Reika opened her eyes in a training hall.
There was no transition. One moment she felt the pull of Alyssara's power in the Kagu courtyard, like a hook set behind her breastbone. The next she was standing on a polished wooden floor in a long, plain hall, sunlight slanting through high windows, dust turning slowly in the beams. Racks of practice swords lined one wall. Nothing else. No banners, no names.
It wasn't Training Ground Omega, and it wasn't anywhere in the Creighton estate. It felt older than either. The air had the particular quiet of a place where one person had trained alone for a very long time, and something of him was still in the grain of the boards. She had never met Magnus Draykar. She knew him anyway, the way you know a voice from a book you have read too many times. This hall was his. Or it was meant to feel like his.
Arthur stood at the far end, ten paces away, with a wooden practice sword in his hand.
