Ilyra set the empty wooden broth cup on the step beside her boot. She rested her bandaged forearms across her knees and told Seyun why his hope for her seven-dawn echo no longer troubled her the way his secret counts had in Oran. Back in the river city, when she had discovered that he had quietly paid the smith for her marsh-iron spear repairs while waiting for her Bronze breakthrough, the secrecy had poisoned the gift. It had made her feel like a prize bird being fattened in a cage for someone else’s check.
Tonight, he had spoken the truth to her face before the echo was five minutes old, acknowledging her achievement as hers before naming what question it might send him.
Yet open speech was only half the reason her chest felt fully unburdened. Ilyra lifted her chin. She pointed one scarred finger at the open V of Seyun’s scorched practice coat. There, the flat, two-inch pale scar across his lower chest bone caught the amber light of the courtyard fire bowl.
Yesterday morning between those central granite pillars, Seyun had stood six days away from receiving a qualitative Crown echo from Nara Soth. A training prize twenty times weightier than anything an Early Jade spearwoman could ever generate. And Nara had returned the stone tablet and ended their actual dispute. Because of that, Seyun had walked out at dawn, spoken the reconciliation before Mina and Daro. Then she let that Crown bond seal shut at the cost…
