She raised her sword and the blade was strikingly radiant, brighter and fiercer than the pale glow of mine. A radiance that burned my eyes and left afterimages dancing in my vision, white spots that wouldn't fade no matter how hard I blinked.

  This was the Holy Path in its purest form, the techniques that the Church reserved for its most devoted servants. The ones who had given themselves so completely to the faith that the light lived inside them, burned inside them, poured out of them like water from a broken vessel. I'd learned the foundations before I left, the basic forms and the simple prayers that called the light and shaped it into something useful. Selyse had mastered all of it.

  She came at me like a storm.

  The first strike was a feint, a low sweep at my legs that transformed into an overhead blow faster than I could track. I got my blade up in time to block, barely, and the impact drove me back three steps. My arms went numb to the elbows and my teeth rattled in my skull. Light exploded where our swords met, holy steel against holy steel, and the shockwave rattled the torches in their sconces and sent shadows fleeing to the corners of the chamber.

  The second strike came before I recovered. A thrust aimed at my heart. I twisted away, felt the blade's heat as it passed within an inch of my chest, smelled my own hair beginning to smoke. I tried to counter with a slash at her exposed side, but she was already moving, already flowing into the next technique like water finding its path downhill.

  Sechsfacher Schild.

  The Sixfold Shield.

  Her blade moved in patterns that seemed to exist in six places at once, creating a defensive web that my strikes couldn't penetrate. Every time I thought I saw an opening, her sword was there to meet mine. Every time I tried to circle around her guard, she shifted to block my path. She was redirecting my own momentum against me, turning my attacks into stumbles and my advances into retreats.

  I'd seen this technique performed once, by a Grandmaster of the Order, during a demonstration meant to inspire the younger Inquisitors. He'd made it look effortless, like a dance or a meditation. Selyse made it look like breathing.

  "Stop fighting," she said, and there was no mockery in her voice, no triumph, just pleading. "Come back to me. Please. I can still save you."

  She was right that I was slower. I hated that she was right.

  But slower didn't mean helpless.

  I shifted my stance and changed the rhythm, letting the old forms come back to me. The ones I'd learned before I learned to doubt, before I learned to question, before I learned that faith could be a weapon wielded against the faithful.

  Mondschatten Sto?.

  The Moonshadow Thrust.

  My blade flickered, became two, became three. An illusion of light and angle, a deception built into the technique itself. The thrust came from nowhere and everywhere, aimed at her throat, her chest, her hip, all at once and none at once.

  Selyse didn't flinch.

  Spiegelnde Antwort.

  The Mirroring Answer.

  Her blade caught mine at the exact point where illusion became reality, reflecting my own deception back at me. I felt the impact travel up my arm, felt my shoulder wrench as she redirected my force into empty air.

  "You remember," she said, and there was something like pride in her voice. "I thought you'd forgotten everything I taught you."

  "I remember all of it."

  I came at her again.

  Kreuzende Klingen.

  The Crossing Blades.

  A technique meant for two swords, adapted for one. My blade carved an X in the air, each line trailing light, each intersection a potential strike. The pattern was meant to overwhelm, to force the defender to choose which line to block and accept the cut from the other.

  Selyse chose neither.

  Flie?ende Ablenkung.

  The Flowing Deflection.

  She stepped into my attack instead of away from it. Her blade caught both lines of the X at their crossing point and turned them aside with a motion that looked almost gentle, almost tender, like a mother brushing hair from a child's face.

  "You're telegraphing," she said. "You always did. Your eyes go to the target before your blade does."

  She was right. She'd told me that a thousand times in training, corrected the habit a thousand times, watched me fall back into it a thousand times more. Some weaknesses you don't outgrow. Some habits are carved too deep.

  I pressed the attack anyway, trying to overwhelm her defenses with speed rather than precision. My blade became a blur of pale light, striking high, low, left, right, probing for any gap in her perfect guard.

  There were no gaps.

  She let me exhaust myself against her shield, and I could feel her counting my heartbeats, measuring my breath, waiting for the exact moment when my arms started to shake and my reactions started to slow.

  Then she went on the offensive.

  Brennende Klinge.

  The Burning Blade.

  Her sword ignited, wreathed in actual flame, white-hot fire that licked along the steel and left trails of light in the air. The temperature in the chamber spiked and sweat broke out across my forehead and back, dripping into my eyes and blurring my vision.

  She cut at me in sweeping arcs that set my hair smoking when they passed too close, that scorched the stone floor where they struck. Each swing left afterimages burned into my retinas and each near-miss left blisters rising on my skin.

  I blocked what I could and dodged what I couldn't, retreating step by step toward the wall, giving ground because the alternative was burning.

  "It doesn't have to be this way." Her voice cracked. "Nys, please. Just stop. Put down your sword and come home."

  A sweeping cut aimed at my neck. I ducked, felt the heat sear across my scalp, smelled burning hair.

  "I'll protect you. The way I always have. Just stop fighting me."

  I needed space and time. I needed her to stop pressing long enough for me to think.

  Silberner Atem.

  The Silver Breath.

  I exhaled, and my breath became light. A cloud of pale luminescence hung in the air between us, blinding and disorienting. It wouldn't hurt her and wouldn't even slow her down for long, but it bought me three seconds of confusion, three seconds where she couldn't see exactly where I was.

  I used them to circle left, to put the wall at my back instead of the corner, to find my footing again.

  Selyse dispersed my cloud with a wave of her burning blade. The light scattered like startled birds, fled to the corners of the chamber, and she found me again with eyes that had never lost track of me at all.

  Mutters Umarmung.

  The Mother's Embrace.

  She didn't attack. Instead she opened her guard, spread her arms wide, her burning blade held out to the side like an invitation. The technique was defensive and protective, a stance that said: come to me, let me hold you, let me keep you safe.

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  It was also a trap. Anyone who stepped into that embrace would find themselves wrapped in holy fire, burned from the outside in, consumed by a love that didn't know how to let go.

  "Please," she said. "I don't want to kill you. I've never wanted to kill you. Just come home. Just stop fighting. I can make them forgive you. I can make them see that you were confused, that you were led astray, that you didn't mean any of it."

  A thrust at my stomach. I twisted, and I wasn't fast enough. The blade kissed my side and left a line of agony that made my vision white out for half a second.

  "Please."

  She was driving me toward the corner again. I could feel the wall approaching behind me, could feel my options narrowing with every step. In a few more seconds I'd have nowhere left to retreat and nowhere left to go.

  One more technique. One more chance.

  Gebrochener Flügel.

  The Broken Wing.

  I'd never been able to do it right.

  It was an advanced form, one of the last techniques taught to Inquisitors before they took their final vows. The footwork was awkward and counterintuitive. The blade position felt wrong, angled too far back, leaving the body exposed. The whole thing looked like a mistake, like a student who had forgotten everything they'd learned. That was the point. The Broken Wing was meant to invite attack, to make the enemy think they saw weakness. And then, in the moment of their strike, the wing unfolded, and what had looked broken became something sharp and fast and lethal.

  But I'd never gotten the timing right. The instructors had despaired of me. Selyse had spent hours trying to teach me, adjusting my grip, correcting my stance, watching me fail again and again.

  You're thinking too much, Nys. You have to let the technique move you. You have to trust it.

  I never could. I never trusted anything that required me to look weak.

  I raised my blade into the opening position. Felt my weight shift wrong, my angle go off, my body fall into the same mistakes I'd made a hundred times in the practice yard with Selyse watching, shaking her head, hiding her smile.

  "Nys..."

  Selyse's voice softened. The fire along her blade dimmed.

  She recognized the form. Recognized my struggle with it. Recognized the girl who could never get this one technique right, no matter how many times she tried.

  "You still can't do it," she said, and there was no mockery in her voice, just sadness and the memory of all those hours in the practice yard, all those patient corrections, all that hope that someday I would get it right.

  I let my blade waver and let my stance falter. I let my eyes go to the floor, ashamed and defeated. I let her see what she expected to see.

  Her guard dropped. Just a fraction. Just enough.

  Mutters Umarmung became something softer, no longer a trap but just a sister reaching out to catch her sibling before she fell.

  "It's okay," Selyse said, and she took a step toward me. "It's okay, Nys. You can stop now. I've got you. I've always got you."

  The Broken Wing unfolded.

  My blade came up fast and sharp, faster than I'd ever moved it in training, faster than Selyse had ever seen me move it. The angle that had looked wrong became perfect. The exposed body became bait that was no longer needed.

  The tip of my sword stopped an inch from her throat.

  Selyse froze.

  "I learned," I said.

  She stared at me, at the blade at her throat, at the sister she thought she knew who had just shown her something she'd never seen before.

  "When?" she whispered.

  "After I left. When I didn't have you to lean on anymore." I held the position, held her eyes, held everything perfectly still. "When I had to learn to trust myself because there was no one else."

  The fire along her blade roared back to life. Her guard snapped up. She knocked my sword aside and came at me with everything she had, all pretense of gentleness gone, all hope of peaceful resolution burned away.

  Reinigendes Licht.

  The Purifying Light.

  She planted her feet and raised her sword above her head. The flames along the blade intensified and gathered and focused into something blinding. A single strike meant to end everything, to burn away shadow and corruption and doubt and fear and anything else that stood against the light.

  There was no blocking it. The force would shatter my blade and my arms and my chest in a single blow.

  There was no dodging it. The light would follow me, would find me, would burn me wherever I tried to hide.

  I wasn't fast enough, wasn't strong enough, wasn't faithful enough.

  Selyse began her swing.

  I dropped my sword.

  The blade clattered against the stone floor and the pale glow faded. I stood there with empty hands, arms at my sides, and watched my sister's expression shift. Determination became confusion, and confusion became uncertainty, and uncertainty became something I hadn't seen on her face since we were children, since the night the ash fell and she held my hand and promised me always.

  Hesitation.

  The Purifying Light flickered and the flames along her blade guttered. Her swing slowed and stopped, hung suspended in the air above her head like a question she couldn't bring herself to answer.

  She was my sister. Underneath everything, underneath the Grey Hand and the cleansers and the salvation she'd sold her soul for, she was still my sister. The girl who'd counted my freckles while I slept, who'd built shelters for baby birds, who'd promised me always and meant it even if she didn't know how to keep it. And for just a moment, looking at me standing there defenseless, she couldn't bring herself to strike.

  The moment was all I needed.

  My hand found the knife at my belt. Plain steel, unblessed, unremarkable. The kind of weapon a street rat might carry, hidden in a boot or sewn into a sleeve. The kind of weapon Yozi had taught me to keep close, for the moments when swords weren't enough, when faith wasn't enough, when the only thing that mattered was being willing to do what your enemy wouldn't expect.

  I drove it into my sister's throat.

  The Purifying Light died.

  Selyse's sword fell from fingers that had forgotten how to grip. It hit the stone floor with a sound like a bell being struck, and the flames went out, and the chamber plunged into something that was almost darkness after all that blinding white.

  She stumbled forward with one hand rising toward her neck, toward the handle of the knife still buried in her flesh, toward the blood that poured between her fingers in thick red streams. Too fast, too much, painting her armor and her hands and the floor beneath her feet.

  I caught her before she fell.

  We sank to the ground together, my arms around her, her head resting against my shoulder the way it had when we were girls. When the nightmares came and she would climb into my bed and I would hold her until the shaking stopped. Her blood soaked through my clothes, hot and wet, spreading across my chest in a stain that would never wash out, that would follow me through every shirt I ever wore, that would be there every time I closed my eyes for the rest of my life.

  "Nys..."

  She tried to speak and the word bubbled and drowned. Her throat was full of blood and she was trying to say my name, trying to tell me something, trying to use her last breath on words that wouldn't come.

  "Shh." I held her tighter and pressed my cheek against her hair. Breathed in the smell of her, smoke and sweat and the faint trace of the soap the Church used, the same soap we'd both used since we were children. "Don't talk. It's okay. It's okay."

  It wasn't okay. It would never be okay.

  Her hand found mine and squeezed. I squeezed back, felt her fingers already going weak, felt the life draining out of her with every heartbeat.

  "Remember," she whispered. I had to lean close to hear her, had to put my ear against her lips. "The nest. The baby birds."

  I remembered.

  We'd been seven years old, maybe eight. We'd found a nest in the courtyard of the Church, hidden in the branches of the only tree that grew there. Three eggs, pale blue, fragile as promises. Selyse had wanted to take them inside, to keep them warm and safe. I'd told her that the mother would come back, that we should leave them alone. We'd argued about it for hours, the way we argued about everything back then, fierce and loud and absolutely certain that we were right.

  In the end, we'd compromised. We built a little shelter around the nest, sticks and leaves and scraps of cloth, to protect it from the wind without taking it from the tree. We'd checked on it every day and watched the eggs hatch and watched the baby birds stumble and fall and finally, finally learn to fly. We'd watched them leave the nest together and held hands while they disappeared into the sky.

  "I remember," I said.

  Selyse smiled. The expression was wrong, twisted by pain and blood loss, muscles that weren't working right anymore, a face that was already starting to forget how to be a face. But underneath all of that, I could still see my sister. The girl with seventeen freckles, the girl who'd built shelters for baby birds, the girl who'd believed in protecting small things from the cold. The girl who'd promised me always.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered. And I didn't know if she was apologizing for trying to kill me, or for failing, or for everything that had led us to this moment, two sisters bleeding on a stone floor in the dark.

  Then the light went out of her eyes and she was gone.

  I held her for a while longer.

  I'm not sure how long. Time didn't mean anything. The torches flickered and the shadows danced and somewhere behind me, Yozi stood watching with the Tear pulsing against his chest. He didn't say anything and didn't move. Just waited, patient as the shadows he commanded, giving me whatever I needed.

  I thought about the ash falling the night our parents died, the way it had settled on Selyse's hair, on her freckles, on the hand that held mine so tight I thought my fingers might break. I thought about the nest and the eggs and the baby birds learning to fly. I thought about always, and what a stupid word it was, how impossible, how no one could ever keep a promise like that because always was too long and people were too weak and eventually everyone left, everyone died, everyone became something you couldn't recognize anymore.

  I thought about the Broken Wing, and the years I'd spent learning to do it right, and the look on her face when she realized I'd been pretending. I learned, I had told her. After I left. When I didn't have you to lean on anymore. The cruelest part wasn't the knife. The cruelest part was letting her die knowing that the little sister she'd protected had become something that didn't need protection.

  When I finally stood, my face was dry and my hands were steady. I picked up my sword and cleaned the blade on my sleeve and slid it back into its sheath.

  "The exit is this way," I said without turning around.

  Yozi didn't ask questions. He fell into step behind me as I walked past my sister's body, past the pool of blood spreading across the ancient stone, toward the passage that would take us back to the surface. He didn't say what he was thinking, but I knew anyway. I could feel it in the way he walked behind me, in the careful distance he kept, in the silence that said more than words ever could.

  A woman who could walk away dry-eyed from her own sister's corpse was the most dangerous thing in this palace.

  I kept walking.

  The blood on my chest was cooling now. Selyse's blood. My sister's blood. It would dry and crack and flake away eventually, and I would wash the stain from my skin, and I would never speak of this to anyone, and I would carry it with me every day for the rest of my life.

  I walked toward the light at the end of the passage, and I didn't look back, and I didn't cry, and somewhere deep inside me, in a place I couldn't reach anymore, a little girl was still holding her sister's hand while the ash fell around them like grey snow.