Tybalt drifted through formless darkness, hardly aware of himself at all.

  The closest thing to self-awareness he felt was a consciousness of a pain in his chest. The void was peaceful other than that.

  When he regained a sense of place, he found himself in a cell. Stone walls, iron bars on the door.

  Great. Did the beastfolk capture me? I didn’t even know they had buildings made of stone. Plus, I honestly thought they were determined to kill us… Where’s Mariella?

  A pit formed in his stomach. He couldn’t help but fear what might have happened—or might be happening—to her.

  A shadow fell across the bars and banished any thoughts outside of wondering who that presence was. Then a face loomed through the bars. The shape of it felt vaguely familiar, but the features were hard to make out. Tybalt couldn't place the person in the moment.

  “Prisoner’s awake!” called the figure in a loud voice.

  The guard jangled his keys noisily as he opened the cell door, and then three large, strong men entered.

  “Are we doing this the easy way or the rough way?” asked the guard who had first spoken.

  “Oh, I’m always easy,” Tybalt replied, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. He gave the men a sheepish grin.

  “Rough way it is, then!”

  A truncheon took the wind out of Tybalt, and the other two men grabbed his arms and pulled them painfully behind his back.

  Did they know I was planning something, or are they just pricks? Tybalt wondered as they dragged him off. He hadn’t even started charging mana yet.

  Not that it mattered. He recognized his surroundings now. He was in the Temple of Astara again.

  So, another of those damned deity-driven dreams…

  He was brought before the priestess again. She smiled as beautifully and viciously as ever, brandishing a blade as his knees hit the floor in front of her.

  “We meet again, Tybalt,” she said.

  His stomach did a flip. She remembers me? Between dreams? Just like…

  “This time, I’ll make your suffering from last time look like a fun vacation,” she added.

  Tybalt opened his mouth to speak—at least it wasn’t sealed shut this time—but another voice beat him to it.

  “Get away from him, bitch. This is my territory. He’s mine.”

  Vidalia! She had said something about protecting his dreams before, but Tybalt hadn’t been certain how seriously to take that. Apparently now he had the answer to that. Very seriously.

  He turned his head, and the foxgirl stood in the middle of the scene, looking somehow more real and substantial than everything else.

  “You dare—”

  “I don’t care about whatever speech you’re about to make,” Vidalia said. “This is a dream. That means I’m in control. Get out. Don’t come back, or Tybalt and I will play with you together. Give you a little taste of whatever you were about to do with that dagger.”

  The high priestess opened her mouth with an outraged expression, but no sound escaped her lips.

  Suddenly everything dissolved around Tybalt and Vidalia, and Tybalt found himself sitting on a mountainside beside the foxgirl.

  “What just happened?” he asked, slightly stunned.

  “Some bitch needed to find her own man and mistakenly grabbed mine,” Vidalia replied. She winked and looped her arm with his. “I could have asked her to leave politely, but I’ve done enough massaging other people’s egos for one day.”

  “Who was the, um, bitch?” Tybalt asked, still a bit confused. “I mean, this woman was in a dream of mine before…”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. She could be a goddess, for all I know. Whoever she is, she still couldn’t overpower me in a dream, so she’s probably no one to worry about. At least not right now. Underhanded bitch. I had this strange feeling you were in trouble when I was walking home, so I sat down and fell asleep against a tree, only to find you in this situation…” She shook her head. “Well, I made her leave. I hope that's enough.”

  “I see,” Tybalt said. He couldn’t help but smile. He enjoyed this little streak of possessive protectiveness in the fox maiden. “It’s enough. Thank you for your help.”

  “I promised I’d protect you in your dreams, darling. Sorry I kept you waiting. I had a busy evening.” It was still that same variant of “darling” she had used before, Tybalt noted. The one that implied spousal status or intentions.

  “What were you up to?” Tybalt asked. “I’m glad you showed up when you did. I know from the last dream with her that it didn’t affect me in real life, but it’s still not much fun getting mutilated.”

  “I was dealing with the man who’s leading our brave beastfolk defenders,” Vidalia said. “Convincing him not to send more people after you and your Lieutenant. I basically had to get down on my hands and knees and beg just to get him to do the sensible thing and leave you and her alone. Not actually that dramatic. I’m exaggerating. It was a little embarrassing, but worth it if you and she are safe. And I’m also happy that it probably saved the lives of the men he would have sent after you.”

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  “Hey, don’t do anything uncomfortable for my sake,” Tybalt said immediately. “I can take care of myself. So can Mariella.”

  “Oh, so you’re on a first name basis, now?” She winked and smiled, then frowned when Tybalt didn’t immediately return it.

  “Darling, I… I wouldn’t do anything that would disrespect you or dishonor myself,” Vidalia said after a moment. “I’d rather die, and I know you would rather die, too.”

  Tybalt nodded and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Good.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever given you any reason to worry,” she said, a trace of hurt in her voice.

  “You haven’t,” Tybalt said. “I just have a feeling. About this Andric guy. This dream isn’t my first time hearing his name. I can’t help but see him as a potential rival. I’ve heard the other beastfolk talk about him. He’s a leader for your people, right?”

  “Not on any formal level,” Vidalia said. “The elders appointed him a war chief temporarily to respond to this current situation, but he doesn’t have any special status beyond that. Well, he is the Chief’s son.”

  “And the next Chief?” Tybalt asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Somebody important.

  “That’s not decided,” Vidalia replied. “We have seen it shift between families more than once in the past. My family were chiefs once. The elders decide.”

  Doubtless a group of men stacked by the current Chief to help get his son selected. And considering that they already made him a war chief, it’s a safe bet they’re grooming him to take dad’s place.

  “I think I should point out that there’s no man in the world who can compete with you,” Vidalia said quietly but firmly. “In any way that’s important.”

  “Would you have married him if I didn’t exist?” Tybalt asked bluntly. “I’m not going to be hurt by your answer. But it feels like we’re dancing around what his significance is.”

  “I guess,” she said unenthusiastically, her big fox ears drooping. “I’d feel obligated… to support him in every way possible. It wouldn’t exactly have been a happy situation for either of us.”

  “Oh, no?”

  Any man who wouldn’t be happy with you is just an ingrate.

  “There wouldn’t be any love. I know that future, Tybalt. I spent time trying to understand the timelines I didn’t like. The ones where I wasn’t with you. I didn’t just turn my face away from them.”

  “I understand,” he said, taking her hand softly in his own. “What was so terrible?”

  “We don’t actually like each other,” she said, almost laughing. “That wouldn’t be improved by marriage. He’s in awe of my powers, he thinks I’m pretty, and he might even be a little bit afraid of me, but I don’t think he respects me. I respect him, but I’m not attracted to him, and I’d… resent him.” She tapped the fingers of her free hand on her thigh. “Specifically, I’d resent him for not being you. It’s not fair, but that’s the truth. He’s a straightforward, honorable, strong man. But he’s not what I want. He wouldn’t live up to your shadow in my mind, no matter what he did. I’d rather be your concubine than his wife, if I had to choose. It’s kind of shameful, by the standards of my people, but it’s how I feel.”

  Tybalt squeezed her hand.

  “All right. You do respect him, though. Do you trust him?”

  Love can blossom from just those two things. Tybalt wasn’t the type of person to be jealous of those sorts of possibilities that had never materialized into reality. The questions were more of a gauge of Vidalia’s self-awareness—and Andric’s character.

  She sighed. “Of course I do! That’s easy enough. I trust lots of people, Tybalt. Within my tribe, I trust almost everyone to some extent. We’re like a big family. Everyone is everyone else’s distant cousin if you look far back enough. When there are no outsiders around, a girl could walk down to the stream completely naked without fear of anything happening to her. Men would look away rather than shame her—and then have a strong word with her older brother or her parents about what had happened.”

  “That’s really sweet. I’ve never actually seen a community that tightly knit in real life. Or maybe I have. But I’ve never been a part of one.” He’d thought of Greentear. His mother had always kept him a little bit separate from the other villagers, but maybe that place had actually been like this, too. Maybe trust and safety was normal.

  Maybe I could have had that. Or maybe I still could.

  “You must have at least considered helping him more,” Tybalt continued after a moment. “It feels like you’ve been trying to hold him back a bit, for my benefit.”

  “Maybe a little, but look at the bigger picture,” Vidalia said. “What do I care about helping Andric kill three dozen people? Your squad is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They only matter as a stepping stone for your growth. My plan was to hide our tribe away until we could link up with you. But the reason that made the most sense wasn’t just because of your world-shaking power. You must have already considered what happens next when your squad disappears in the desert.”

  Tybalt slowly nodded and smiled. A woman who thinks things through all the way to the end. Definitely a keeper.

  “What do you think happens?” he asked.

  “The Army will send more soldiers, of course. It’s not like defeating your little squad will destabilize the Kingdom. Right?”

  “Yeah. A company, or even a full battalion if they have some idea of what actually happened.”

  “And unlike you, Andric doesn’t have any plan for that!” she exclaimed. She sounded frustrated. “Nor does the Council of Elders. They just…” She let out a long breath and let the sentence fade away.

  Plan is a strong word for what I have, Tybalt thought. I’m just trying to get strong enough that, when the time comes, I stand a chance against the wall of men and steel that’s coming. I guess that’s a plan. A very basic one. Better than literally nothing. I hope she’s not expecting that I have a specific solution in my head already…

  “We’ll have to work together to deal with that,” he said after a moment.

  She nodded. “Anyway, I do respect Andric. I know he has good intentions. He’s a good person. He always does the right thing, as far as he understands it. Always has, ever since we were kids. It can be frustrating. I may disagree with him about priorities and methods—and we’ve definitely had our disagreements, mainly through Vicky, my sister, as our intermediary—but his heart is in the right place. I can’t even call his thinking hubris. That’s when you’re overconfident, and you fail because of it. But he’s just been succeeding so far. He could even argue that his failures are because I’m not helping him enough.

  “So I understand why, from his perspective, it’s hard to take a step back. He thinks he’s winning. If you and the Lieutenant didn’t exist, he’d have decent odds of killing off your squad and becoming the hero of all four tribes. Maybe he could even aspire to something higher than the role of Chief. With just the damage he’s done so far, he’s the best champion our people have had against the hum—against the Army—in a generation or more. If you weren’t here, he’s the man who’d be standing between the people of my tribe and… a terrible fate.”

  Tybalt could picture that fate in his mind, so he didn’t ask her or say anything more about it, just gently caressed her hand.

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