Page 39 of The King's Man 1

“I’d have let you practice. I’d have given your family everything they needed while you searched for a way to stop that poison.”

“I can try anyway, Megaera,” I say earnestly.

Her hands ball in her skirts. “How can you help without the safety of our name?” Her voice hardens, but her eyes gleam with tears, and I ache at her cutting words. “They’ll come for you, and you’ll be of no use to me.”

In her shoes, to save someone—Akilah, or little Lucetta, even Father... wouldn’t I go to the ends of the world? Even if it meant binding myself to someone I don’t—

“Marriage...” I shake my head. “That isn’t something I can offer you.”

A frail “Megaera” followed by hacking coughs turns her towards the house with a hard “See yourself out.”

I grind my forehead against the wall of the carriage as it rumbles away from the Temenos gates. When I pass through the icy shadow of the grand luminarium that presides over the capital and the royal city, I bang my forehead in lieu of a bow.

I’m selfish. When it comes down to it, I choose what’s best for me no matter the cost. Every luminist out there would see right through my insistence I want only to save lives. They’d shake their heads, read warnings from the tome of the arcane sovereign, recite the codex of elemental blessings. And eventually, give up. A hopeless case.He won’t even choose his family.

I laugh, but it’s hollow, and the sound dies behind my pinched lips when Akilah hands me the gift box.

A rectangular wooden badge lies inside. It’s the same size as my identification sigil, and far more powerful. Riverpearl edging gleams under the faint light in the carriage, framing the emblem of the royal house. This is a soldad. A badge of dedication to the magical arts. Only the most promising linea carry these—access to libraries, to examinations,to learning.

I turn the badge to a grid of six empty squares. Three stamped squares gives one the right to call oneself a vitalian.

“Is this...?” Akilah whispers, stroking the edge reverently with her fingertip.

I clutch it shakily. If I use this to enter the examinations, I could get those three stamps.

Brandish a stamped soldad, and no one will question my background. I’d be...

I’d be a real vitalian.

The soldad feels heavier than its size should allow, the riverpearl edging cool against my palm. This is a path—to knowledge, to power. To helping the helpless.

But it’s also a potential path to ruin, like the tithiscar.

If someone who knows I’m not linea, not full-blooded and legally entitled, catches me with this...

My gaze shifts back to the glowing dome where it straddles the royal city, protecting the men beyond it who’ve made these laws.

I clench my teeth. What if I can use this to make a difference? Even if it’s a small difference. Isn’t that worth the risk?

* * *

The Pavilion Library is a ring of beautiful buildings around a vast, pavilion-dotted garden. Rooms upon rooms filled with books, filled with spells. If I keep the soldad, I’ll be allowed to stay here—not just to gaze at this sea of knowledge, but to dive in, to fish out exactly what I want. Maybe somewhere in here there’s the knowledge I would need to help Megaera’s father.

I grip the pearl-rimmed wood and turn to the white-bearded skriniaris who let us in. A white cat trots at his side, like a matching accessory.

The skriniaris eyes me up and down, then takes the soldad from my pinched, shaking fingers.

He inspects it carefully and offers it back. “I was expecting you.”

I blink. Had Silvius pulled more strings than the badge? Had he gone to lengths to make sure even a skriniaris would know I’d come?

“He said any risk is worth honing your skills,” the skriniaris says.

“You know him? Silvius?”

A chuckle. “Is that the name he gave you?”

I sink onto my heels and scrub my frowning face. I see the clearing in the royal woods, the scattered bodies of stamped redcloaks...

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