Prologue
(Author’s Note: This story was inspired by “What Have They Done to Us” from Arcane / League of Legends, and the feeling of two people who once loved each other being changed by a world that forced them apart.)
The first thing Lenora noticed was his sword.
It was too large for the kind of fighting she preferred, a heavy Velorian blade made for power rather than speed. Its edge was dark with mud and blood, gripped tightly between the hands of a man standing twenty paces away through the smoke. Around them, men shouted, steel crashed against steel, and the ground had been churned into a thick mess beneath hundreds of boots. Yet somehow, for one impossible moment, the battle seemed to fall silent.
Lenora stopped.
The man did too.
He wore the dark, worn clothes of a Velorian soldier, nothing polished or ceremonial left about him. His sleeves were torn at the forearms, dried blood marked one side of his face, and a shallow cut ran across the bridge of his nose. He looked exhausted. Older. Harder.
But his hair was still brown and hopelessly messy.
Freckles still crossed his face beneath the dirt.
And his eyes—
Lenora’s fingers loosened around the hilts of her daggers.
No.
It couldn’t be.
The man stared at her as though he had forgotten how to breathe. His sword slowly lowered an inch.
Fifteen years disappeared.
For half a heartbeat, Lenora didn’t see the soldier standing before her.
She saw bare feet splashing through a shallow creek.
A stolen apple tossed carelessly through the air.
A wooden sword being held above a boy’s head as he shouted that he was defending Merrin’s Crossing from an army of monsters while she informed him that monsters probably weren’t stupid enough to attack someone yelling that loudly.
She saw sunlight through oak leaves.
Dirty knees.
A crooked grin.
A hand reaching for hers.
Then she remembered that hand being torn away.
“Cassian?”
She barely heard her own voice.
His expression broke.
“Lenora.”
Hearing her name from him hurt more than any blade ever had.
Somewhere behind her, an Aldren soldier shouted for her to move. Another voice from the opposite side barked an order she couldn’t understand. Neither Lenora nor Cassian reacted.
They simply stared.
She had buried him fifteen years ago without a body.
She had believed Veloria had killed him along with everything else she loved.
Cassian looked at her like he had buried her too.
Then a Velorian officer screamed his name.
Cassian flinched.
The battlefield crashed back into existence around them.
Lenora tightened her grip on her daggers.
Cassian raised his sword.
Neither moved.
“Fight!” someone shouted.
Lenora swallowed.
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
Then he came at her.
His sword cut through the air with enough force that she should have struggled to stop it, but Lenora twisted aside instead. The blade passed her shoulder by inches. She turned with the movement, one dagger flashing toward his ribs.
She changed its direction at the last second.
Cassian saw.
His eyes snapped to hers.
He swung again.
Too high.
She ducked easily.
Lenora struck toward his throat.
Too wide.
He stepped back.
Neither of them was missing by accident.
They circled one another through the chaos, moving with the precision of people who had spent half their lives learning how to kill. Cassian’s sword was stronger than anything Lenora could meet head-on, forcing her to stay light on her feet, slipping around each swing before darting close enough to strike. Her daggers could have found gaps in his defence again and again.
They didn’t.
His sword could have ended the fight just as many times.
It didn’t.
Cassian caught her wrist after one attack and pulled her sharply toward him. For a second they were close enough that Lenora could see every new scar on his face.
“You’re alive,” he breathed.
She couldn’t tell whether it was relief or accusation.
“So are you.”
A soldier rushed toward them.
Cassian released her instantly, shoving her away just before another blade came crashing between them. Lenora stumbled backward and disappeared into a surge of Aldren soldiers. By the time she fought her way through them and turned again, Cassian had been swallowed by Veloria’s ranks.
“Cassian!”
She searched desperately through the smoke.
Nothing.
Only soldiers.
Only steel.
Only war.
Lenora stood there for one dangerous second longer before someone grabbed her shoulder and dragged her away from an approaching blade.
She kept looking back.
Fifteen years ago, she had reached for Cassian while soldiers pulled them toward opposite sides of a creek.
Their fingers had slipped apart.
She had spent half her life believing that was the last time she would ever see him.
Now, somewhere beyond the smoke, Cassian was alive.
And wearing the uniform of her enemy.
