YAN

  “WAKE UP.”

  “What in the Ari’s crusty left nipple..?” the armourer blinked, shirtless, stinking of mead and oil, just like the cot he slept in. “It’s the middle of the bloody night.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Yanick asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the old man mumbled, still half-horizontal.

  “Then get up.”

  The armourer hauled his bulk upright with a grunt, scratched his belly like a bear, and yawned without shame.

  “Can’t this wait till dawn at least?”

  “Now,” Yanick said. It was almost the voice of the Hound.

  The old man pulled on a dirty shirt and shoved his feet into worn wooden clogs.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To your workshop,” Yanick said. “I need you to make me a gauntlet.”

  “Sir, right now? In the…”

  “Middle of the bloody night,” Yanick snapped. “That’s right. Move.”

  The old man threw a patched coat over his shoulders and grabbed a clay jar off the shelf. They stepped out into the dark. The moon, first quarter, hung over them, laughing with half a face. Yanick didn’t care. He’d burned a mountain of healing herbs, drowned them in mead. If they had vodka in the camp, he would’ve bathed in it. Anything to dull the pain.

  Inside the smithy, Yanick shut the door behind them.

  “No one can know,” he said.

  “Holy hells.” The armourer lit a lamp, set it on the workbench, and turned. “Let me see.”

  Yanick unwrapped the crude bandage. The moment the cloth peeled away, the wrist bloomed purple and yellow like some poisoned fruit. The bone under the skin didn’t line up right. It bulged wrong.

  “That’s a break.” The armourer whistled. Long, low whistle. “With displacement.”

  “No shit."

  Yanick’s jaw was locked so tight he could feel the pulse in his molars.

  “The gauntlet needs to be rigid. Tight. Like a cast. Something that’ll keep my wrist steady. Locked in place, even under impact.”

  “My cousin had one like that once,” the old man muttered. “Leg. A Horse rolled on him. Before they cast it, they had to reset the structure first.”

  “You’re saying it has to be put back?” Yanick’s face went blank.

  “Unless you want a wrist like boiled cabbage. Yeah. Set it first. Then I’ll lock it up in steel for ya.”

  “You know how to do it?”

  “Needs to look like the good one, ay?” he pointed at Yanick’s left hand.

  “More less.”

  “But I can’t do it alone,” the old man cooled the enthusiasm. “Two men job. One holds, one pulls.”

  “I told you, no one can know.”

  “Can’t help you then.”

  “Argh,” Yanick growled. An urge took him over. A sudden urge to break something, to punch, to kick, to destroy. Or to rip his arm off. But for that, there was not enough alcohol in his bloodstream.

  He dropped to his knees and wept. Not loud. Just a quiet, shaking thing. Frustration. Rage. Shame. Bone-deep fatigue. It all cracked open.

  The armourer let it sit. Let the silence speak.

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  “What’s it gonna be, my lad?” he asked after a while, his voice caring. Almost fatherly.

  Yanick raised his head, eyes wet, jaw clenched hard enough to crack.

  “Go fetch Azrael.”

  *

  The armourer returned shortly, Azrael stumbling behind him barefoot, shirt half-buttoned, hair wild with sleep. His eyes were cloudy, but sharp enough to know this wasn’t some midnight jester.

  “Yan?” he muttered, then stopped cold in the doorway. “Oh…”

  Yanick sat slumped against the forge wall, clay jar in his left hand, his right swollen to twice its size. Purple, bloated, obscene. Azrael sucked in a sharp breath.

  “You fought like this?” He dropped to one knee beside him. “You twisted with that?”

  “I am the Divine Wolf,” Yanick mumbled, barely more than exhale.

  The old man took the jar out of his hand.

  “My mead?” he barked. “You drank it all…”

  “Probably for the best,” Azrael cut in, still staring at the wrist like it might detonate. “You know what needs doing?”

  “Bone’s out of line.” The old man nodded grimly. “Has to go back first. I’ll hold the arm. You pull.”

  He moved to the hearth, swept aside old blades and broken tongs, started laying out tools like a butcher preparing for feast.

  “Once it’s in place, I’ll wrap it tight. Metal band, leather laces, rivets. No buckles. If it comes off, it’ll have to be broken.”

  Yanick let them lift him, his body loose and heavy. They laid him across the table like raw meat. Azrael rolled up his sleeves with the slow finality of a man about to do something unforgivable.

  “This is going to hurt.”

  “You got any more of that mead?” Yanick grinned crookedly.

  “Let it be my loss,” the old man muttered. “I’ve got something better.”

  He ducked behind the forge shelf and came back with a dark green bottle, half-covered in soot and dust.

  “What’s that?” Azrael asked.

  “Smuggled it back from the northern post. Not exactly legal. Not exactly mine, either.”

  He cracked the wax seal with a thumbnail and poured a generous measure into a dented tin cup. The smell hit first. Sharp enough to sand your lungs smooth.

  Yanick took it with his left hand. Stared at it like it might judge him.

  Then he drank.

  Fire, pure fire. No warmth, no burn. Just fire. It didn’t trickle. It bit. It roared down his throat and coiled into his stomach like a sleeping dragon, then burst open in his chest. He coughed so hard his ears popped. For a second, the pain in his wrist vanished under something worse.

  And that was the point.

  His eyes watered, his nose ran, and his spine straightened like someone just hammered him to life.

  “Oh, Ari…” he wheezed, blinking. “No wonder she used to drink this.”

  Rayla. The thought came like a whisper. She used to sip it like it was water. Now he understood. She must have carried more pain then he realised. He felt sorry. For her, for himself.

  Azrael took the cup, checked there was still vodka in the bottle, and then moved to Yanick’s side. He nodded once at the armourer.

  “On three,” the old man said. “I’ll anchor the elbow. You pull till it cracks back.”

  Yanick clenched his jaw.

  Azrael met his eyes. “You ready?”

  “No, but do it anyway.”

  He took a breath.

  “Wait,” he said. “They cannot know. The soldiers. No one can know.”

  “And no one will.”

  “Ready?” the old man asked.

  They didn’t count to three.

  Azrael took hold of Yanick’s forearm. The armourer gripped the swollen, purple hand like he meant to wring the sin out of it. There was a heartbeat of stillness. No warning. No prayer.

  Then they pulled in opposite directions. Violent. Brutal. And something inside Yanick’s arm shifted.

  The world inverted.

  A white hot scream ripped up through his spine and out of his throat. He wasn’t even sure it was his own. It must have been Amaia’s screaming and this was the night when Yanick held the knife against Ademund’s chest.

  The world tumbled.

  Pain cracked through his skull like thunder. For a heartbeat he was certain they were tearing his arm off. That he’d look down and see a bleeding stump and two men holding pieces of him.

  The world splintered.

  He was back on the academy stones, face-down, grit in his teeth. Commander Sargos’ shadow loomed long and thin across the courtyard gravel. Then he was underwater. Freezing. Drowning. The moon laughing in the sky like it knew how weak he was. Then floating through black void, arms outstretched, watching Amaia fall. They were both rolling down. His side bleeding, his arm, his hand, shattered. And they were rolling down and down until they stopped.

  Darkness came.

  No pain. No sound. Just the thick silence of unconsciousness wrapping around him like a second skin.

  *

  The forge fire had burned low. Shadows clung to the beams above.

  Yanick looked at his arm. It was no longer a swollen balloon of pain, but a rigid construct of flesh and iron. Reset bones have been locked in place beneath tight leather bindings and cold steel plates.

  Azrael was gone. Only the armourer remained, looming over him like a crooked statue, something heavy cradled in one hand.

  It was a gauntlet. The gauntlet for the Divine Wolf of god Ari. Brutal, beautiful, uncompromising. Steel laid over thick leather. Riveted down one side. No buckles. No mercy. Tight as bone.

  “You passed out,” the armourer said, his voice flat. “Didn’t scream long. Must’ve been proud.”

  Yanick didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the thing in the old man’s hands. It looked like it could break a man’s jaw with a flick. It looked like a piece of him that had been missing.

  “It won’t come off,” the armourer added. “Not unless you die. Or want to.”

  Yanick sat up, slow as thawing mud. His right arm pulsed with pain, but it was… contained. Tamed. Like a beast behind bars, pacing but not free. He wanted to move the fingers, to check how and whether they work, but decided no to. Not yet. This moment was to perfect to ruin.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t thank me yet.” The old man snorted. “You’ll hate it by noon. You’ll bleed under it by dusk.”

  Yanick took the gauntlet and slid it on. It hugged his wrist like it had been forged into his skin.

  “I’ll still be standing,” he muttered.

  “You sure about that?”

  “No.” Yanick flexed his fingers. They moved like rusted gears grinding back to life, but they were obeying his will. “But neither are they.”