Daughter of the Sword

7 || The Dreams

THAT NIGHT, I HAVE the first dream.

He's a shadow. Nothing more. Tall and strong, he stands with his back to me, silhouetted against a flaming sky. But something about his posture, the grip of his shoulders, is wrong—he is in pain.

I step forward. If he hears me, he gives no sign. I look around, at the scorched grass around me, sloping away into mist and leaving nothing but the open sky to envelop us.

"Hello?" I ask. But my voice comes out muffled, warped. Nothing like myself.

The figure turns. He says something back, but his voice is sucked away, leaving nothing more than a distant mumble against his lips.

His body remains a shadow, and if I squint, some of the sunlight filters through him, like he's made of smoke. I look down at my own body and gasp. I hold up a hand to my face, twisting it, peering at it from all angles as the sunset glows through it. It is the same darkness, smoke and nothing more.

"What is happening?" I ask. I look up to him for an answer, but he can't hear me. All I can make out are his eyes, glowing against his silhouette. They're darker than anything I've ever seen before, almost black. They beg me to come closer, to reach out, to lose myself in them like another world, another galaxy. I take a step forward, then another. He reaches out a hand.

I jolt awake. Soft blue light drifts through my window, and I shiver, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I drag myself over to my chamber pot. Another rugged day. I sigh. But as I set in on my breakfast, delivered yet again without waking me, I cannot get those eyes out of my head.

Beckett's footsteps clatter through the cell block as I finish up the last of my porridge.

"I'm trying to negotiate into getting you meat a few times a week," he says by way of greeting, in a far brighter mood than usual. Perhaps the sunlight was good for both of us, after all. "Even eating more, your body can't possibly build up the muscle you need if you eat like a bird." He unlocks my cell and beckons me forward.

I frown and follow, feeling again he squeeze of my sleeves at my elbows, the struggle of the corset. It is not size I fear, but muscle; the absence of delicateness. What is a woman if she not poised like an ornament, fragile and soft?

As we begin my warm-up, jogging laps around the room, I cannot help but note that Beckett seems... warmer. Beyond the fresh air. Beyond the afternoon away from his duties.

After only a few laps he cuts short my running, and actually beckons me over for a water break. Is he warmer towards me? We run through our regular circuits, but those too are shorter than usual, and by the time the servants bring down lunch for us, he puts the weights away. "I want to teach you combat," he says.

"What?" I sputter.

He shrugs. "I don't know how to teach a woman. Laps and push-ups are one thing—one thing you have done very well, if I may commend you—"

I try to conceal the shock on my face. A compliment?

"—but actual procedure is quite another. I confess, I've spoken of actually training you before, but I did not believe you would ever even get close to it. But your body has responded well to conditioning."

I frown, but he continues, oblivious.

"I confess, you have done far better than I ever could have expected of a woman, let alone a highborn one who has never seen work."

He means it as another compliment, I know, but I cannot help but hear the failure behind it. What kind of lady am I if I can take so well to rigour? Still, I bow my head, unable to process the storm of emotions raging through my mind. My head spins with them, and again I feel caught in the middle, trapped between the life I am destined for, and the life I have been forced into. Satin and steel. To accept Beckett's training, to save my life, means abandoning who I am. Abandoning every piece of myself I have so carefully honed over the years, the delicacies of womanhood so envied by the other young ladies of my mother's teahouse. Mera Calloway, daughter to King Magnus' war general, twin sister to the most eligible bachelor in the empire, after the Prince. She would balk at the thought of taking up arms, if not nearly faint. But her survival instincts, my survival instincts, must outweigh that. They must outweigh me.