For the first time, the prince looked uncertain. “What else?”
“Then give me something else,” she said. “Tell me one true thing.”
“I need a blade,” he said, his voice cutting through the clang of metal.
The master smith, a barrel-chested man named Korvin, bowed. “For you, Your Highness, anything. A longsword? A sabre?”
Ember’s heart did not falter. She had forged steel long enough to know that some truths were sharper than any blade.
“Neither did you.”
“Keep it.”
“You didn’t sleep,” Arin said.