Happy Friday, peeps! Thanks for reading! This is the st chapter this week, but I'll cheonday with the one!

  I hope you have a great weekend!e

  (Oh, P.S. if you don't want to wait until Monday, or if you just want to binge a whole bunch of episodes at once, chapters on my Patreon are already to the halfoint of Book 2: Madness of Princes for all tier levels.)

  Athalia’s friend, the knight, was an older man with a minor holding the Lord of Siu al had awarded him some thirty years before for saving a bumbling cousin in the north.

  “When I was a young buck,” as the old knight said. Most of his stories started off that way.

  The old knight’s favorite pastime was to ret his heroic feats of long ago and swear he could replicate them tonight if called upon. By the end of the first month, Seleketra had heard all of his exploits and begun to see where minor details were getting tangled as the past grew further away.

  But he was as gentle as Athalia had promised. He never hurt Seleketra on purpose, and when he found out he was too heavy for her, he taught her positions that saved her from taking a man’s weight.

  “Some of these court ds are a sight bigger than I. Never lifted a sword in their life, the rds. We’d better get you a few tricks in reserve to keep from being smothered.”

  The old knight taught Seleketra leased a man, what he liked to hear, what would keep him hanging on her every gnce. Without realizing it, he also taught her to listen to the same ae over and ain, to appear fasated every time, and to seem captivated by the most tedious versation.

  Seleketra soon learhat the most vital role she had to py wasn’t in the bedchamber, but on the arm. She was to be a status symbol, a mark of wealth and potency, a bao make other men burn with envy by imagining her vishing her favors upon her panion. Desperately yearned for by all, but possessed by few.

  The old knight bought dresses and jewelry for his young panion, and staged smaller versions of the events she would one day attend. Actors, singers, jesters, fire jugglers, and tortionists, all pying to an audience of two. Dances, feasts, and exhibitions.

  Pretty was dazzled by the spectacle. She couldn’t tain her shouts of joy and dismay at seeing her first drama, and in mihe jester had her g from ughing so hard. The bendy people who twisted themselves into curlicues held Pretty spellbound, and the fire jugglers were delighted by her gasps ahusiastic appuse.

  Kindly, the old knight admonished Seleketra. A close-rat could behave that way oreets, but for Seleketra, these performances must be mundane, minor diversions at best. Demigoddesses were not awed by anything, let alone human foolery.

  Pretty found boredom easiest to vey with the musis the old knight hired. They didn’t know how to make the body-moving, heart-thumping, wailing music she was used to hearing oreets of Siu al. These musis droned like water bugs while the old knight taught her the steps to the dances popur at court, which didn’t seem much like real dang at all to Pretty. She never knew uphill folk had to folloattern to dance.

  The weather grew colder, and the performers stopped traveling for the winter. It was time, the old knight told her, that he brought in a priest to teach Pretty her letters.

  Pretty had never met a person who knew letters, but Athalia had been adamant that it was a y. The Daylily had risen from the Closes to an uphill townhouse without ever reading a lick. She was determihat Seleketra would go even farther, and the only way to do that was to read like the nobles did.

  The priest scared Pretty sicker than sick. Ba Siu al, whehe moon hid behind the ghost city, the priests of the strong gods flowed in waves through the low streets looking for close-rats to sacrifiights when the moon hid were bad medie, and the priests were the reason why.

  But Athalia wanted Pretty learnt iers, so she was going to have to do it to be a good daughter.

  Shaking and sweating, Pretty begged the old knight to promise he wouldn’t let the priest drag her off. He took her hand and gave her his solemn vow.

  She had trouble paying attention to the priest’s teag until she made believe she was Seleketra. Seleketra wasn’t afraid of anything, not even the bent shape ihe priest robes, or the hot rank breath whistling through its mask, or the hands all covered in scars and old blood.

  By springtime, Seleketra could read the one book the knight owned and even make her owiful letters with ink and part. The priest crawled away, back to whatever high pce it worshipped in, and Pretty only ever saw it again in day terrors.

  “My dear Seleketra, you have blossomed like a winter flower,” the old knight told her one day at supper. “Your manner, your ent, your touch… The Daylily will be delighted with your transformation. As for I, however, it is with the heaviest of hearts that I admit it is time you return to Siu al.”

  “My good knight,” Seleketra replied, fav him with a bittersweet smile and a skillful caress from her tattooed fingers. “The pleasure of our time together will always be one of my greatest treasures.”

  But whatever Seleketra said, Pretty was so happy her heart could bust. She was going back to Athalia! She would show the Daylily that she’d been learned better than any real daughter could.

  ***

  Lathe didn’t keep up extra sword practice while the ons masters were absent, but she pyed with the disappearing and mirr, and not just to harass Thirty. She used it while the pirate scum and Four practiced blood magic—usually to their annoyand during rge-scale melees while training to assault or defend a castle, when nobody would miss her. She eve around the animals iables, because they were harder to deceive than humans.

  Most of the time, she could disappear pletely, her sound, st, and shadow gone as well as her form. There were certain times, however, that her shadow remained, and she had to resort to dist where the shade fell.

  Master Saint Daven hadn’t noticed the pattern before he left, which just went to show what ayheaded old crow he was, always squawking at her to think when he was the o thinking. All he’d noticed was that Lathe’s abilities went in streaks. Perfevisibility for weeks at a time, thehing she had learned would fall apart.

  But he must not have kept track of when he had to yell at the brat, because he never did mention how it was right around the same time every month.

  What else Lathe realized that the master hadn’t was how much stronger her other medie got during that time. She could heal up in a heartbeat, throw her shadow a mile, outrun the wind.

  She had almost whupped Four during the autumn tour. They had fought the match before the championships, and she just near pulled the upset of the year. Her left bde pared a wisp of dark hair from the back of Four’s he sed before his medie snatched her out of the air and smmed her backward into the wall of the keep.

  our she’d be ready for that throwing trick, and then she would really give her roommate what-for.

  Lathe spent a good deal of time dreaming of winning the spring tour, then rubbing her victory in the ons master’s ugly face.

  But the spring tour loomed close, and the old crow still wasn’t back.

  Lathe wayid Grandmaster one day after lectures to ask about it. “You figure the twins run out on you?”

  Grandmaster Heartless had just received the writ announg when the king would be in residence for the spring grafting. He’d e to the kits to make arras, and she, as usual, was w scullery.

  “What twins?” the old man asked.

  “The Saints, you know the Saints! The ons masters. Me, I figure they up and run off so’s they didn’t have to teaore.”

  “Ah, I see. No, I imagine Masters Saint Daven and Saint Galen will be back when and if they . Do you have pints about training under Master Fright?”

  “Nah, he’s a good fighter, him, just fussy when it es to lecture time. Same as all of ’em.”

  Grandmaster smiled. “I suspect if students spent a lecture listening instead of talking, and sitting still rather thaing up and moving around, they might find the masters less ined to fussiness.”

  “Don’t seem likely, Grandmaster Sir. If you so much as itch your nose or let a fart slip, you’re is scrubbin’ pots ’til the ghost cities burn out.”

  “Try it my way ond see what happens.”

  Lathe agreed uhusiastically. Grandmaster had river water in his ears. She’d sat still purt near ’til her bones jumped out of her skin while that bmed manners lecture dragged on and on, and she’d still got in trouble. It had nothing to do with her. Anybody with on sense would’ve poked that mole on the back of Eleven’s o make sure it wasn’t a tick.