Brandon Sanderson’s epic Stormlight Archive fantasy series will continue with Wind and Truth, the concluding volume of the first major arc of this ten-book series. A defining pillar of Sanderson’s “Cosmere” fantasy book universe, this newest installment of The Stormlight Archive promises huge developments for the world of Roshar, the struggles of the Knights Radiant (and friends!), and for the Cosmere at large.
Reactor is serializing the new book from now until its release date on December 6, 2024. A new installment will go live every Monday at 11 AM ET, along with read-along commentary from Stormlight beta readers and Cosmere experts Lyndsey Luther, Drew McCaffrey, and Paige Vest. You can find every chapter and commentary post published so far in the Wind and Truth index.
We’re thrilled to also include chapters from the audiobook edition of Wind and Truth, read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Click here to jump straight to the audio excerpt!
Note: Title art is not final and will be updated as soon as the final cover is revealed.
Day One
Kaladin — Shallan
Chapter 1: Unfamiliar Ground
I should have known I was being watched. All my life, the signs were there.
—From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 1
Kaladin felt good.
Not great. Not after spending weeks hiding in an occupied city. Not after driving himself to physical and emotional exhaustion. Not after what had happened to Teft.
He stood at his window on the first morning of the month. Sunlight streamed into the room around him, wind tickling his hair. He shouldn’t have felt good. Yes, he’d helped protect Urithiru—but that victory had come at an agonizing cost. Beyond that, Dalinar had made a deal with the enemy: in just ten days, the champion of Honor and the champion of Odium would decide the fate of all Roshar.
The scope of that was terrifying, yet Kaladin had stepped down as leader of the Windrunners. He’d said the proper Words, but had realized Words alone weren’t enough. While Stormlight healed his body instantly, his soul needed time. So, if battle came, his friends would fight without him. And when the champions met atop Urithiru in ten days—nine, since the first day was underway—Kaladin wouldn’t participate.
That should have made him an anxious, stewing pot of nerves. Instead he tipped his head back, sun warm on his skin, and acknowledged that while he didn’t feel great, someday he would feel great again.
For today, that was enough.
He turned and strode to his closet, where he picked through stacks of civilian clothing neatly laundered and delivered this morning. The city was a mere two days free from occupation and the fate of the world approached, but Urithiru’s washwomen soldiered on. None of the clothes appealed to him, and shortly he glanced at another option: a uniform sent by the quartermaster to replace the one Kaladin had ruined during the fighting. Leyten kept a rack of them in Kaladin’s size.
Kaladin had stuck the uniform to the wall with a Lashing last night, after Teft’s funeral, as a test. Urithiru was awake, with its own Bondsmith, making things… different. His Lashings normally lasted minutes at best—yet here this one was, ten hours later, still going strong.
Syl poked her head into his room—past the hanging cloth doorway—without any thought for privacy. Today she appeared at full human size and wore a havah rather than her usual girlish dress. She’d recently learned how to color her dress, in this case mostly darker shades of blue with some bright violet embroidery on her sleeves.
As Kaladin fastened the last buttons on the high collar of his uniform jacket, Syl bounced over to stand behind him. Then she floated a foot or so into the air to look over his shoulder and examine him in the mirror.
“Can’t you make yourself any size?” he asked, checking his jacket cuffs.
“Within reason.”
“Whose reason?”
“No idea,” she said. “Tried to get as big as a mountain once. It involved lots of grunting and thinking like rocks. Really big rocks. Biggest I could manage was a very small mountain—small enough to fit in this room, with the tip brushing the ceiling.”
“Then you could be tall enough to tower over me,” he said. “Why do you usually make yourself shorter?”
“It just feels right,” she said.
“That’s your explanation for basically everything.”
“Yup!” She poked him. He could barely feel it. Even at this size, she was insubstantial in the Physical Realm. “Uniform? I thought you weren’t going to wear one anymore.”
He hesitated, then pulled the jacket down at the bottom to smooth the wrinkles across the sides. “It just feels right,” he admitted, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
She grinned. And storm him, he couldn’t help grinning back.
“Someone is having a good day,” she said, poking him again.
“Bizarrely,” Kaladin said. “Considering.”
“At least the war is almost over,” she said. “One more contest. Nine days.”
True. If Dalinar won, Odium had agreed to withdraw from Alethkar and Herdaz—though he could keep other lands he controlled, like Iri and Jah Keved. If Odium won, they were forced to cede Alethkar to the enemy. Plus there was a greater cost. If Dalinar lost, he had to join Odium, become Fused, and help conquer the cosmere. Kaladin wanted to think that the Radiants wouldn’t follow as well, but he wasn’t certain. So many people thirsted for war, even without the influence of an Unmade. Storms, he’d felt it too.
“Syl,” he said, dropping his smile. “I’m sure more people are going to die. Perhaps people I care about, but I can’t be there to help them. Dalinar will have to choose someone else to be champion and—”
“Kaladin Stormblessed,” she said, rising higher into the air, arms folded. Though she wore a fashionable havah, she left her hair white-blue, flowing free, waving and shifting in the wind. The… nonexistent wind. “Don’t you dare talk yourself into being miserable.”
“Or what?”
“Or I,” she thundered, “shall make silly faces at you. As I alone can.”
“They aren’t silly,” he said, shivering.
“They’re hilarious.”
“Last time you made a tentacle come out of your forehead.”
“Highbrow comedy.”
“Then it slapped me.”
“Punch line. Obviously. All the humans in the world, and I picked the one without a taste for refined humor.”
He met her eyes, and her smile was still storming infectious.
“It does feel warm,” he said, “to have finally figured a few things out. To let go of the weight and step out from the shadow. I know darkness will return, but I think… I think I’ll be able to remember better than before.”
“Remember what?”
He Lashed himself upward, floating until he was eye level with her. “That days like this exist too.”
She nodded firmly.
“I wish I could show Teft,” Kaladin said. “I feel his loss like a hole in my own flesh, Syl.”
“I know,” she said softly.
If she’d been a human friend, she might have offered a hug. Syl didn’t seem to understand physicality like a human did, though where she’d been born—Shadesmar, the Cognitive Realm—she had a substantial body. He had the sense she hadn’t spent much time on that side. This realm suited her.
Dropping to the ground, Kaladin walked back to the window, wanting to feel the sunlight. Outside he saw the heights of the mountains, capped by snow. Wind blew across him, bringing with it fresh scents of clean, crisp air and a flock of windspren. Including those that made up his armor, who soared in around him. They stayed close, in case they were needed.
Storms, he’d been through so much so quickly. He felt echoes of an anger that had almost entirely consumed him at Teft’s death. Worse, the feeling of nothingness as he fell…
Dark days.
But days like this existed too.
And he would remember.
His armor spren laughed and danced out the window, but the wind lingered, playing with his hair. Then it calmed, still blowing across him, but no longer playful, more… contemplative. All through his life, the wind had been there. He knew it almost like he did his hometown or his family. Familiar…
Kaladin…
He jumped, then glanced at Syl, who was walking through the room in a half dance, half stride, her eyes closed—as if moving to an inaudible beat.
“Syl,” Kaladin said, “did you say my name?”
“Huh?” she said, opening her eyes.
Kaladin…
Storms. There it was again.
I need your help. I’m so sorry… to ask more of you…
“Tell me you hear that,” Kaladin said to Syl.
“I feel…” She cocked her head. “I feel something. On the wind.”
“It’s speaking to me,” he said, one hand to his head.
A storm is coming, Kaladin, the wind whispered. The worst storm… I’m sorry…
It was gone.
“What did you hear?” Syl asked.
“A warning,” he said, frowning. “Syl, is the wind… alive?”
“Everything is alive.”
He gazed outward, waiting for the voice to return. It didn’t. Just that crisp breeze—though now it didn’t seem calm.
Now it seemed to be waiting for something.
* * *
Shallan lingered atop Lasting Integrity, the great fortress of the honorspren, thinking about all the people she’d been. The way she changed, based on perspective.
Indeed, life was largely about perspective.
Like this strange structure: a hollow, rectangular block hundreds of feet tall, dominating Shadesmar’s landscape. People—spren—lived along the inside walls, walking up and down them, ignoring conventions of gravity. Looking down along one of the inside walls could be stomach-churning unless you changed your perspective. Unless you convinced yourself that walking up and down that wall was normal. Whether a person was strong or not wasn’t usually subject to debate, yet if gravity could be a matter of opinion…
She turned away from the heart of Lasting Integrity and walked along the very top of the wall. Looking outward to survey Shadesmar: rolling ocean of beads in one direction, jagged obsidian highlands—lined with crystalline trees—in the other. On the wall with her, an even more daunting sight: two spren with heads made of geometric lines, each wearing a robe of some too-stiff glossy black material.
Two spren.
She’d bonded two. One during her childhood. One as an adult. She’d hurt the first, and had suppressed the memory.
Shallan knelt before Testament, her original spren. The Cryptic sat with her back to the stone railing. The lines and pattern that made up her head were crooked, like broken twigs. In the center the lines were scratched and rough, as if someone had taken a knife to them. More telling, her pattern was almost frozen.
Nearby, Pattern’s head pulsed to a vibrant rhythm—always moving, always forming some new geometric display. Comparing the two broke Shallan’s heart. She had done this to Testament by rejecting the bond after using her Shardblade to kill her mother.
Testament reached out with a long-fingered hand, and Shallan—pained—took it. It gripped hers lightly, but Shallan had the sense that was all the strength Testament had. She responded to being a deadeye differently from Maya, who stood nearby with Adolin and Kelek. Maya had always seemed strong of body, in spite of being a deadeye. Spren broke in different ways, it appeared. Just like people.
Testament squeezed Shallan’s hand, bearing no expression but that torpid motion of lines.
“Why?” Shallan asked. “Why don’t you hate me?”
Pattern rested his hand on Shallan’s shoulder. “We both knew the danger, the sacrifice, in bonding to humans again.”
“I hurt her.”
“Yet here you are,” Pattern said. “Able to stand tall. Able to control the Surges. Able to protect this world.”
“She should hate me,” Shallan whispered. “But there is no vitriol in the way she holds my hand. No judgment in the way she remains with us.”
“Because the sacrifice was worth something, Shallan,” Pattern said, uncharacteristically reserved. “It worked. In the end you recovered, did better. I am still here. And remarkably, I am not even a little bit dead! I do not think you will kill me at all, Shallan! I am happy about that.”
“Can I heal her?” Shallan asked. “Maybe if I… if I bond her again?”
“I think, after talking to Kelek…” Pattern said. “I think you are still bonded to her.”
“But…” Shallan glanced over her shoulder at him. “I broke the bond. That did this.”
“Some breaks are messy,” Pattern said. “A slice with a sharpened knife is clean; a slice with a dull one is ragged. Your break, done by a child without full Intent, is ragged. In some ways that makes it worse, but it does mean that some Connection between you two persists.”
“So…”
“So no,” Pattern said. “I do not think that merely saying Words once more would heal her.” His head pattern spun a little more slowly, as if he were contemplating something profound. “These numbers are… perplexing, Shallan. Strangely irrational, in a sequence I do not understand. I mean… I mean that we are walking on unfamiliar ground. A better metaphor for you. Yes. Unfamiliar ground. In the deep past, deadeyes did not exist.”
It was what they’d learned, in part, from the honorspren and from Maya. The deadeyes—all of them except Testament—had been bonded to ancient Radiants before the Recreance. Together they’d rejected their oaths, humans and spren alike. They’d thought it would cause a painful, but survivable split. Instead, something had gone terribly wrong.
The result had been the deadeyes. The explanation might lie with Kelek, the very person Shallan had been sent to Lasting Integrity to kill. She squeezed Testament’s hand. “I’m going to help you,” Shallan whispered. “Whatever it takes.”
Testament didn’t respond, but Shallan leaned in, wrapping her arms around the Cryptic. Pattern’s robe always felt hard, yet Testament’s bent like cloth.
“Thank you,” Shallan said. “For coming to me when I was young. Thank you for protecting me. I still do not remember it all, but thank you.”
The Cryptic slowly, but deliberately, put her arms around Shallan and squeezed back.
“Rest now,” Shallan said, wiping her eyes and standing. “I’m going to figure this out.”
Chapter 2: Taking the Next Step
I first knew the Wind as a child, during days before I knew dreams. What need has a child of dreams or aspirations? They live, and love, the life that is.
—From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 3
Syl eventually trailed out of Kaladin’s room and into his family’s quarters. He lingered in the sunlight and wind, hovering, because why not? Light here was constantly replenished, and holding the tower’s new Light seemed not to push him to action the way Stormlight did. Instead, holding it was… calming.
Yet he jumped when a loud noise sounded from farther inside, a set of shockspren snapping into appearance around him, like breaking yellow triangles. When he reached the doorway, however, he found the noise was just his little brother, Oroden, clapping. Kaladin calmed his thundering heart. He had lately become more prone to overreact to loud noises—including ones that, upon reflection, were obviously nothing dangerous.
No further words came from the wind, so Kaladin hovered out into the main room, where Oroden was playing with his blocks. Syl had joined him. Though she could make herself invisible, she rarely chose to around his family. Indeed, last night they had discussed a new procedure: When she appeared with color on her clothing, like the violet on her sleeves, it meant she was visible to others. When she appeared as a uniform light blue, only he could see her.
“Gagadin!” the little boy said, pointing. “You need bocks!”
“You” in this case meant Oroden himself—who had noticed that everyone called him “you.” Kaladin smiled, and used his Light to make the blocks hover. Syl, shrinking down, hopped from block to block in the air as Oroden swatted them.
What am I doing? Kaladin thought. A contest for the fate of the world is approaching, my best friend is dead, and I’m playing blocks with my little brother?
Then in response, a familiar voice spoke from deep within him. Hold to this, Kal. Embrace it. I didn’t die so you could mope around like a wet Horneater with no razor. Unlike the wind, this didn’t seem anything mystical. Instead… well, Kaladin had known Teft long enough to anticipate what the man would have said. Even in death, a good sergeant knew his job: keep the officers pointed the right way.
“Fyl!” Oroden said, gesturing to Syl. “Fyl, come fin!” He started spinning in circles, and she joined in, twirling around him. Laughterspren, like silver minnows, appeared in the air. That was another difference in the tower lately—spren were everywhere, showing up far more frequently.
Kaladin sat on the floor amid hovering blocks, and was forced to think about his place. He wasn’t going to be Dalinar’s champion, and he wasn’t the leader of Bridge Four any longer. Sigzil went to important meetings in Kaladin’s place.
So who was he? What was he?
You are… the wind’s voice said softly. You are what I need…
He went alert. No, he was not imagining that.
His mother entered, wearing her hair tied with a kerchief, like she always had when working in Hearthstone. She settled down next to him, nudged him in the side, then handed him a bowl with some boiled lavis grain and spiced crab meat on top. Kaladin dutifully started eating. If there was a group more demanding than sergeants, it was mothers. When he’d been younger such attention had mortified him. After years without, he found he didn’t mind a little mothering.
“How are you?” Hesina asked.
“Good,” he said around a spoonful of lavis.
She studied him.
“Really,” he said. “Not great. Good. Worried about what’s coming.”
A block floated past, steaming with Towerlight. Hesina tapped it with a hesitant finger, sending it spinning through the room. “Shouldn’t those… fall?”
“Eventually, maybe?” He shrugged. “Navani has done something odd to the place. It’s warm now, the pressure equalized, and the entire city is… infused. Like a sphere.”
Water flowed on command from holes in the walls, and you could control its temperature with a gesture. Suddenly a lot of the strange basins and empty pools in the tower made sense; they had no controls, because you activated them by speaking or touching the stone.
Syl got Oroden twirling, then left him dizzy and with a few blocks as a distraction. She popped to human size again and flopped onto her back next to Kaladin and Hesina, her face coated in an approximation of sweat. He noticed a new detail: Syl’s havah was missing the long sleeve that would cover the safehand, and she wore a glove—or she’d colored her safehand white and given it a cloth texture. That wasn’t odd; Navani always wore a glove these days to leave both hands free. It surprised him that Syl was wearing one though. She’d never bothered before.
“How do small humans keep going?” Syl said. “Where does their energy come from?”
“One of the great mysteries of the cosmere,” Hesina said. “If you think this is bad, you should have seen Kal.”
“Oooooh,” Syl said, rolling over and looking to Hesina with wide eyes, her long blue-white hair tumbling around her face. No human woman would have acted in such a… casual way in a havah. The tight dresses, while not strictly formal, weren’t designed for rolling around on the ground barefoot. Syl, however, would Syl.
“Embarrassing childhood stories?” the spren said. “Go! Talk while his mouth is full of food and he can’t interrupt you!”
“He never stopped moving,” Hesina said, leaning forward. “Except when he finally collapsed at night to sleep, giving us brief hours of respite. Each night, I would have to sing his favorite song and Lirin would have to chase him—and he could tell if Lirin was giving a halfhearted chase, and would give him an earful. It was honestly the cutest thing to see Lirin being scolded by a three-year-old.”
“I could have guessed Kaladin would be tyrannical as a child,” Syl said.
“Children are often like that, Syl,” his mother said. “Accepting only one answer to any question, because nuance is difficult and confusing.”
“Yes,” Kaladin said, scraping the last of the lavis from his bowl, “children. That’s a worldview that, obviously, solely afflicts children—never the rest of us.”
His mother gave him a hug, one arm around his shoulders. The kind that seemed to grudgingly admit that he wasn’t a little boy anymore. “Do you sometimes wish the world were a simpler place?” Hesina asked him. “That the easy answers of childhood were, in truth, the actual answers?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “Because I think the easy answers would condemn me. Condemn everyone, in fact.”
That made his mother beam, even though it was an easy thing to say. Then Hesina’s eyes got a mischievous sparkle to them. Oh, storms. What was she going to say now?
“So, you have a spren friend,” she said. “Did you ever ask her that vital question you always asked when you were little?”
He sighed, bracing himself. “And which question would that be, Mother?”
“Dungspren,” she said, poking him. “You were always so fascinated by the idea.”
“That was Tien!” Kaladin said. “Not me.”
Hesina gave him a knowing stare. Mothers. They remembered too well. Shamespren popped into existance around him, like red and white petals. Only a few, but still.
“Fine,” he said. “Maybe I was… intrigued.” He glanced at Syl, who was watching the exchange with wide eyes. “Did you… ever know any?”
“Dungspren,” she said flatly. “You’re asking the sole living Daughter of Storms—basically a princess by human terminology—this question. How much poop do I know?”
“Please, can we move on?” Kaladin said.
Unfortunately, Oroden had been listening. He patted Kaladin on the knee. “It’s okay, Gagadin,” he said in a comforting voice. “Poop goes in potty. Get a treat!”
This sent Syl into a fit of uproarious laughter, flopping onto her back again. Kaladin gave Hesina his captain’s glare—the one that could make any soldier go white. Mothers, however, ignored the chain of command. So Kaladin was saved only when his father appeared in the doorway, a large stack of papers under his arm. Hesina walked over to help.
“Dalinar’s medical corps tent layouts and current operating procedures,” Lirin explained.
“‘Dalinar,’ eh?” she said. “A few meetings, and you’re on a first-name basis with the most powerful man in the world?”
“The boy’s attitude is contagious,” Lirin said.
“I’m sure it has nothing to do with his upbringing,” Hesina replied. “We’ll instead assume that four years in the military somehow conditioned him to be flippant around lighteyes.”
“Well, I mean…” Lirin and Hesina glanced at their son.
Kaladin’s eyes were a light blue these days, never fading back to their proper dark brown. It didn’t help that although he was sitting, he was hovering an inch off the ground. Air was more comfortable than stone.
The two of them spread the pages out on the counter at the side of the room. “It’s a mess,” Lirin said. “His entire medical system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up—with training in how to properly sanitize. Apparently many of his best field medics have fallen.”
“Many of his best in all regards have fallen,” Hesina said, scanning the pages.
You have no idea, Kaladin thought. He glanced at Syl, who had sidled over to sit closer to him, still human size. Oroden was chasing blocks again, and Kaladin…
Well, despite his tension, he let himself bask in it. Family. Peace. Syl. He’d been running from disaster to disaster for so long, he’d completely forgotten this joy. Even eating stew with Bridge Four—precious moments of respite—had felt like a gasp of air when drowning. Yet here he was. Retired. Watching his brother play, sitting next to Syl, listening to his parents chat. Storms, but it had been a wild ride. He’d managed to survive.
And it wasn’t his fault that he had.
Syl rested her head—insubstantial though it was—on his shoulder as she watched the floating blocks. It was odd behavior for her, but so was her being human size.
“Why the full size?” he asked her.
“When we were in Shadesmar,” she said, “everyone treated me differently. I felt… more like a person. Less like a force of nature. I’m finding I missed that.”
“Do I treat you differently when you’re small?”
“A little.”
“Do you want me to change?”
“I want things to change and be the same all at once.” She looked to him, and probably saw that he found that completely baffling. She grinned. “Suffice it to say that I want to make it harder for certain people to ignore me.”
“Is being this size more difficult for you?”
“Yup,” she said. “But I’ve decided I want to make that effort.” She shook her head, causing her hair to swirl around. “Do not question the will of the mighty spren princess, Kaladin Stormblessed. My whims are as inscrutable as they are magnanimous.”
“You were just saying you want to be treated like a person!” he said. “Not a force of nature.”
“No,” she said. “I want to decide when I’m treated like a person. That doesn’t preclude me also wanting to be properly worshipped.” She smiled deviously. “I’ve been thinking of all kinds of things to make Lunamor do. If we ever see him again.”
Kaladin wanted to offer her some consolation, but he honestly had no idea if they’d ever see Rock again. This was a different shade of pain, distinct from the loss of Teft, distinct from the loss of Moash—or the man they’d thought Moash had been.
That brought the reality of the situation back to him, along with the strange warnings the wind had whispered. He found himself speaking. “Father, what’s the battle look like currently? A ten-day deadline. Seems like everyone might simply rest and wait it out?”
“Not so, unfortunately,” Lirin said. “I’m warned to expect heavy casualties in the next few days, as Dalinar anticipates the fighting will last right up until the deadline—in fact, he fears the enemy might push harder to capture ground in the Unclaimed Hills and the Frostlands. Apparently, per the agreement, whatever each side holds when the deadline arrives… that’s what they get to keep.”
Storms. Kaladin imagined it: fierce battles over unimportant, uninhabited land—but which both sides wanted to hold nonetheless. His heart bled for the soldiers who would die in the nine days before it all would end.
“Is this the storm?” he whispered.
Syl glanced at him, frowning. But he wasn’t talking to her.
No… that voice replied. Worse…
Worse. He shivered.
Please… the wind said. Help…
“I don’t know if I can help,” Kaladin whispered, hanging his head. “I… don’t know what I have left to give.”
I understand, it replied. If you can, come to me.
“Where?”
Listen to the Bondsmith…
He frowned. The day before, Dalinar had mentioned having a duty for Kaladin in Shinovar, involving the Herald Ishi and some “odd company.” Kaladin had already resolved to go. So perhaps he could help.
Come to me, the wind repeated. Please…
There was a highstorm tonight, and Kaladin had thought to use it—and the Stormlight it offered—to get to Shinovar. However, Dalinar had promised him more details before he left. So, taking a deep breath, Kaladin stood and stretched.
It had been wonderful to spend time with his family. To remember that peace. But even as worn out as he was, there was work for him to do yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said to his parents. “I’ve got to go. Dalinar wants me to try to find Ishi, who has apparently gone mad. Not surprising, considering how Taln and Ash are faring.”
His mother gave him an odd look, and it took him a moment to realize it was because he was speaking so familiarly of Heralds—figures of lore and religious devotion the world over. He didn’t know any of them well, but it felt natural to use their names like that. He’d stopped revering people he didn’t know the day Amaram branded him.
God or king. If they wanted his respect, they could earn it.
“Son,” Lirin said, turning away from his many sheets of paper. From the way Lirin said the word, Kaladin braced himself for some kind of lecture.
He was unprepared for Lirin to walk over and embrace him. Awkwardly, as it wasn’t Lirin’s natural state to give this sort of affection. Yet the gesture conveyed emotions Lirin found difficult to say. That he’d been wrong. That perhaps Kaladin needed to find his own way.
So Kaladin embraced him too, and let the joyspren—like blue leaves—swirl up around them.
“I wish I had fatherly advice for you,” Lirin said, “but you’ve far outpaced my understanding of life. So I guess, go and be yourself. Protect. I… I love you.”
“Stay safe,” his mother said, giving him another side hug. “Come back to us.”
He gave her a nod, then glanced at Syl. She’d changed from a havah to a Bridge Four uniform, trimmed in white and dark blue, with her hair in a ponytail like Lyn usually wore. It was strange on Syl—made her look older. She’d never truly been childlike, despite her sometimes mischievous nature—and her chosen figure had always been that of a young, but adult, woman. Girlish at times, but never a girl. In uniform, with her hair up and wearing that glove on her safehand she seemed more mature.
It was time to go. With a final hug for his brother, Kaladin strode out to meet his destiny, feeling like he was in control for the first time in years. Deciding to take the next step, rather than being thrust into it by momentum or crisis.
And while he’d woken up feeling good, that knowledge—that sense of volition—felt great.
Excerpted from Wind and Truth, copyright © 2024 Dragonsteel Entertainment.
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