Evan never let Ezra drift far. He guarded him like a swordsman with a weapon at his hip: ready to use, safe from being left behind.
Ezra was walking independently now. Just that separation felt inappropriate.
He was small—still all soft cheeks and short legs—but he moved like he'd decided the world was going to behave for him. Every step landed clean. No toddler wobble. No clumsy foot placement. No looking down to check where the ground was.
To an uninformed observer, Ezra would have looked strange. Not in an eerie way—just in the way that made you blink and look again. Toddlers weren't supposed to place their feet like that. It looked like someone had put a soldier in a child's body.
Evan didn't know what "normal" looked like at the top end of the world. He'd served only two masters—first under Riverrun, now under Blackfyre—and both had lived in the kind of power where rules bent. Maybe Ezra's steadiness was just what happened when mana ran thick in the blood, when bodies and minds matured too fast to fit commoner expectations.
And Reitz and Aerwyna… their tight control, the way they watched who looked and who listened—maybe that wasn't fear. Maybe it was etiquette. Under the Aufstiegfrieden, you didn't advertise an heir's potential. You hid it, or you buried it until you had to use the information at the right time.
The convoy continued to shove its way through Bren without breaking its rhythm.
Reitz and Aerwyna had insisted on it.
Two squires trotted behind the group with packs and waterskins, the squires being Hearth and Caspian. Ezra had asked for that—calmly, like it was obvious that touring a city meant you needed supplies.
Aerwyna walked just ahead and to Ezra's left, her braid swinging against her back. Reitz paced the other side, a little looser, like he was trying to make the whole thing feel normal.
It did not feel normal.
Ezra's attention snapped from building to building as if he was scanning a battlefield.
"Where does the iron come from?" he asked.
Reitz blinked, then pointed toward the hills beyond the city.
"North-east," he said. "The old mines. We bring the ore in by wagon, melt it in the foundries near the river. You've seen the smoke."
Ezra nodded once, filing it away.
"And charcoal?" Ezra asked.
"From the southern woods," Aerwyna answered, voice clipped. "The managed cuts. Not the deep forest."
Ezra's gaze flicked toward her for half a breath.
"Yes, mother," he said, perfectly polite.
Evan watched that exchange and felt his skin crawl.
Ezra's tone sounded like a child.
The meaning didn't.
They passed the blacksmith's place first.
Heat poured out of the open doors in thick waves. The clang of hammers rang sharp and regular. Sparks jumped and died against packed dirt. The air smelled like iron, sweat, and old smoke.
Ezra stopped.
The escort stopped with him, because no one was going to let the heir stand alone in the street.
"Is the steel folded?" Ezra asked.
One of the escorting Knights—an older man with gray in his beard—looked almost offended by the question.
"Folded?" he repeated.
Ezra blinked once, then corrected himself, like he was rewriting a thought mid-sentence.
"Do you refine it by re-melting?" he asked. "Or by—" he hesitated, mouth twisting, "—by working it repeatedly?"
Reitz laughed under his breath.
"Mostly re-melting," he said. "You can rework a bloom, but it's not some mystical trick. It's labor and heat."
Ezra stared into the forge like he wanted to climb inside.
Aerwyna's hand slid to the back of his collar.
"No," she warned.
Ezra's shoulders sank, but he didn't argue.
Evan watched the Knights in the escort. Some had children. Most would not even speak at Ezra's age, let alone ask questions like how do you refine your steel.
They glanced from Ezra to Reitz and Aerwyna, and Evan could almost hear the conclusions forming.
The boy is a genius.
The Lord and Lady taught him themselves.
House Blackfyre breeds monsters.
There were only two Knights in the group that didn't look puzzled.
They were the ones who had survived Catalyna.
Evan felt the familiar shiver crawl up his spine.
If they only knew Lord Ezra was like this even when he was a baby, he thought.
He'd been there when it started.
At first, guarding Ezra had been both an honor and a nightmare.
The first time Ezra spoke in complete sentences, Evan had almost drawn his sword.
Not because the words were threatening.
Because they weren't baby words.
There were stories—whispers told by old soldiers after too much drink—about Arcanists who worshipped demons. About children born wrong, with eyes too old, voices too calm.
Evan had watched Ezra read.
Watched him stare at a candle flame for an hour, barely blinking, like he was taking measurements.
Watched him move with Reinforcement so smooth it looked like he was a mechanical contraption.
After Catalyna, Evan had decided that if Ezra wasn't a demon-possessed child… then the world had simply gotten stranger than any story.
Over time, Evan got used to it.
Not comfortable.
Just… accustomed.
Ezra would talk like a scholar one moment—asking about mine output, guard schedules, the thickness of the walls.
Then, if someone mentioned mana, the child would light up like he'd been offered sweets.
Excited.
Greedy.
Still a child.
Just not in the normal ways.
When Ezra was still a yearling, Evan learned to watch for the moments when the child simply ran out of body. It came without warning—one breath he was bright-eyed and relentless, the next he was heavy-lidded and swaying, anger flashing because he could not force his limbs to keep up with his mind, that is if he wasn't using mana.
Curiosity hit him the same way. If Ezra saw something he didn't understand, he went still and intent, then lit up the moment anyone gave him a thread to pull. And when no one could—or would—answer, he threw tantrums. Not the loud kind. Ezra's were quiet and deliberate, the sort that ended with damage.
The lavatory faucet was one of them. Ezra wanted to know where the water went and how it returned. Evan couldn't tell him—because Evan didn't know. A day later Evan found a neat little hole carved into the wall behind the basin, just large enough for a child's hand to fit through. Aerwyna's reprimand had been swift.
Another strange thing about Ezra was play.
He didn't reach for rattles or bright little figures. He didn't hoard stuffed animals or beg for trinkets the way other children did. If you put one in his hands.
Evan realized that it actually meant nothing. Noble children were said to sharpen early. He'd asked around when he could—careful, quiet—and heard the same complaints everywhere once he started listening: kitchens, stables, soldiers with children back home. Tantrums. Exhaustion. The strange hours where a child burned bright and then simply fell apart.
Ezra fit those complaints.
He just did it with words too clean for his mouth, and mana reinforcing his whole body.
And with a kind of control that made Evan's skin prickle. Knight-apprentices stumbled through drills for months before their feet stopped betraying them. Ezra never stumbled. Not once.
That is not to say Ezra didn't play. In fact, he did.
Once he had asked his father for wood.
Reitz, proud and baffled, indulged him.
Ezra then asked Evan—Evan, the sworn shield—to teach him how to carve. It was one of Evan's quiet habits, picked up back in Riven. Ezra had seen him do it when Evan guarded him in the nursery.
A yearling carving should have been a joke. But Evan had seen Ezra do things more precise.
Three months later, Ezra carved like a master.
Not like a child.
Like a trained artisan.
And Evan had noticed the other part—the way Ezra's body shimmered faintly while he worked, mana soaking into his wrists and fingers, reinforcing tiny joints for impossible precision.
Ezra's carvings were… strange.
Not animals. Not little Knights. Not houses.
He made a long, segmented carriage with tiny wheels and called it a "train."
He made insect-looking crafts with narrow wings and called them "aircraft."
He said they were "transportation vehicles" and then started talking about "scale models" and "ratio" like the words had weight.
Evan understood only some of it. In quiet moments he caught himself turning Ezra's words over in his head, trying to make sense of them after the fact.
Children asked questions. Everyone said so. Children said strange things that made adults pause and think.
It was just that Ezra wasn't supposed to be able to say them like that yet—so clear, so certain, like the words had been waiting in him all along.
Evan had heard a neighbor's child ask why the sky was blue. That was the sort of question adults laughed at and then forgot.
Once, on a whim, Evan tried it on Ezra—asked the same thing, as if it were a game. Ezra didn't laugh. He answered. Calmly. Like it was obvious.
"It's the small bits in the air," Ezra said. "They scatter the sun's light. Blue scatters more than red, so it gets thrown all over the sky. That's why the sky is blue, and why sunsets are red—because the blue got scattered away before the light reaches your eyes."
He recalled.
It baffled him, he was supposed to ask more questions, like what small bits he was talking about. Instead he opened his mouth and shut it. He smiled and nodded instead.
Ezra had tried making contraptions, too.
Little frameworks of wood and string.
He destroyed them before they were finished, muttering that he had to be patient, that "it wasn't time yet."
Evan hadn't known what that meant. He still didn't.
Aerwyna had been overjoyed when Ezra made his first carving.
Then she'd looked at Evan with a gaze sharp enough to flay skin.
Because Evan had lent Ezra his dagger.
Evan had thanked every god he'd ever heard of that she hadn't reprimanded him on the spot.
There were other incidents. Boredom was Ezra's enemy.
When he was bored, he tried to escape.
Evan reinforced the exits—bells on doors, latches tuned to squeak—but Ezra still found ways. Silent. Clean. Like the child had been born knowing how to move without making a sound.
Once, he almost succeeded. Evan caught him at the last moment—one hand on the latch, feet already set for a smooth run. Evan had pleaded then. Not with authority. With something raw.
Ezra stared at him for a long moment, then stepped back.
He never tried again.
Evan had never been sure whether to feel relieved… or unsettled.
He came back to the present with a jolt when Aerwyna stopped.
It wasn't a landmark that looked important—just another block of stone and rebuilt walls, a few shops standing where rubble had been cleared—but the air felt different here. The Knights noticed it too. Conversation died.
Evan's stomach tightened.
This was where the battle with Catalyna had happened.
Aerwyna closed her eyes and bowed. Reitz did the same. So did most of the soldiers and Knights.
A stone plaque sat against a low wall where a building had once stood. Plain. No fancy carving.
Just names.
More names than Evan liked to remember.
Ezra looked bewildered at first—the sudden silence, the bowed heads, the heaviness that settled over the street.
Then something clicked.
He stepped closer to Aerwyna and bowed too.
Evan bowed, eyes closed.
He remembered: the laughter before, the hard training, the bruises, the small jokes soldiers told to make the days bearable—until the day it all became ash.
Catalyna.
He had never forgotten the moment her power showed itself—how the air changed, how heat and pressure made his teeth ache. It was rare to see someone at that level. Someone who could stand near Aerwyna and Reitz and not be immediately crushed.
Evan had only seen three people who were clearly above them.
The Prince of Gasmere.
The Rex Imperia.
And the Primus Praetorian.
Even then, Bren's Knights had not fled. They met her head-on without a care for their lives.
That discipline had filled the street with corpses.
Evan's throat tightened. He held the bow for one more heartbeat, then lifted his head.
Ezra was still bowed, small shoulders tense.
Evan didn't know if the child truly understood.
But Ezra had followed.
That mattered.
Evan hadn't been born to steel and crests.
Before he was Sir Evan of Bren, he had been just Evan zu Riven.
Bastard of a Riverrun noble—one of Lady Aerwyna's uncles, though he hadn't known that as a child. His mother, Carwen, had never spoken the man's name. On the rare days she mentioned him at all, her jaw would set hard enough to crack teeth.
They lived in a leaning shack that creaked in the wind. When the rain came, the roof wept in ten different places. They put pots and buckets under the drips and pretended it was a game.
She was beautiful—not in the polished way of a noble court, but in the simple, sun-worn way of the countryside. She never married. Not because she'd borne Evan, but because Evan was a nobleman's son. That made her dangerous to want.
No common man in Riven would court her. Not with a lord's stain on her name. A jealous noble didn't need proof or law to ruin you—only the thought that you'd touched what he once had. So Carwen stayed alone, and everyone pretended it was choice instead of caution.
She would scold him for the smallest foolishness, tongue sharp as any switch. Then, when he sulked, she would ruffle his hair and put an extra scrap of cheese on his bread.
She had no magic. When she cut her palm on a rusty nail, it took weeks to heal.
When he was seven, a man in Riverrun colors rode up the dirt path.
Evan remembered the way Carwen's mouth pressed into a thin line when she saw the tabard. The way her voice shook when she argued, though he couldn't make out the words.
The man set a small bag of silver on the table. It made a dull clink. "Compensation for the loss of manpower," he said.
He had cried when they pulled him away but he himself knew it was necessary. You couldn't deny a request from the Lord. Promised himself he'd run back, break free, sprint through the fields.
He hadn't. He'd ridden away in a cart with other boys, clutching a bundle of spare clothes, cheeks stiff with dried tears.
"I'll be the best," he whispered into the straw of the barracks pallet that first night. "I'll become a Knight. I'll buy you a house with a roof that doesn't leak."
He scrubbed armor until his fingers cracked and bled. He polished boots until he could see his reflection. He ran drills until he vomited behind the stables, wiped his mouth, and ran again. Magic came slowly. Water bent to his will like a stubborn mule: reluctant, then grudging, then finally obeying. He learned how to numb pain, how to slick blades with ice, how to harden his own skin against blows.
He was never the best.
There was always some noble-born boy whose mana came easy, whose sword arm seemed guided by ten generations of training. Evan was dependable, not dazzling. A good second.
He told himself that was enough. He just needed to cross the line into Knighthood. Then he'd have a stipend.
Then his mother fell ill.
"Just a cough," the first letter had said. "Nothing to fret about."He told himself that was enough. He just needed to cross the line into Knighthood. Then he'd have a stipend.
The next came later. Her handwriting wobbled across the page, stubborn and proud. Carwen had paid a merchant to teach her her letters—because she knew Evan would be educated, and she refused to have silence be the only thing between them.
The cough turned wet.
He begged her, in his replies, to see a healer. He sent every coin he could scrape together. He didn't need it—he was fed, sheltered, and clothed in the barracks.
Then the answers stopped coming.
Evan was requested for messengers to go to his mother.
When word finally reached him.
"She passed quietly," the man said, hat in hand. "Buried under the oak."
She had left a letter.
My Evan,
If you are reading this, then I am gone. Don't be afraid of that.
They told me to call healers. I sent them away. Not because I thought I was strong, but because I would not spend your coin. Not one bit of it—neither what you sent, nor the first silver they laid on my table when they took you and named it "compensation." I kept it all.
You were my pride and joy. I never cared what anyone called you, or me. You were mine, and I was blessed.
I left the money with Hella at the mill. She'll give it to you. She knows who you are.
I don't know what life is for with you gone. I tried. Then the coughing came, and I found I did not have the will to fight for a few more weeks of empty days. I am sorry for that, if it is a sin.
I love you. I have always loved you.
Goodbye, my Evan.
Youra Ma, Carwen
Evan had been on gate duty that day. Spears at rest, boots braced, eyes fixed ahead.
He did not abandon his post. His captain later praised his discipline. He never did comeback, instead he wrote to Hella saying that she could use the money instead.
The words rolled off him like rain.
I gained power, he thought now, kneeling in Bren's square. Enough to walk through a storm untouched. Enough to freeze a man where he stands. And it still couldn't buy her another breath.
Fate had strange tastes.
On his next campaign, the First of their squire cohort—the golden one, the commander's favorite—took an arrow through the throat. He died twitching in the mud, eyes wide, hand clamped uselessly over the wound.
When they needed someone to fill his place, Evan was the one still standing.
They had discovered his aptitude with different weapons after that.
He rose, not because he shone, but because others had fallen.
That was how he became a Riverrunner. That was how he earned the right to wear Aerwyna's colors.
She hadn't been like this then.
They'd called her the Ice Queen, and it had stuck—earned young, in a Primarch's war-camp, when she was sixteen and already too good to be comfortable around. Not just a water-mage, but one of the best cryomancers Riverrun had ever produced. The sort of talent soldiers remembered with equal parts gratitude and dread.
Back then she looked at the world like glass: clear, hard, unforgiving. She was obsessed with proving herself, with never being seen as anything less than the sharpest blade in any room. She trained like a soldier trying to beat death itself, and she drove her guard with her.
Evan respected her for it. Feared her, too.
It was in that same camp that she first met Reitz—when he still wore another Primarch's colors.
Primarch Laufferk's.
Evan remembered him as a loud, fire-bright presence among banners: too much laugh, too much heat, as if he could charm the camp into forgetting what it was. He'd arrived on some errand between Primarchs, a courier wrapped in rank, and somehow he'd ended up in Aerwyna's path like a man who didn't know when to step aside.
At first she'd looked at him the way she looked at everyone then—cold and measuring.
Reitz, of course, had grinned like it was a challenge.
To him it was a game. A spar in the mud between errands, a chance to show off how hot his fire could burn and how easily he could make men watch. He threw compliments like daggers—sharp, careless, meant to stick.
Aerwyna took it personally.
She had been sixteen, proud enough to choke on it, and she'd already killed for her rank. She did not tolerate being treated like an amusement.
So she met him in the yard.
And again.
And again.
Reitz was stronger. Not by finesse—Aerwyna had that in spades—but by sheer weight of power, the kind that made the air feel crowded when he cast. He laughed when their spells broke against each other. He winked when she glared.
She trained harder.
It should have been hatred. Evan thought, watching them now, that it had started close enough.
Aerwyna was furious at his cockiness, furious that he could afford it, furious that he could look at war and still find room to smile. She wanted to beat him bloody just to wipe that grin off his face.
Then, slowly, the shape of it changed. She started noticing when he pulled his strikes at the last moment. When he took hits he didn't need to take, just to see if she could land them. When his eyes tracked her hands with the same intensity she gave to her own spellwork.
It wasn't contempt.
It was attention.
And one day she realized the truth that made her even angrier: he wasn't playing because he didn't take her seriously.
He was playing because he did.
After that, the rivalry didn't soften. If anything, it sharpened.
But when Reitz smiled at her, Aerwyna started to smile back.
When she had decided to marry Reitz Blackfyre, Evan had expected to be discarded to be absorbed into the ranks of House Riverrun.
Instead, she called him to her chambers, half-packed trunks stacked by the door.
"Come to Bren with me," she had said, not looking up from a buckle she was fastening. "I know how you stand your ground. I'll need that there."
"You trust me, Milady?" The words had slipped out.
She snorted.
"I trust you to be stubborn," she said. "And I need men who aren't waiting to be told what to think of my husband."
She had eloped.
So he went to Bren, braced for some proud, fire-dazzled Lord.
He found Reitz instead:
A man who apologized to his horse for riding too hard.
Who made crude jokes about his wife where only trusted guards could hear, and never let his eyes linger on any other woman.
Who spent more time talking to engineers about roads and bridges than to sculptors about his likeness.
A man who built roads instead of statues.
They are good people, Evan thought now, watching Reitz lay a hand gently on Aerwyna's shoulder as she finished her bow before the plaque. Whatever else the world says about nobles, these two have earned their place.
And then there was Ezra.
He didn't fit neatly beside his parents in Evan's mind.
Reitz's warmth.
Aerwyna's hard edge.
They were strong, but human.
You could imagine drinking with one, sparring with the other, dying for both.
Ezra was different.
He's not like us, Evan thought. He doesn't measure things the way we do. He weighs… something else.
Ezra's head turned, as if he'd felt the stare. Purple eyes met Evan's, steady and unreadable for a few heartbeat.
The toddler walked between Aerwyna and Reitz, hands occasionally brushing their sleeves.
He looked small.
Too small for the weight that sat on his shoulders.
Evan's grip tightened around his sword belt.
He had pledged his sword to Aerwyna.
By extension, to her child.
No matter what came, Evan would give his life for Ezra—so the boy's potential could live long enough to matter.
He didn't know what that future looked like. He only knew he would stand in front of it. And if the world wanted Ezra, the world would have to go through him first.
He had failed his mother in the end. He had never brought her the house with the good roof. Some failures couldn't be mended.
But this, at least, he could swear to.
I will not fail this one, Evan thought.
Let demons crawl from whatever pits they favored. Let arcanists come howling down from their filthy hills, boasting of old blood and old grudges. Let every enemy House Blackfyre had ever made gather at these walls.
They'd find him in front of the boy.
And if they wanted Ezra, they'd have to break themselves on his shield first.