“I’m starting to have my doubts about my sainted father,” Kip said. He pushed his hair back with a hand. “Anyway. Anyway! So … I’m not going to be a Blackguard. Think about what that means.”

He thought she’d figure it out instantly. “Kip!” she complained. “I have no idea what you mean.”

He blanched, looked away, felt suddenly vulnerable, squirmed. “Blackguards can’t … Blackguards can’t be involved with other Blackguards.”

“Right,” she said, like what he was saying was trivially true. Not. Connecting. The. Dots.

Don’t make me say it, Teia.

“But if I weren’t in the Blackguard, I could be involved with someone … who is.”

“Rrrright,” she said. Eyebrow rising like coaxing a small child: Use your words, Kip. Then her hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh shit!”

Not the reaction he’d been hoping for. But in for a danar, in for a quintar. He stared at the wall. It felt like he was tearing his heart out and throwing it against that spot.

“I’m about to run out of friends and allies here, Teia. I’ve angered my grandfather to no end, and with a word, he can end my tenure with the Blackguards. And it’s not like you … you all will have your duties, which may include stopping me from, you know, killing my grandfather.”

“Kip, it’s not like we’re going to forget you.”

“No, actually, it’s exactly like that. Or worse than that. The whole point of the Blackguard is that your loyalty is to the Blackguard and to whomever the White tells you your loyalty needs to be to. With a promachos? Your job may be to kill me, just like that.” He was angry, but he wasn’t angry at her. He wasn’t being fair. He really had ambushed her. Maybe she hadn’t even thought of it. Until recently, he’d been kind of relieved to be in a brotherhood where he didn’t even have to think of relationships for a time.

“Kip, we would never turn against—”

We, she said. Not I. He interrupted, “Point is, turns out friends are a luxury I may not get. So what I need are allies. Tisis gives me that. What—”

“Tisis?”

“—I want to know from you is, is there one good reason I shouldn’t say yes to her offer?” Brusque. Being an asshole, and he couldn’t help himself. He looked at Teia, and it was like she was already receding in the distance with his hopes.

“Her offer? What? What offer?”

Had he not made it clear? “She proposed we marry.”

“Marry?!”

“It’s the only way to get a rock-solid alliance. Even a promachos can’t dissolve a marriage.”

“Are you seriously— Kip, you’re sixteen!”

“Seventeen in a few months. Ten. Ten months.”

“Marriage, Kip. Marriage. Yes, there are a thousand good reasons. Like … like … Well, I mean, you’re only sixteen—”

“I’m not looking for a thousand reasons to say no to her, I’m looking for one. Was. Was looking.” And suddenly, horrifyingly, infuriatingly, tears were flooding his eyes. He took a deep breath, blinked, blinked, but it didn’t matter. The tears came, and he couldn’t speak, and the tears spilled down his cheeks.

Rejection. From Teia.

Should have fucked her when you had the chance, Andross Guile said in the back of Kip’s head. And Kip was ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was level, somehow. Tight, oh so very tight and quiet, but level. “How embarrassing for both of us. I apologize. I was unfair. Please…”

Teia looked at him, totally stunned, speechless.

“Please excuse me,” Kip said. It was his room, but he had to get out. He couldn’t breathe in here, couldn’t face her for one more second. He practically fled into the hall. He went to the lifts, but there wasn’t one at this level. He flipped his green spectacles on—they hid his eyes—and drafted a hand brake. He’d never done this before, but he’d seen it done. And, to hell with it.

He attached the brake directly to one of the anchor lines, grabbed the crossbar in both hands, and jumped down the hole.

Sudden terror can apparently be quite bracing.

But the terror lasted only a second. Kip went whizzing down the shaft past alarmed discipulae and magisters. Level after level blurred past in tears and regret. He applied the brake and came to a jerking stop at his floor—the basement where he did so much of his training.

The Prism’s training room was empty. Thank Orholam. Kip threw his spectacles back into the hip case and slapped each of the color panels, flooding the room with colored light of seven spectra. Any drafting he wanted to do would be easy. He threw off his tunic and moved to the heavy bag. It took all of his discipline to warm up. Beating the hell out of the bag immediately would just sprain his damn wrists.

Whatever distance he’d gained in running from his weakness closed in as soon as he started punching the bag. Circling the swaying leather and sawdust wasn’t flight enough to get away from his stupidity. Whatever pain shot from fist to wrist to elbow to shoulder wasn’t enough agony to overwhelm the shame. What had he even been asking? How had he not seen that she was dumbfounded? How had he not taken the quiet exits her blank, stunned looks had offered him?

No. Kip had bulled ahead. Like a dumb animal. All the grace of a turtle-bear.

His fists thumped, thumped the bag, and his wrists hurt, the connective tissue crying out as he hit the bag too hard. He wasn’t warmed up yet, but he couldn’t help but hit until he crossed the threshold of pain. As if pain would blot out all else.

Why had he backed Teia into that corner, where there was nothing she could say? He’d wanted to lose her. It was the only explanation.

He tried to imagine what the right response would have been.

And couldn’t.

This was all on him. Bastard and outcast, choosing to be bastard and outcast. He hit and hit, the thud of luxin glove on leather becoming his voice. He could judge every punch by its sound, and soon he was making corrections—tightening here through the gut to put more force into the hit, foot landing just there to give him an anchor, aiming just there as the bag swung back.

But it was no escape. He’d let himself think he could have friends. That here, at the Chromeria, at the very center of all things, he could be no longer alone. But Gavin was gone, Karris was furious, Teia didn’t want him, his friends would be taken away, and he could never trust them again. Kip was to be alone, again, and this time, finally, fatally.

And what are you going to do? Cry about it? Feel sorry for yourself? Poor little Kip of Rekton, poor little fat boy.

He closed his eyes and tried to hit the bag by feel. It had always been more theoretically possible than actually possible: you knew how the bag was shaped, you knew how it swung, you knew where it was hanging, you knew how hard and where you’d hit it, so you should be able to tell where it was going to come back. Repeat. Right?

Of course it wasn’t nearly so easy. Whatever else he was, Kip was leagues from being a blind fighter.

Finally the tendons in his arms and every surface of his fists felt merely hot rather than in pain, and his muscles warm. He picked up the speed. Elbows, knees, quick combos, face. He kicked the bag, reveling in the bass, meaty thump of a perfectly executed kick.