The Duke’s Reborn Daughter Sometimes Chooses Violence.

“What,” Violet said, “in the actual hell does the King’s Tournament have to do with saving Cordelia?”

She was on her feet now, the apple abandoned somewhere. Estovan and Anias both wore matching expressions of concern, which, from two people that composed, was roughly equivalent to anyone else screaming. Damian’s jaw was set. Sere only looked puzzled, her head tilted.

“I must agree with Lady Indri,” Estovan said. “I confess I don’t see it. What is the purpose of entering the Tournament? Let alone winning it?”

“The winner of the King’s Tournament is granted a Boon,” I said. “Whether they win the junior or the senior division. They are granted anything within the Crown’s power to give. Most people ask for Lands. Titles. Gold. That kind of thing. Some people ask for pardons for heinous crimes. You could ask for practically anything.” I paused. “Such as the dissolution of a betrothal between two Houses.”

There was silence. One that stretched for only a heartbeat, but felt much longer. “You want to win the entire Tournament,“ Violet said slowly, “so you can ask the King to break off this betrothal. All of this…for her.”

“Yes.” I lifted a hand before the noise could start up again. “Winning is maybe not strictly necessary. Even getting through the qualifiers gets us a stage at the Capital itself. Everyone important in the Kingdom will be there. Even if all we manage to do is reach the Capital and make some noise, we can lay Greenward’s crimes in front of every Province at once, somewhere he can’t buy every paper and bury it. That alone is worth something.” I lowered the hand. “But winning is the main thing to strive for. A Boon is something the King grants freely. It doesn’t make him look weak in front of the Kingdom. I will say that for my boon, I simply wish to cleanse my city of the forces corrupting it in secret. I’ll present Greenward’s crimes before him. At the right stage…that’ll be a request he cannot refuse. I’m not going to directly ask him to dissolve the betrothal or anything.”

“That’s what the evidence was for.” I nodded at the board. “We need evidence plus the right stage. The proof gives him the justification. The Boon gives him the mechanism. Put them together and his hands are tied. Sometimes, you have to force people to do the right thing.”

Damian made a small noise of grudging understanding. He still didn’t look happy. Estovan and Anias looked thoughtful. Sere and Violet just looked confused.

“There are two problems with this plan, My Lady,” Estovan said. “May I?”

“Please.”

“The first problem is...a Boon is a tradition. An honored tradition, perhaps, but still just a tradition. It is not a binding contract.” His dark eyes were steady. “The King may grant it. The King may also reinterpret it, or quietly decline to honor it at all. Particularly if honoring it would cost him favor with the strongest military House in the Kingdom. You may win, present your request, and be handed nothing.”

“I know,” I said. And I did. “I can’t make it binding. All I can do is frame the request so that refusing it costs him more than granting it. But you’re right, at the end of the day he’s still a King. It’s a gamble. Our hope lies in me strongarming him enough, and in the fact that this alliance is doubtless more important to Julian than it is to Duke Bulwark.”

Estovan did not look entirely convinced. Not that I’d expected him to be. “The second problem,” Estovan went on. “If you wish to partake in this tournament yourself, and I have no doubt you do…the Tournament forbids Magical Implements and Artifacts. There is no rule against Godblades, but only because nobody has tried. You would not be allowed to use it. You would be a Hero who cannot draw her sword.”

“Yes. I imagine that’s how it would go.” I confirmed.

Anias spoke then, and her voice carried an edge I rarely heard from her. “Then weigh this carefully, My Lady. Even in the junior division, an arena is the easiest place in the world to kill someone and call it an accident. You would be unarmed, in a place your enemy has every reason to want you dead.” She didn’t look away. “The risk seems too high. You must know that as well as I. Why enter at all?”

“Because I want the best chance this works. That involves me participating in it myself.” I held her gaze. “And if the worst happens. If someone does try to kill me, then I’ll summon Vaelin and let myself be disqualified.”

Anias studied me for a long moment, then inclined her head. It felt like acceptance more than it did agreement. It would have to be enough, for now.

“Which brings me to why I need the two of you.” I looked at Violet, and then at Damian. “I want the best chance at this, and for that, I would ask you two to participate too. Nobody knows about my Gift, and it is useful but, there is no telling who I might be up against. Besides, I’m not a fighter. Without Vaelin, there’s going to be someone stronger.” I drew a breath. “I don’t know how far I can go on my own. I think the two of you might go a great deal further.”

Violet’s whole face lit up. “We’re entering too?”

I was unsure if she had heard the rest of what I’d said, or if she’d stopped listening after that sentence. “If you’ll do it.”

“Obviously I’m doing it.” She was nearly vibrating. “Are you kidding me? A reason to hit people that doesn’t end with you lecturing me about it.”

Damian’s reaction was quieter. “I’m in. I’ve been training too, you know. I don’t know how far I’ll get but I think I can be useful.” Something flickered across his fac.

They had both agreed. Not that I’d thought they wouldn’t have. It still made me feel better. Sere had gone very still. Now she wrote and held the notepad up. I knew what she’d written without having to look.

And me?

My chest tightened. “You can’t enter it,” I said gently. “Your Gift is the most powerful thing any of us has, Sere. It’s also the most secret. You can’t use it in the tournament, not with so many people watching. People would know what you could do, and they’d never stop looking for you again.” I shook my head. I wanted to be gentler about it, but I also wanted to make sure she understood. “It’s too dangerous.”

Her shoulders dropped. She looked at the floor, the pencil hanging loose in her fingers, and she looked so much smaller than the terrifying thing she actually was.

I pulled her into a hug. “That doesn’t mean you won’t do something important,” I said into her hair. “It just means not this. There will be things only you can do. I promise. I hope you don’t have to do them, but you’re the only one who can, if it comes down to it.”

There was one thing she could do, one I couldn’t force myself to say. Because there was a version of all of this where the plan failed. Where the Tournament went wrong, where the King handed me a smile and nothing else. In that version, I would arrange for Duke Greenward to die on one of the many stages he seemed to love so much. Cordelia hadn’t objected to killing her father exactly. She had objected to doing it in a way that ruined the city. I could manage that much, if I had to.

I held Sere tighter, and I didn’t say it, and I hated it, in some small, cold corner of myself, how easily the thought had come. Perhaps I had always been my mother’s daughter.

Liar. Vaelin’s voice was almost gentle. I didn’t argue.

I straightened. Violet was watching me with an odd expression, and when she spoke, her voice was lower than usual. “We’re doing all this for Cordelia,” she said. “You’re doing all of this for her, right? For that do- girl, Right?”

I knew what she was actually asking. Are you doing this just for her? “Yes. Making our District and our city more independent is a good thing. Something worth doing anyway. I probably wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for her.”

Violet tugged her braid and stared hard at the floor. When she finally spoke, the words came out in a rush. “Would you do the same for me?” She didn’t look up. “If it was me. If I were the one getting married off, or sold, or whatever the hell. Would you do all of this for me too?”

It was an odd question. I didn’t hesitate. There was nothing to hesitate over. “If it were you,” I said, “I’d burn down the world to get you back. You know that.”

Violet’s head snapped up. Her face went to a deep, furious red, all the way to her hairline. She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, and what finally came out was a strangled, “O-okay. Fine. Then -then I’ll do whatever the hell you need. I guess I’ll do it.”

I blinked. “...Are you all right? You don’t feel sick or anything, right?”

“I’m FINE.” She was extremely not fine. She was also clearly not going to tell me.

“Well, I do need one more thing from you. If you’ll do it, I mean.” Violet stared at me. I felt guilty about saying it, but it was important. I turned towards the board and thought again.

5. Make Violet a Duchess.

“House Indri has no head. As long as that’s true, it’s a vote that never gets counted on the Council. It’s a District the other Dukes can intrude on. I want to change that. Everything will go much easier if Aelheim has a functioning Golden Five again. I need House Indri to have a Duchess. It should be you. I…I know you said you didn’t want to, so we can do things anyway if you refuse-”

“Sounds boring as fuck,” Violet muttered, still red. “But fine, I can do that much. For you.” She paused. “And for her, I guess. It’s only temporary, right?”

I nodded. ”Just until this ends. After that, it doesn’t matter.” Violet sighed. I really was asking a lot of my friend. She was one person I would never be able to repay. “And then there’s this.”

6. Master my Edict.

“I need to master the second half of my gift. I’m not sure how or where I might use it, but I need all the power I can get. I can’t leave this on the table.” I paused for a heart beat, ”I probably won’t be able to use it in the tournament. I can use my Tenet without just about anyone knowing, but using my Edict…well, that would complicate things even more than they already are. I would like all of your help, to practice.”

I looked at all of my friends, one by one. None of them looked particularly worried. Or afraid. Or even nervous. I’d expected them to be at least one of those three things. Perhaps the final thing would change that. The one I wouldn’t make appear on the Magical Implement.

“And,” I said, trying to keep my voice as calm as I could manage. “There’s my father.”

Estovan’s expression tightened. Anias shifted where she stood. “He’s been dying since the auction. I think it’s safe to say he will die, if nobody can do anything about it,“ I took a deep breath. “I think I can fix him now, with Vaelin. At least I can try.”

Anias went rigid. Estovan stared at me, and for the first time in the whole meeting, the First Sword of House Veyne looked genuinely shocked. “You can do such a thing?” he asked, very quietly. “Truly?”

“Maybe.” I said slowly. “I don’t know. I think it should be possible. As for how it’ll actually work, I have no idea. Just…don’t count on it. I’m not counting on it either. It’s just a small possibility for now, that’s all.

I thought, for half a breath, of the portrait at Indri Manor. Of a woman who was meant to be my mother and looked nothing at all like me. There were questions there, and none of them were for me. I wasn’t truly Esra. They were still important, but now wasn’t the time.

“That’s basically everything I can think of,” I said. “I can’t do any of it alone.” I looked away, “And the truth is, I wouldn’t want to do it alone, even if I could.”

I knew my friends were loyal. They had proved that on multiple occasions. I knew that I was asking more of them still, for something that was entirely my business, and very little of theirs. If there was hesitation, even the tiniest bit, I would-

Violet snorted. “You use a lot of damn words to say really simple shit, you know that?” She crossed the room and flicked me hard on the forehead. “I was gonna train anyway. Now I’ve got a reason. Easy.”

“Merchant guilds,” Estovan said. “I have old contacts who owe me from a time long past. I will see if they still remember me.”

“I do have my own contacts,” Anias said. “My Lady visited the Information Guild, and that is a good start, but it is only a start. I will see what I can find.”

“I’ll help in any way I can,” Damian said. “If that means trying to win a tournament, I’ll do that.”

Sere held up her notepad. She’d drawn all of us. Me she’d drawn with an enormous head, for some reason. Violet was twice everyone else’s size. Estovan held a sword taller than he was. Anias was twice as broad as everyone else. Damian was frowning even as a stick figure. In a corner of the page, she’d written: We help.

My eyes stung, and for once I didn’t try to make them do anything else. It was still impossible. It was still unlikely. It was still hard. Now, however, it was just slightly less of all three of those things.