“I meant no offense,” says Grey, but there’s a note in his voice that makes me wonder if he truly means that. Before I can ask, he seizes his end of the branch and hoists it onto his shoulder.

I grit my teeth and follow suit. The buck feels heavier each time. I speak in broken phrases, panting in between. “My sister, Nolla Verin—is the best. She always—takes top prize. In—in the mounted games.” I pause to catch my breath. “I’m good with an arrow, but she is better. Many are better. Some of the contests—are brutal. I do not like—I do not like the violence. Even still, I look—I look forward to it each year. The food, the parties. I’m told—I’m told—”

“Lia Mara. Set it down.”

I drop the branch, then brace my hands on my knees. The woods are very dark now, and I can barely make out Grey’s form. He’s a large shape in the darkness. We’re making very slow progress, and I wait for him to tell me he’ll ask one of the other men to help him. After Mother’s announcement, I felt incapable at home. Like someone lesser.

After failing with Rhen, and now, in a different way, failing with Grey, I feel incapable here.

But Grey says nothing more about fetching Jacob. He’s quiet for the moment, and I don’t mind, because I’m trying to rub knots out of my shoulder. Eventually, he says, “We’re less than two hundred yards from camp. Can you make it?”

Two hundred yards might as well be two hundred miles, but I brace myself and lever the branch onto my shoulder. “I think so.”

“I know so.” He says it like it’s something I should be proud of. I sweat and stagger and try not to fall.

“In the Royal Guard,” he says conversationally, as if I’m not gasping with every step, “we were trained to be skilled at weaponry, but that was never our primary lesson. We were taught to see ourselves as different from the people. As a group. Every day came the call and response. Who are you? We are the Royal Guard.”

“My mother’s … my mother’s soldiers”—I draw a ragged breath—“are trained similarly.”

“If one guardsman failed to follow orders, the entire unit would be punished. It bred unity—and obedience—quickly.”

“I’m sure.” I nearly stumble over a rock.

“After a while,” he says, “a guardsman begins to recognize anyone outside the unit as a potential threat. As a target. It makes it easy to follow orders when you’re in a constant state of evaluate-and-disregard or evaluate-and-act.”

I’m barely listening to him. My focus is squarely on the placement of my feet in the dark, and the weight of the branch on my shoulders. “I need to put this down.”

“We’re almost there. Keep your eyes on the fire.”

I blink sweat from my eyes, and I can see the glow through the trees. I force my feet forward.

“After your mother invaded,” he says, “anyone from Syhl Shallow was a threat.”

I brace sweat-slicked palms against the branch to try to give my shoulder a reprieve. Part of me wants him to move faster. Another part of me wants to pitch face-first into this underbrush.

“So when I say that it is odd to think of times of celebration,” he continues, “it is because I had forgotten that your people may be our enemies, but they are still people.”

“Yes.” We will never reach that fire. “They are people. We are people.”

“Indeed.”

I clench my eyes shut. “I cannot—I cannot—”

“You’re stronger than you think. Another step.”

I step.

“Another.”

I lose track of how many steps are left. My eyes no longer track the fire, and instead track the movement of his body in the darkness. His voice has become hypnotic. Another. Another. Another.

When he finally stops, it’s so unexpected that I nearly walk right out from under the branch.

“Silver hell,” says Tycho. “Is that a stag?”

I drop it in the dust beside the fire and quickly follow suit. My knees hit the ground, and I do not care. “Yes.”

“Finally,” says Jacob. “Something with some real meat on its bones.”

“Lia Mara is quite the shot,” says Grey.

“Quite the brute, too,” says Jacob. “How much does that thing weigh?”

Quite the brute. I don’t know if I should blush or frown. I yank the quiver off my back and busy myself with putting everything back with our accumulated supplies. “It was luck.”

A hand catches my arm, and I turn, ready anger on my tongue.

Grey’s easy expression is gone. “Strength and skill are not matters of luck.”

“You carried most of the weight.”

“I did not. That animal is easily three times your size, and we carried it over half a mile.” He pauses. “Could your sister do that?”

I think of Nolla Verin, with her easy smile and yards of dark hair. She can put an arrow into a dark target on a cloudy night, and no one will ever get her off a horse, but like our mother, she is slight, all fluid grace.

“No,” I admit. “Physical strength is not a point of pride in Syhl Shallow.”

“You did not think you could do it, and then you did. That is more than just physical strength.” His eyes glitter in the darkness, and his voice is low. I’m not sure how, but he’s taken the sting out of the moment, turning it into something warmer. Better. Maybe Mother would frown on this, but for the first time in a while, I suddenly feel … capable.

A blush finally finds my cheeks, and I glance away. I think of what he said when we were walking. My people, his people— it should make no difference. I didn’t expect such a revelation from him.

After days of feeling at odds with the men around me, this moment feels meaningful. I want to cling to it for a while, to share a few more words. To hear the echo of pride in his voice that I haven’t heard in so long.

“Your Highness,” calls Iisak. “If none of you humans have claimed the heart, may I do so?”

Grey’s eyes flick skyward, and he turns away. Whatever spark existed between us burns out to nothing.

“Have no worries, Iisak,” he says. “The heart is yours.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

GREY

The fire dwindles, but the others are drifting into sleep, so I do nothing to bank it. On the opposite side of the burning embers, Lia Mara is awake as well, her eyes distant and fixed on nothing. She surprised me when she forced her way through the fireplace into my room at Ironrose. She surprised me again tonight. She’s so quiet and unassuming that I didn’t expect her to handle a bow with such assurance. I didn’t expect her to put a shoulder under that branch to carry the stag.

I am not used to people surprising me.

As if she senses my scrutiny, her eyes lift from the fire to meet mine. “You should sleep,” she says. “I can keep watch until Noah wakes.”

Noah is always the first to sleep, but always the first to wake, well before the sun breaks across the horizon. He says that his training as a doctor allows him to sleep anywhere, at any time. He can lie down and find sleep in seconds, a talent I envy.

When I try to sleep, I lie in the darkness and watch the stars shift overhead and think of all that will be lost if Emberfall tears itself apart in a civil war. I think of Syhl Shallow and how far we have yet to travel and whether we will be any safer there than we are here.