The training yard smelled of sand and sweat and the particular sharpness of magic spent under the morning sun. Hallah stood in the center of the sanded circle, Gold Rush heavy in her hand, facing a boy who looked like he might faint.
"Again," she said.
Lucan raised the wooden practice blade—shorter than hers, lighter, designed for his smaller frame. His glasses slipped on his nose. He pushed them back with a finger that trembled slightly.
"Holding it wrong," Hallah said, stepping closer. "Like this." She adjusted his grip, her calloused fingers guiding his softer ones. "Thumb here. Wrist straight. Don't grip like you're afraid it'll bite you."
"I'm afraid it will," Lucan admitted.
"It won't." Hallah stepped back, raised her own wooden blade. "I'm the one who bites. Now—thrust."
He thrust. Awkward, hesitant, but technically correct. She parried easily, tapped his shoulder with her blade.
"Better. Again."
They practiced until the sun climbed high, until Lucan's arms shook and his tunic clung to his thin frame with sweat. Hallah pushed him harder than Garrett would have dared—harder than any tutor could, because she knew what waited in shadows, what Aldric's patience would eventually birth.
"You're not a warrior," she told him, after he finally collapsed in the sand, gasping. "And you don't need to be. But you need to know enough to not die if I'm not there."
"You'll always be there," Lucan said, looking up at her with those pale grey-blue eyes.
"Yeah," Hallah said, though the word felt heavy. "Until I'm not. Get up. One more."
Garrett watched from the edge of the yard, arms crossed, his scarred face unreadable. After three months of daily lessons, he still hadn't spoken to Lucan directly—hadn't acknowledged their blood relation, the nephew he pretended didn't exist. But he watched. And he corrected Hallah's form when she practiced with the real blades, showing her angles of attack that had no names in standard manuals.
"Your Highness," Garrett said once, stopping her as she left the yard. "A word."
Hallah tensed, hand finding Gold Rush's grip.
"The Prince," Garrett continued, not looking at Lucan where he sat recovering. "He's improved. Not enough to survive a real fight. But enough to die with dignity." He paused. "That's not nothing."
"High praise," Hallah said dryly.
"It's all I have." Garrett's eyes flicked to Lucan, then away. "Keep teaching him. Keep him alive. That's more than I did."
He walked away before Hallah could respond.
The seasons turned. Autumn gave way to winter, snow falling on the Crown Spire's towers, and still they trained. In the tower classroom, Hallah sat with the Lingua Arcanum text open before her, trying to make her throat form sounds it wasn't designed to make. The nasal hum. The swallowed vowels. The rhythm that Lucan could execute flawlessly but that made her sound like a drowning cat.
"Like this," Lucan said, leaning close. Too close. She could smell the honey-cake he'd had for breakfast, the lavender soap he used, the particular warmth of him that had become familiar over months of shared lessons.
His finger touched her throat, gentle, finding the hollow where the vibration should resonate. "Here. Feel it here."
She tried again. "Aqua... eau."
"Better." His thumb stroked her throat once, twice, before he pulled away. His ears were red. "Much better."
Hallah's face felt hot. She told herself it was exertion.
Mage-Primus Vance watched them from the corner, her silver hair catching the winter light. "You progress, Paladin. Slowly. But progress." She turned to Lucan. "Prince. Your assistance is noted. But remember—your own studies suffer for this tutoring."
"Yes, Magister," Lucan said, ducking his head.
"Don't," Hallah muttered as the instructor left. "Don't let her make you feel bad for helping me."
"She's right, though." Lucan closed his own textbook—advanced transmutation theory, years ahead of standard curriculum. "I should be further ahead."
"You're ahead enough." Hallah stood, stretched muscles sore from sitting. "Come on. Lunch. Then sword practice. Then more of this torture."
The book was older than the kingdom.
Hallah sat cross-legged on the floor of the Paladin's quarters, The Paladin's Codex open across her knees, the ancient pages crackling like dry leaves. Ten thousand years old, the King had said. Last held by a Paladin before the Silence.
"I can't read this," Hallah muttered, frustrated. "It's like trying to speak with my mouth full of stones."
Lucan settled beside her, his shoulder pressing against hers. "Let me see." He bent over the page, his hair falling across his forehead, close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his pale grey-blue eyes. "It's Old High Verdantian. The vowels shifted after the Silence."
His finger traced the ancient ink. "Here—Impositio manus sancta. 'Holy Lay on Hands.' Light healing, cure poison, restore vitality. Takes one slot to memorize. Unlike your Weaver's Judgment from the dragon—that's permanent, doesn't use a slot. This one you have to commit to a slot, but once you have it, you can use it as long as you have reserve."
Hallah considered. "One slot for healing. Worth it."
"Definitely worth it," Lucan agreed. "Show me how to pronounce it?"
"Together," Hallah said, and they bent their heads over the ancient text, voices merging in the old tongue.
They practiced for weeks, Hallah stumbling over syllables that felt too large for her mouth, Lucan patient, correcting, guiding. The night she finally spoke it correctly—"Impositio manus sancta!"—golden light bloomed from her palms, warm and living, and Lucan gasped as he felt the lingering ache in his ribs fade to nothing.
"It works," he whispered.
"Yeah," Hallah said, flexing her glowing hands. "It works."
She turned the page, found another spell—Sancteimpermand scutum aeternus. "Eternal Shield. Takes two slots. Doesn't break until you run out of reserve or dispel it."
"For me?" Lucan asked.
"For you," Hallah confirmed. "If I'm not there. If I can't..." She stopped, couldn't finish.
"I know," Lucan said quietly. "Teach me how it works. Even if I can't cast it. So I know what you'll do. So I can help."
They studied the diagrams together, the geometry of protection, the mathematics of defense. Hours passed. The fire burned low. And when they finally slept, it was back-to-back on the floor of the quarters, too tired to separate, too comfortable to care what servants might whisper.
Spring came to Valeris, and with it, the first attempt on Lucan's life.
They were in the eastern gardens, practicing sword forms among the blooming jasmine, when Hallah caught the scent—bitter almonds, faint but unmistakable, rising from the cup of wine a servant had left for Lucan. She knocked it from his hand before he could drink, the liquid splashing across the white stones, hissing where it touched.
"Poison," she said, her voice flat. "Don't drink anything I don't hand you. Don't eat anything I don't taste first."
Lucan stared at the steaming stones, his face pale. "Aldric?"
"Or his friends." Hallah took his hand, squeezed it hard enough to ground him. "I'm not leaving your side. Not for meals, not for sleep, not for shitting. Where you go, I go. Until we find who's doing this."
The servant was gone—fled, or never there, a ghost in livery. Hallah tracked him through the palace corridors, following the scent of fear and almond, but he had vanished into the servant's warren, the anonymous mass of those who kept the castle running.
That night, she slept on the floor of his chambers, Gold Rush naked beside her hand, and listened to him breathe in the darkness. The rhythm of it—shallow, nervous, but steady—became the sound she measured her own heartbeat against.
In the morning, the King summoned them. He sat in his private study, no crown, just an old man with ancient eyes and a face lined with worry.
"The servant was found dead in the lower cells," he said quietly. "Hanged before he could be questioned. Aldric's sigil was in his pocket."
Lucan's hands shook. Hallah placed hers over them, steadying.
"I cannot protect you from my own son," the King said, his voice breaking. "Not directly. The law forbids it. But I can give you this—" He pushed a small vial across the table. "Antidote. For the most common poisons. Keep it hidden. Keep it close."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Hallah said.
The King looked at Lucan, and his eyes softened. "You look like your mother. She would be proud of how you've grown."
Lucan said nothing, but Hallah felt his hand tighten in hers.
The years turned. Lucan grew taller, though he remained willowy, his frame filling out with muscle from sword practice but never losing its delicacy. He was twelve now, or nearly—old enough that his voice had begun to shift, cracking on high notes, settling into something deeper. Hallah was twelve too, her body changing in ways that confused her, that made her armor fit differently, that drew looks from courtiers she didn't know how to interpret.
They developed routines. Dangerous routines, she knew, but necessary. She tasted his food before he ate. She checked his chambers for hidden threats—needles in bedding, toxins in lamp oil, the thousand ways a spare prince could die. She slept on the floor beside his bed, Gold Rush within arm's reach, and woke every morning to find him watching her, something soft and unguarded in his expression that he showed no one else.
The Winter Ball found them dressed in formal blacks, silver trim, the six-colored sash of divine service. They had practiced for this—Marguerite's dance lessons, the waltz, the proper distance to maintain in public.
"One-two-three," Hallah murmured as they took the floor, her hand finding his waist, his settling on her hip. "Don't step on my feet, Prince."
"Don't lead," Lucan whispered back, his breath warm against her ear. "I thought we established I have to guide you."
"Only in magic. In this, I follow."
They danced. The court watched—nobles calculating, whispering, reassessing the spare who had grown graceful, who moved with confidence beside his Paladin. Hallah saw Countess Sylvaine's eyes narrow, saw Duke Valmont lean to whisper to a companion, saw Helena Stormborn watching with something like envy.
"She wanted you," Lucan said quietly, nodding toward Helena. "For her own Paladin. Before you chose."
"She can't have me," Hallah said. "I'm taken."
"By me?"
"By the job. Shut up and dance."
But she was smiling, and he was smiling, and for a moment, the court disappeared, and there was only the music, and the warmth of his hand in hers, and the feeling that they were becoming something more than protector and protected.
The dance ended. They separated, breathless, and Hallah caught sight of a figure in the shadows—Garrett, watching them, his scarred face unreadable. He nodded once, small and fierce, and disappeared into the crowd.
Later, in the gardens, they found a dead bird on the path outside Lucan's chambers. A sparrow, neck broken, arranged carefully as a message. Hallah burned it with a word—Ignefeu—and said nothing, but she checked his bed three times that night, and her hand never left her sword.
The spar with Garrett came in the spring of their second year.
Hallah faced the Captain of the Royal Guard in the training yard, Gold Rush against his longsword, and she saw respect in his eyes now where once there had been only skepticism. They fought—fierce, technical, blade singing against blade—until she found his opening, a gap in his guard that hadn't been there five years ago, and tapped his throat with her edge.
"Yield," she said.
Garrett laughed, breathless. "Yield, Paladin. You've grown."
Lucan watched from the edge of the sand, his hands clenched, pride written across his face in a way that made Hallah's chest tight. When she walked to him, sweating, grinning, he handed her water without a word, their fingers brushing.
"You're magnificent," he said, so only she could hear.
"Not like I care or anything," she said, her tsundere reflex automatic, but she was still grinning.
That evening, they sat in the library, Lucan reading aloud from a history of the First Paladins, Hallah cleaning Gold Rush's blade with methodical strokes. The fire crackled. The rain fell against the windows. It was comfortable, domestic, dangerous in its comfort.
"Hallah," Lucan said, setting the book aside. "Do you ever think about... after? After the Academy? After we're grown?"
"Think about what?"
"Us." He wouldn't meet her eyes. "What we are. What we'll be."
She set down her sword, turned to face him. "I'm your Paladin, Lucan. That's what I am. That's what I'll be. Until I die, or you release me."
"And if I don't want to release you?"
"Then I'm yours forever." The words came out softer than she intended, too honest, too bare.
He looked at her then, and his eyes were too bright, too full, and she realized with a start that he was crying, silently, the tears tracking down his face. But he was smiling too, a trembling thing that broke her heart and mended it at the same time.
"I want to be king," he whispered. "I want to be worthy of what you see in me. But I'm afraid I'll fail. That I'll be nothing more than the spare, the mistake, the—"
"You're not," Hallah interrupted, her voice fierce. "You're going to be the king this kingdom needs. I saw it. I swore to it. And I don't swear oaths I don't mean."
"Yeah," Lucan said. She reached out, wiped his tears with her thumb, rough and calloused against his soft skin. The touch lingered longer than it should have. "I know. And you won't fail. Not while I'm here."
The letter arrived on the eve of his twelfth nameday, sealed with the Crown Prince's personal sigil—a serpent devouring its own tail.
Lucan broke it open in the privacy of the Paladin's quarters, Hallah reading over his shoulder, her hand resting on the grip of Gold Rush.
"Little brother," Aldric wrote, his hand elegant and poisonous. "I hear you've grown bold. I hear you've grown tall. I hear you've forgotten what you are—the spare, the backup, the mistake. Let me remind you. The Academy trials begin tomorrow. I will be watching. I will always be watching. And when your Paladin fails—when she cannot protect you from what comes next—remember that you chose this. You chose to stand where you should have knelt."
Lucan's hands shook. Hallah took the letter from him, read it again, then held it to the candle flame until it curled and blackened.
"He's trying to scare you," she said.
"It's working," Lucan whispered.
"Yeah." She turned to face him, took his hands in hers—his soft, hers calloused, both trembling. "But I'm scarier. And I'm not going anywhere. Tomorrow, you pass that trial. Tomorrow, you prove him wrong. And I'm going to be right there, being unimpressed and critical and... and proud. Not that I'd ever say that out loud."
"Counts to me," Lucan said, the ghost of a smile touching his lips.
"Damn right."
The night before the trial, they sat on the window seat of the Paladin's quarters, watching the stars wheel overhead. Two years of training. Two years of shared meals and shared dangers and shared silences that had become something else. Hallah was acutely aware of his shoulder pressed against hers, of the warmth of him, of the way he smelled like lavender and old paper and something else now, something male and new.
"Will you watch?" Lucan asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Tomorrow?"
"Not like I care or anything," Hallah said, the words automatic. "But yeah. I'll watch. Someone's gotta make sure Garrett doesn't actually kill you."
"I won't die," Lucan promised. "Not while you're watching."
"Damn right you won't."
They sat in silence, the future vast and terrifying and bright, stretching out before them like a road made of starlight. Twelve years old, Paladin and Prince, bound by oath and something else, something neither would name yet.
Tomorrow, the trial. Tomorrow, Class S. Tomorrow, everything changed.
But tonight, they sat together, hands clasped, watching the stars, and Hallah thought that maybe—just maybe—the Weaver knew what He was doing after all.