Tybalt opened his eyes to the sensation of fingers running gently through his hair.

  The images from Vidalia’s dream were still running vividly through his mind, dominating his visual memory to the point that it took him a moment to reorient to his surroundings. When his eyes had adjusted, he recognized that he was inside a cave, and the sky had turned black outside.

  Full dark, stars are out. Hours must have passed.

  He turned his head to the side, saw a stone wall, and felt a pang of pain from his chest. He looked down at himself, noticed that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and saw a terrible burn mark where he had been shot earlier. He dimly remembered what had happened just before he lost consciousness. The arrow wound had closed up thanks to Mariella’s quick action, but it was far from healed. He had been naked at the time, but he could feel that the Lieutenant had put his pants back on for him in addition to cauterizing his wound.

  That was… nice of her. It was strange to picture Mariella having seen his nakedness while he was unconscious. Had she averted her eyes? Did he want her to have seen him, when he wasn’t… ready for action?

  His face heated slightly, and he looked up. He had already realized his head was resting on something soft. Now he recognized that he was lying in the Lieutenant’s lap. It was her fingers slowly combing his hair.

  As he faced up, he saw she was looking down at him intensely.

  Is her nose all right? He could see a trace of dried blood underneath it, and it looked slightly swollen and red. The rest of her face was its usual adorable self, except for one thing.

  “Tybalt, you’re—you’re awake.” A big smile threatened to take over her entire face. “Thank the gods.”

  He nodded, slightly dazed, not quite trusting himself to speak. As he opened his mouth, it felt like it was full of cotton.

  “I knew you would live, of course,” she said, attempting to affect an air of nonchalance.

  Too late to pretend you weren’t worried. He snorted, then cleared his throat.

  “Thank you—um, thank you for saving my life,” he said hoarsely, coughing midway through the sentence.

  “Right back at you. That arrow would have killed me just as surely as the boulder earlier if you hadn’t been looking out for me. Again.” Her fingers resumed caressing his hair affectionately.

  That feels really nice.

  “A little water?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Mariella said. She took out a canteen Tybalt recognized as his own—it had a familiar dent from an old fight—and she bent to pour a little into his mouth. He noticed something a little different about her. Some things that jiggled before his eyes as she moved.

  What’s going on there?

  He drank a few sips of the water and then tapped her thigh gently with one hand to tell her he was done drinking for the moment. She pulled the canteen back and capped it.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m glad you were able to refill the water. Um, what happened…?” He pointed awkwardly up at her gambeson, which was now unbuttoned to show the top of her undershirt and a couple of inches of cleavage.

  “Oh.” She halfheartedly raised a hand to cover herself, then sighed and let it drop. “I had to remove my clothes in a hurry, and I lost a couple of buttons in my haste.”

  “What? Why did you have to…?”

  “I have a skill that lights everything close to me on fire. Maybe if I get better at using it, I’ll be able to spare my own clothing from the effects, but I doubt it.” She sighed. “Maybe that’s another reason why it’s usually the men in my family who do the fighting.”

  Tybalt struggled mightily within himself, trying not to laugh. He failed.

  She looked annoyed at him, then just shook her head and wrinkled her nose.

  “Yeah, I guess it is a little funny, and I bet you’re enjoying this.”

  His smile faded slightly.

  “I like the way you look, yes. I think I already expressed that, in my way.”

  Her face colored. “You did,” she said.

  An awkward silence settled between them. Tybalt was tempted, at first, to comment that he was annoyed that she had fought naked, and he’d been unconscious for it. But it felt like the wrong moment, the wrong mood.

  He remembered how Mariella had pushed him away earlier that day, and he wondered how she would react to further gestures of affection if he tried again. She was probably lost in her own thoughts, but maybe she was wondering if he would make another attempt—whether with excitement or trepidation, he couldn’t be certain.

  Was I too aggressive? Is it… was there another reason why she pushed me away? There were things he knew about her history that he had given little thought to until now. Things that he should perhaps consider.

  “Tybalt, I, um, liked the kissing earlier,” Mariella said finally.

  He winked.

  “But we were in the middle of a disagreement,” she continued. “You can’t resolve a tense situation that way, just by seducing your way out of it.”

  “I can’t?” Tybalt asked, genuinely a little surprised.

  There’s no way that was why she pushed me away, though, right?

  “I know you haven’t had… healthy relationships modeled for you before. Your story about your childhood—”

  “Hold on, are we in a relationship?” he asked, breaking out into a wide grin.

  Mariella groaned, reddened, and raised a hand to cover her face as she answered. “Yes! No! I don’t know. Apparently, I’m attracted to the immature type. And someone who’s enough of a jerk to try to make me be the one to say we’re together…”

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  “Immature but persistent.”

  He could tell she had to resist the urge to laugh.

  “If we were in a relationship, hypothetically, you couldn’t deflect a disagreement every time with humor, or sex, or distractions!” she said. “It would be fun at first, but that’s no way to maintain—”

  “Osteomancy and Bone Repair,” Tybalt said, making his face more serious as he spoke.

  “What?”

  “Those were my other two skills, the ones I was embarrassed to tell you about.”

  In truth, he was embarrassed. He thought of himself as a good liar, so it was embarrassing that he hadn’t come up with those answers on the spot. Osteomancy, on its own, didn’t suggest anything untoward. It was at least a bone-related skill. And he could just pretend that Undead Repair was Bone Repair. Easy lie to maintain. He simply didn’t mention Fleshcraft. And she already knew about Bonebreaker and Mystic Blast. Hopefully four was a normal number of skills to get at the second tier.

  “Advanced Fire Resistance, Cloak of Fire, Emberflow, Endless Flame, Fire Shadows Camouflage, Fireshot, Purifying Fire, Spark, Wrath of Flame,” Mariella said.

  This time it was Tybalt’s turn to say, “What?”

  “I told you.” She looked away, and her expression turned pensive. “I told you that I was happy to list off all my skills for you. To show that I trust you too. I’m a woman of my word.”

  I didn’t ask you to, he thought. That’s… you choosing to make yourself vulnerable to me. At least a bit. He felt a little guilty about having lied to her so freely just a few seconds before. She was looking at him with those big, brown, trusting eyes, cradling his head with obvious affection.

  She might say that she didn’t know if they were in a relationship, but her body language and her decisions were telling a different story.

  “What does Purifying Fire do?” he asked. It sounded like a possible anti-undead skill, and he thought he understood what the other ones were probably for, just from the names.

  “Destroys things, but only evil ones,” she said, shrugging. “I’ve never really had much reason to use it, and I had to use up one of my skill selections to get it. Completely different from my regular flames, so it was something I couldn’t grasp through just trial and error.”

  That confirms my suspicion.

  He nodded and followed up with another question. “Where are we?”

  “I found us another cave,” she replied. “We seemed to have pretty good luck hiding in caves and bad luck being out in the open. So, while you’re recovering from your injury, cave it is.”

  I knew that we were in a cave, but I guess that’s all the detail she can give me…

  “Good figuring,” Tybalt said. “They seemed to target us.”

  “Yeah,” she said dryly. There was subtext to that single syllable, and Tybalt guessed it was that she was questioning his judgment in still trying to deal with the beastfolk peacefully.

  She must have been afraid for her life, he thought. Maybe even worried that if they overcame her, the beastfolk would do to her… the same things that our men do to their women. His face contorted slightly in anger at the thought. It’s understandable that she might be more sympathetic to the squad’s position after we were attacked twice, seemingly unprovoked. Hard to keep in mind the fact that from their perspective, we’re just part of the Kingdom’s boot. Even if you do keep that in mind, it doesn’t change the fact—

  “Who’s Vidalia?” Mariella asked, her voice not suspicious but definitely curious.

  Tybalt swallowed, trying not to show his nervousness at the question.

  “Was I talking in my sleep?” he asked.

  “A little. You said her name.”

  “Does that… bother you?”

  She smiled and seemed to relax a bit. “You said mine, too. Was it a pleasant dream?”

  “It was great.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  “You…” She looked like she was going to playfully slap him, then pulled her hand back as if she’d thought better of it, perhaps remembering that he was still wounded. “Is she someone important to you?”

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  “A lover? The courtesan you… lived with for a while, when the squad was stationed near Verma?” She still sounded more curious than jealous.

  Tybalt blushed, then shook his head. She heard about that. Probably Volusia’s doing. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter. Those aren’t things I’m trying to hide. My past is part of me, and I want Mariella to know me. I’m not sure I can tell her the truth about my powers yet, but I can at least tell her about Vidalia.

  “No. Her name was Brandy. Vidalia is… a beastfolk woman. A foxgirl, specifically.”

  “Oh. Is that why…?”

  “No.” He knew what she was going to ask.

  Is that why you started having a problem with the squad killing beastfolk? But it wasn’t. He distinctly recalled how that aversion had grown over a long time. Then again, I dream of Vidalia every time I come to this part of the country. It’s possible she could have subtly guided me in that direction. Dream girl, telling me just what any man wants to hear… a perfect setup.

  “Sorry,” Mariella said. “I’m getting awfully personal, considering I said the you-and-me thing couldn’t happen… and then that we might be together, or maybe not… and I pushed you away when we were kissing in the water. It’s not really my business, who you lived with, or even who you sleep with in the future.” She fiddled with her hair nervously as she spoke. “Not when I can’t make up my own mind. I just—”

  “I want us to get personal,” Tybalt interrupted. “You’re not sure about how you feel. I get it. But I am.”

  Her cheeks reddened again.

  “Yeah. Maybe there’s not as much… doubt as I’m pretending.” She looked away, and they both grew quiet for a moment, her hands still silently stroking his hair. “You know, I think my dad would like you.”

  “Really?”

  Well, I’m in.

  “You’re brave and honorable. You might not be at your full strength yet, but you take every opportunity you can to protect me. You saved my life at least twice today.” Her tone was so affectionate it bordered on the worshipful.

  “I’m not everything you think I am,” he said slowly, not sure why he was saying even that much. He should just let her admire him more and more. Probably. But there was a part of him that felt bad about pulling her closer, letting her form a shining image of him, when he knew he was lying to her about the most important facts of his situation.

  Or maybe this is the moment when I tell her the truth about everything, he thought. That’s what Vidalia would do. Worst that could happen is… He swallowed as an image of himself on fire popped into his head. Yeah, I guess the worst that could happen is she decides to burn the heretic. ‘Purifying Fire!’ I’m already wounded, too. I have my health elixirs, but I need to wait for a chance to get them out of the ring without her noticing. Even at full health, I’m sure she could still kill me. Fuck…

  “Maybe not, but you’re better than you think you are,” she said. “I’ve noticed how you talk yourself down with me. Like you’re just as bad as everyone else in the squad. But it’s not true. You’re good.”

  Not according to the gods you follow… and even by any standard I could cook up, I’m pretty bad, actually.

  “We should probably air everything we’re curious to know about each other,” Tybalt said. “If you’re up for it. Getting personal. Then you can decide if you think I’m really good or not.”

  He wasn’t sure how much he would tell her. He didn’t like going into a conversation like this without a plan, limits, a line he was going to follow, something.

  Mariella nodded. “All right.” She fiddled with her hair again, but she wore a nervous little smile. “Um, where should we start?”

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