The first indications that Thornfield had made a mistake in admitting Nine came six months into training, when he began to get the hang of sword work beyond vicious chopping that would make a woodsman blush.

  Nine’s bald spots had grown ba, and the hair was even starting to take on a lustrous brown color. He was gaini, aen pined of the splintering pains in his legs that heralded growth. With regur meals, malnourished brats from the low streets teo catch up to the height they ought to be quickly. When their growth aing evened out, whatever strange habits they’d created in their awkward stages could be corrected and their newfound fat could be repced with muscle.

  But one deadly habit caught the ons master’s eyes.

  “Stop!” Saint Daven caught Nine’s wrist mid-hack. He raised a hand and smacked the boy in the face.

  “Don’t!” the boy shrieked.

  “Then stop me.”

  A dozen more times proved Nine couldn’t. It alsht the truth p out in a tearful, furious tantrum.

  Saint Dave directly to Grandmaster. “Our little berserker’s blind in his right eye. Sounds like an iion did it.”

  Grandmaster frowned. “Did he say how long ago he lost sight in it?”

  “I didn’t think to ask.” Nine might have mentio for all the young ons master knew, but uanding that heavy Siu al at was doubly hard when the boy was worked up.

  “Take him to Healer Prime immediately. If we’re lucky, he do something about it.”

  The sed, calmer retion of ale of his injury included seve dockworkers, every one of them trying to beat his skull ft. He’d e off the better of them, though.

  “Ain’t nobody took a notion to e after me nor Pretty since,” he cluded proudly.

  Healer Prime was only half listening as he examihe boy’s eye. “And how long ago did you say you were hit?”

  “Ba flood season, that was. The moon was hiding behind the ghost city, so I khat night was gonna be bad medie ’fore I ever left the Closes.”

  “There’s nothing I do for it after this much time,” Healer Prime told Grandmaster in his study te that afternoon. “Even with royal blood magic, that eye will never see again.”

  “That’s it, then. He may learn to pensate somewhat, but a soldier with half a field of vision will always be at a disadvantage,” Grandmaster Heartless said. “Nine will be dismissed at dusk after he’s breakfasted.”

  Saint Daven uood that Thornfield couldn’t stoop to produg subpar Thorns. Every man who was grafted had to uphold the martial excellence of the order, because any one of them could be called upon to guard the king. Boys who couldn’t keep up with Thornfield’s demanding standards were sent back out into the world to deal with the sequehey thought they’d left behind.

  “Shame to waste that much piss and swagger,” Saint Galen said, chewing over the news with him te that day in their shared room in the masters’ tower. “The kid goes after everybody he fights like he believes his own stories.”

  “Almost as bad as Cutter was.” Saint Daven tapped the bde of an old dagger on his khout really notig he’d brought it out. His sword Wild had beeed down for scrap after Lord Paius’s death and his thornknife had splintered when his soul shattered, but the dagger he’d held onto. “Fast as oiled lightning, too. In a few years, he could’ve had the skill to back up that mouth.”

  The grandmaster was right, of course. A half-blind Thorn could never be an effective shield between his lord and danger, no more than a half-mad, disgraced Thorn could.

  ***

  Grandmaster Heartless was on his way into the great hall for breakfast the evening when Saint Daven fronted him.

  “Give me a month of extra lessons with the little berserker,” he said. “Let me see if I egate his eye as a weakness. If he’s not better than a man with two good eyes by then, I’ll kick him out and reimburse His Majesty for the room and board.”

  Grandmaster’s bushy white brows drew down in a glower. “I didn’t make my ruling lightly, Master Saint Daven. This isn’t a game of wagers. We’re talking about a boy’s life.”

  “I apologize, Grandmaster. I didn’t mean any disrespect, but it seems like a waste to me. Nine’s got more potential than half his css. He’s got the blood magid the willio learn, and he was skilled enough to keep us in the dark about his eye for this long. There’s the ce that, with the right tool set, he could cel out the disadvantage.”

  Grandmaster gred into the younger man’s gold eyes, but Saint Daven didn’t look away.

  It was the first time sihe broken Thorn’s return to the school that he’d shown a flicker of i in anything. The mad young man might be the best fighter the school had ever produced. Heartless had feared he’d been pletely ruined by the cruel hand of fate—until this very moment when, it seemed, Saint Daven had decided to e back to life.

  “They’re all going to die, Grandmaster,” he said in a low voice. “If Nine fill a gap in defenses in the meantime, why waste him? It might be an unpardonable offeo give the kihan the best, but a private posting with some minor noble? Surely the berserker could mahat until the king came for his lord.”

  “Not every lord turns on the king,” Heartless said.

  But many were accused of it. The results came to the same.

  Grandmaster perused the hall, boys and men scattered around the tables, as may spots as filled ones. Less than half the he school had housed iless’s day, and dwindling more every year. Boys with blood magic were getting fewer and farther between, while the demand for Thorns stayed the same.

  “If he doesn’t meet and exceed Thornfield standards by the tour month, he’s gone,” Grandmaster said.

  Saint Daven bowed. “Thank you, Grandmaster.”

  “Don’t tha.” Heartless spotted a table, eating everything he could get his hands on. “You promised remuion for his room and board if you fail. You’d better hope he doesn’t. I doubt your purse is deep enough to cover a full month.”

  ***

  “I ’t go on whore trips no more, me,” Nine announced sadly to his roommates. They had been back to the vilge three times i six months, but in that time, Nine had bee a dedicated drinker. “The masters’re making me do extra sword lessons in the daytime on at a’ my bad eye.”

  “Your rd wasn’t going to fit through that grating much longer anyway.” Izak looked up from his book. “Bad eye, you say? What happeo it?”

  Sighing, Nine climbed up onto his shelf bed and flopped down. The wood crackled under his retly added weight. He wasn’t fat, but he had gone from skeletal to awkwardly lumpy, and the bed had been rickety to begin with.

  “Riverboat-load a’ broke-free bloodsves got after me. ’Bout a thousand, I re.”

  ing from he ck of gory details and the missing st-minute rescue of his twiantamount to a cry for help.

  “That doesn’t tell me anything about your eye,” Izak prompted.

  “It don’t see no more!” Nine exploded. He leaned over the edge of his bed and waved a hand in front of his faphasis. “It got all dark, then it just went away! I didn’t know I was s’posed to have both eyes so’s I could fight.” He flopped back over and kicked the ceiling. “I was fighting fih just ohat fool master had to get bothered about it…”

  “Partial blindness expins why you always turn your head,” Twenty-six said, leaving the archer loop to join the versation.

  “Huh.” Izak squinted up at the runt, tapping his . “I hought about it, but you do. Every time you look me in the eye, you cock your head right.”

  “No, I don’t!” The runt was doing it right then. A sort of quarter-turn and a slight ahat must present him with a better view from his left eye. “And worse, if’n I don’t take these extra lessons, they’ll toss me out! Being a Thorn was s’posed to get me a bunch a’ gold and a uphill pt for us. She’s gotta get out of the Closes, Pretty,” he said early. “They’re dangerous firls.”

  Izak looked at Twenty-six to see if he would mention that this sister robably already dead. For ohe pirate kept his unnecessary bluo himself.

  “Extra lessons will make you a better warrior,” Twenty-six said, “and if you bee the best warrior at Thornfield, you will be grafted to your dirter king. That will lead told, won’t it?”

  Clearly Nine hadn’t sidered that. “Yeah, maybe so!”

  “And maybe by the time your extra lessons are plete, you’ll have worked off some of that extra rd,” Izak added, going back to his reading.

  ***

  Saint Daven’s idea for saving Nine’s pce at Thornfield had very little to do with the boy’s sword work and everything to do with his style of attack.

  “A blind berserker won’t st long,” he expined on their first day of extra lessons. “One ter from the wrong side and you’re dead. We ’t ge your vision, so we have to ge theirs. What I’m going to show you… Maybe you’ll get the hang of it. Odds are you won’t. We have a month to find out.”

  Nine puffed up. “I’ll do it in half that, me. What is it?”

  “Yoing to use the blood magic to disappear.”

  “I seen that once.” Nine made an exploding motion with his grubby hand. “Poof, into smoke.”

  “You’re talking about disincorporation. Smoke stepping is a teique of royal blood magic. The royal family do it, and the king even move reat distances along with him, but smoke is still visible. You’re not going to be.”

  “But I seen somebody do it afore, and I’m a fair study, me.”

  Saint Daven sshed a hand through the air. “Fet about that. You ’t smoke step—you don’t have the royal blood magic. Making yourself invisible is entirely different. You still be wounded; you still be killed. But if you get it right, you ’t be seen. That’s where you’ll get your advantage.”

  The Royal Thorns who had survived the massacre in the ternds would give anything to know how Saint Daven had killed so many of their brothers—his brothers—before his lord and his fellow stolen Thorns were dead. But the truth was, most of them probably couldn’t do anything with the answer if they knew how he’d do. It took a certain kind of mind to use blood magic that way.

  Saint Daven alked about the ternds Rebellion. He didn’t want to now. But there were things the kid o uand to pull this off.

  “Before we get started,” he warned Nine, “you o know that if you tell anyone what I’m about to tell you, I’ll kill you.”

  Whatever Nine saw in his face then must have scared the kid, because win swords fshed up between them.

  “I don’t spread no tales, me!” the boy blustered. “Anyhow, if you’re fixin’ to take after me, that’s the st fixin’ you’ll ever do.”

  Saint Daven nodded. “Good. We uand each other. Let’s get to work.”

  Then he disappeared.

  Hey friends, thanks for reading!

  chapter ing at you Monday! If you don't want to wait, I've already got all of The Strong Gods: Sce of Thorns up on my Patreon, along with a bunch of book 2, and a standalone novel (Broken Thorns) that tells the story of the twin ons masters, Saint Daven and Saint Galen. Check it out if you want to binge, or if you just want to support my writing!

  I hope you have a great weekend! See you Monday!e