chapter TWO: the SHOW must go on...

Here’s a free survival tip, if you’re ever in this situation yourself: if whatever’s coming hasn’t spotted you yet, keep it that way. Ignore every instinct telling you to get as far away as possible if it means romping through dry grass or dead leaves. If you’re already hidden, congratulations. Don’t throw away what leverage you’ve got by sprinting into the open.

And if you aren’t? Pray the nearest shadow’s big enough to hide in.

I felt her weight shift behind me—a subtle sign that she wasn’t planning on standing her ground. She was definitely used to running away, and every muscle in her body was screaming at her to bolt straight towards the village.

There wasn’t any time for me to explain why that was a bad idea.

I gripped her wrist, twisting it until the knife pointed at the dirt instead of either of us. The arm holding me in a choke went slack as she yelped in response, sliding off my throat as my shoulder rolled past hers. She yanked backwards, trying to pull free. Her fingers opened on their own, and the knife dropped into my hand. I ducked low, hooked my other arm behind her knees, and hoisted her up, launching into a silent, desperate charge through the woods.

My eyes were catching up, kind of. Tracking the darkness for any dense thickets where the shadows pooled the deepest. My feet naturally found where the ground gave a little—the soft, moss-cushioned gaps between root knuckles—bounding lightly over the jagged stone ribs poking out from the soft loam of the undergrowth. It was like scrambling up a familiar boulder-face that I’ve climbed hundreds of times.

The whole time, the girl was squirming in protest.

“Let me down!” she hissed, hooking her heels into my thighs and kicking backward in a frantic bid to break my grip. In my arms, she felt more like an armful of dry kindling.

I stopped behind a dead tree, its massive, bleached carcass half-swallowed by boulders and fern fronds.

“Stay down,” I whispered, clamping a hand over her mouth to cut her off.

The hoofbeats had somehow kept pace, but had slowed, almost deliberate. The girl went rigid next to me.

Then, from somewhere far closer than either of us wanted, a voice spoke up, gravelly but amused:

“A new squire so soon, princess?”

Was she the daughter of some local lord? What kind of princess wore a patchwork of scrounged wool and rags? No pampered noble I’d ever met dressed like they lived in a ditch, nor carried a scar like hers—a faded souvenir from a clumsy fall rather than a blade.

A bounty, however? I wouldn’t put it past the Evangels to decide that a girl who looked like she hadn’t eaten properly in months was still a loose end worth tying up. The thought brought back a familiar ache that threw everything out of rhythm: a stutter in my breath, my pulse ahead of the count. And my fingers had already gone white around the knife.

But strangely, I found myself stepping out into the clearing.

He was a thin, lean silhouette wrapped in dark garments bound tight to his frame, leaving no loose edge to rustle or catch. In stark contrast, his pale, piercing eyes flickered with sudden recognition. Unfortunately, I couldn’t place him in my memory. If we’d ever crossed paths before, he’d apparently remembered it a lot better than I had.

“You’re supposed to be dead.” Surprise, mixed with curiosity. “Ten years ago, Horacio said you burned down with the rest of them.”

“You’re mistaken. I’m just a fire-breather.”

He blinked, temporarily taken aback. Then he laughed, a grating, disbelieving laugh that echoed between the trees.

“I think I’d recognize the Perfectionist Knight if I saw him.” He paused.

“Pristine Sterling, former No. 10.” He spat into the dirt between us. “And Carmina Descantor. Looks like I’ll be finishing two jobs tonight.”

He didn’t wait for me to process the fact that royal blood hid behind me. A second later, sharp metal shrieked through the dark. A never-ending volley of daggers flew toward my chest, catching what little moonlight made it through the treetops above.

I deflected on reflex, sparks dissipating as steel met steel. This knife was nothing like my sword—every impact shot up through my forearms instead of being absorbed cleanly, and by the fourth or fifth parry, my fingers stung. Trapped entirely on my back foot, I felt myself sliding back, inch by inch.

Fruit. That’s all my hands remembered at the moment. Meet the angle, trust my timing. Fruit.

“Remind me who you are again?” I muttered under my breath, gritting my teeth. Forcing myself to actually look at him, I realized he wasn’t mid-throw. His arms hung loose at his sides while duplicates of daggers he’d already thrown materialized in the empty air right where his hand had been at the moment of release, then hurled themselves forward on their own, same arc, same speed. And the paths weren’t random. Every one landed exactly where the last had, just a beat behind.

“Kaldr.” He started walking toward me. “Formerly No. 46. From the northern tribes.”

I responded with a sharp, breathless chuckle.

“That knife you’re holding,” Kaldr taunted, “what happened? Weren’t you the premier swordsman out of all of us?”

His mouth twisted into what looked like a smile.

“Why don’t you show me Etude?”

I’d seen this ability before, in some drill I’d watched from a distance. He was just one of the hundred ranked below me that I never bothered learning the name of.

“Kaldr…” I managed between parries, “the one with Canon?”

Surprise flickered across his face for a moment before his eyes hardened.

“Guess you’ve gone soft,” he murmured. “If you can’t even use your cadenza anymore.”

I couldn’t argue. I wanted to blame the decade of rust. But the bitter truth was that I hadn’t been able to remember what it felt like to use it since the day I was betrayed. Etude used to live right on the tip of my tongue. Now, I only tasted dust and cobwebs.

“This is goodbye for real, Sterling,” Kaldr rasped, flicking a wrist. The night tore open, blooming with a fresh wall of gleaming steel. Dozens of duplicate daggers hung suspended in the twilight, a trembling hedge of teeth poised to make me a pincushion.

My chest seized. I tried to force-start whatever dead internal metronome was responsible for magic, panic rising with every second it refused to tick. In that split second, I stopped trying to intentionally use my cadenza. There was no time to think, to beg it to manifest. The instinct to survive took over, and I let my hands try to remember instead.

I closed the distance. A stray dagger bit deep into my side, and another grazed my shoulder. My blade cut through the rest without resistance. No more clangs of deflection.

I only needed one clean, effortless stroke. Like the plank.

Kaldr went down in two pieces and didn’t get up.

I looked away and stood there for a moment, chest heaving. But my fingers wouldn’t stop twitching, simply delighted with the feeling of Etude reverberating throughout my body for the first time in years. It had woken up because my back was against the wall, demanding I live because it wanted to breathe again.

Then I turned to check on Carmina.

She was gone. No sign of a struggle, no blood that wasn’t mine or Kaldr’s. The girl who wasn’t supposed to be alive had disappeared, and my head wouldn’t stop buzzing.

Ten years ago, the nine strongest heroes—the Evangels—had turned on me, attempting to kill me after we defeated the Sinfonia, the god-tyrants who’d once ruled humanity. They’d killed the royal family, House Descantor, and ruled in their place as the Church of Nine ever since. 

I’d spent ten years making sure Pristine Sterling stayed dead.

Now, with a single stroke, I’d announced my return to a world that had thought it finished me off.