Jade Halvern's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Jade won her bout, but the price followed her home. Xalyra now knew the ruins where she practiced. The goddess expected more of her time, more smiles, more presence. Worse, Xalyra spoke too freely. One careless word from a love-struck war goddess could name Jade a foreigner in front of the wrong ears. Jade needed to buy the goddess's silence and her distance. She needed Xalyra flattered and incurious. She set her plan in the hidden war room behind her folded doorframe. Blue light ran along its stone walls. There she drilled with her two curved parrying blades until her arms shook, and she thought. Flattery, not refusal. Give Xalyra something to hold, so she would not reach for Jade herself. She drew a ring from her stores, old and strange, carved with devotional marks. A gift fit for a goddess of war. She also readied a guard. A small metal bird perched on her wrist, its eyes glowing like lamps. It could record what it saw and vanish from sight. She whispered to it. "Watch for her. Warn me before she speaks." The bird clicked and lifted off. Jade returned to the ruins at dusk. She did not practice. She waited. The air split and burned, and Xalyra stepped through, purple-skinned, eyes like coals. "You came back to me," Xalyra said. She smiled, hungry and sure. "I came with a gift," Jade said. She held out the ring. "For the one who taught me to win." Xalyra took it slowly. She turned it in the firelight, reading the devotional marks. For a long moment she forgot Jade's face entirely. "You chose this for me." "I did. But a gift comes with a wish." Jade kept her voice warm. "My standing in this town is fragile. The people here must never doubt who I am. Speak of me to no one. Not my name, not this place, not what you taught me." Xalyra slid the ring onto her finger. "You ask me to keep a secret." She laughed. "I would keep a thousand for you. Guard your little game, Jade. I only want you near." "Then stay far from the town," Jade said. "Meet me here, where no one hears." "Here," Xalyra agreed, admiring the ring. "Only here." Jade had won the silence. The goddess would guard her secret now, not spill it. But the deal had teeth. Xalyra had agreed to meet her only in the ruins, again and again. Jade had traded exposure for a standing appointment with her hunter. The debt was no longer a danger of loose words. It was a fixed hook in her days, and Xalyra would expect her to return.