this, he swore to himself, the vow silent but fierce, burning in the hollow place where his fear had lived. I will become strong. I will become wise. I will become someone who deserves what she has given me. She chose a worthless spare, a timid boy, a frightened child. I will become a king worth protecting. I will become a man worth loving.
I swear it by the Weaver—Syltherion, Cosmic Dragon of Universe Four, who is above gods, who weaves fate itself across realities, who chose her as I choose her now. Not the Six, who are but threads in His pattern. Not the priests' lies, not the Church's small gods. By the One who truly rules, the Fate-Weaver, the Thread-Master, He who binds souls across lifetimes and universes—I vow: I will become worthy of Hallah Sovringard, or I will die trying.
He looked at the girl with the crimson hair and the jade green eyes, who had punched a prince for him, who had chosen him when no one else would.
"Yes," he whispered. "Maybe I should."