Author's Note: I'm inserting a trigger warning here, for those who might be negatively affected by discussion of attempted sexual assault.

  “I’ll go first, with something you asked about before. I did take up with a courtesan for a long time. She retired from that line of work a little while after I met her, and she’s a beautiful person. You would probably like her. We… fell in love. She wanted us to get married.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “We wanted different things from our futures. She had achieved the level of success where she could offer me a certain lifestyle and turn me into, well, a kept man. And…”

  “You’re very proud,” Mariella finished for him. She spoke in a tone of respect, and Tybalt wondered if she was relating his decision—not to lean on someone else for support—to her decision to build her own career rather than just marrying someone her family helped her choose. There was an obvious parallel. “What about Vidalia?”

  “Um, on the one hand, it’s complicated, and on the other, there’s not that much to tell,” Tybalt said. “She visits me in my dreams. She has a class, and those are her powers. She can see the future and communicate through dreams. We’ve never actually met in person, but she lives in the mountains here, and she says that we’re destined to be together.”

  “You are, huh?” She raised an eyebrow and tried to look amused. Her expression came off closer to slightly insecure.

  “She says you’re destined to be with us, too,” Tybalt said, looking deep into Mariella’s eyes until she turned red again and broke the staring contest. His hand reached up and found one of hers, and they held hands in silence for a while, slowly tracing circles on each other’s palms or rubbing at the spaces in between fingers sensuously.

  “That’s a lot to take in,” Mariella said finally, still not looking directly at him.

  “I know. I’m glad you grew up in a family like that, so you can kind of relate to the idea.”

  She nodded, still blushing. There were a few seconds of quiet before she spoke again, finally looking him in the eyes once more.

  “So, she’s the reason why you think we can negotiate with the beastfolk, then? I was beginning to think that plan might need to change.”

  Tybalt nodded. “Tonight, she said that we might have a hard time talking to them when we’re on our own, but once we connect with her, they should listen to us. They don’t listen to her all the time, but they at least trust her judgment to some extent.”

  Mariella shook her head. “That’s great. I wish we knew where to go.”

  “Actually, in this last dream, I got directions.”

  “I already thought this, but that’s a very useful skill to have on our side!”

  I guess I won’t have to do much convincing, getting Mariella and Vidalia to accept each other. She’s certainly impressed with Vidalia’s powers, at least. Maybe I could wait to tell Mariella the truth about my class until we’re safely with the beastfolk. If I timed the conversation right, I’d be surrounded by allies instead of enemies, and if she exploded at me—literally and figuratively—I would be more likely to survive. She’d at least want to hold her nose and help me defend the beastfolk, even if a part of her would be determined to see me arrested or hanged afterward.

  He realized he was taking too long to respond to Mariella.

  “Oh, she says there are downsides,” Tybalt said.

  “I guess there would have to be,” the fire mage replied, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to see the future, communicate with other people, and pull all these strings without ever getting out of bed. There would need to be drawbacks. The gods don’t give anything away for free.”

  All right, firestarter.

  “Yeah. Anyway, I’ll take us along the route she showed me tomorrow.”

  Mariella was silent for a couple of minutes, until Tybalt wondered if she had heard him. Perhaps they were somehow already reaching the stage of their relationship where they could enjoy a companionable silence together. But he doubted it. There were still too many secrets between them.

  “Tybalt, are those dreams the reason you pursued me?” she finally asked.

  “By Kur, no!” he replied emphatically, almost ready to laugh with surprise. “It’s because you’re… frankly better than I deserve. Both of you are, honestly. Vidalia was far too accepting of me, despite knowing that I’ve killed scores of her people. But maybe my good fortune is fate’s way of shaping me. Maybe you can help me to be a better version of myself.”

  As with his last confession of feelings in the valley, Tybalt was surprised by how much he felt the truth behind his words. He wondered if tonight was the night when he would tell the fire mage the truth about his class, after all—unplanned, unscripted, just carried away by their shared feelings.

  He was afraid of her reaction, and the feeling was intense. Afraid of violence as well as simple rejection. She could still punch a hole through his chest if she wanted to, he felt certain. He would need more levels to stand a chance in a fight.

  But it ate at him to keep lying to her.

  Mariella frowned at the curse, then smiled at the rest of what he said. “All right. If that’s true, then… I guess that’s really the main thing I needed to know. Maybe it wouldn’t have been that important even if you had been following a dream. But you know, I’m a proud woman myself. It wouldn’t sit right to think that we were just pieces playing out a destiny divined by some game player somewhere. Even if that person might be very loving.”

  Is that what Vidalia is? A loving game player? Sometimes I do wonder if I’m being manipulated when she’s talking to me. In dreams, it’s hard to be discerning. Maybe Mariella has the distance to see what I can’t. That’s not even mentioning the games the gods are playing…

  “I can’t wait until the two of you meet,” Tybalt said.

  Perhaps sooner than you expect, he thought, recalling what Vidalia had said in his dream.

  “If we’re both supposed to be…” Mariella trailed off. “Well, I look forward to our introduction.”

  Tybalt smiled.

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  “Is there anything you wanted to ask me?” Mariella asked.

  “There’s a lot more I want to know about your parents,” Tybalt said. But there was a note of hesitation in his voice. There was something else he thought he perhaps ought to ask about. Maybe it had something to do with why Mariella had pushed him away earlier. But there was no comfortable or pleasant way of broaching the subject. He’d rather remain silent. He already had one uncomfortable topic he was thinking of bringing up.

  “There’s something else on your mind,” she observed after a moment.

  He nodded but said nothing else.

  A look of realization dawned on her face.

  “Is it… that thing with Tarquin?”

  I guess we are going to talk about that. Never mind about me confessing tonight, then.

  He sighed. “Yeah. It’s not so much something I want to ask as something I’m wondering if I should ask about.”

  “You should ask about it if you want to know about it,” she said evenly, trying and failing to keep her face neutral.

  “If it’s still… affecting you, then I do.”

  “Yeah, I get it.” Her voice turned flat, all emotion draining out. “I’ll tell you about what happened.”

  He squeezed her hand and waited. He noticed her fingers didn’t respond, just lay there in his grip.

  “It was a couple of weeks after I joined the squad. The Commander had introduced me to everyone who didn’t already know me from our first mission together. After he left, the Sergeant took us around to the tavern, ordered the first round of drinks, and paid for them. I remember you left early that night.”

  “I don’t drink much,” Tybalt said quietly.

  She nodded. “Maybe that’s wise. As for me, I do. I like wine. Maybe a little too much. With my family, I’ve always been around it, and even though I never built up much of a tolerance, I always enjoyed having a few glasses with dinner.” She swallowed. “I never thought much of it before I joined the Army. In officer training, they strictly ration drink. I think I must have lost what little tolerance I had while I was there. So, on the night in question, I drank, and I overestimated what I could handle. But I retained the presence of mind to leave alone. I’d heard some horror stories from the few female officers I had met, and those resurfaced in my memory at the time. So I thanked everyone for the warm welcome, and I walked out. I was still walking straight enough, I think. I found my way to my tent and my bedroll, and I just went to sleep in my clothes. Figured I would wash in the morning. I had made it safely to bed. I thought everything was normal.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “This was the part you wanted to know about, though, right?” Mariella said, her voice slightly choked up. “What happened that night?”

  He could feel her wondering if he was trying to find out if she was tainted in some way. That was how most men would think about it.

  “No, I just wanted to know if it was still affecting you,” Tybalt said. He swallowed a lump in his throat and gently squeezed her hand again. “I was wondering if maybe the reason that you pushed me away earlier was some sort of lingering pain. If so, I can move much more slowly. I’m far more patient than I’ve demonstrated. I don’t have to be aggressive. I kind of felt like you wanted me to take the lead, and I was comfortable with that. But that’s all. I’m just trying to figure out where you are.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “The details of what happened are much less important to me. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I already discounted his version of the story before I ever got to know you, if you’re wondering. He’s a big liar. Everyone knows he’s a liar.”

  “The worst part is, I barely even remember that night,” she whispered, almost to herself. “Maybe he was telling the truth, and I did give him some signal that I was interested in him. I don’t—didn’t—think he was handsome, and I know it’s not like me to signal to a guy that I just met that I’m interested in a fling or something. I’m not exactly… experienced in that area. But maybe I just can’t handle drinking anymore.”

  “Don’t doubt yourself,” he replied quietly.

  I didn’t mean to do this… and considering that you remember me leaving early, I bet your recall of that night is better than you think. Other people told you that you were wrong, so you started to question your own memories.

  “Anyway, I woke up, and the tent flap was open. Tarquin was on top of me, pawing at my belt. Thankfully, my pants were still on. I was afraid, and I used my power. I burned him. That’s the full story. He got medical attention, so I imagine he’ll live a normal life.” She didn’t sound like she cared. Maybe she wished she had done some permanent damage. Tybalt could feel the ring of anger in her voice, still as raw as if it had been last week.

  “I’m sorry I asked,” he said awkwardly.

  Mariella took a couple of deep breaths and shook her head.

  “Don’t be. I actually feel a little better, telling it to someone who’s on my side. Someone… I can trust. Specialist Curtis, the medic, took one look at Tarquin’s burns and decided it was my fault. He told me that I needed to understand what the men go through, being in the field for months at a time without female company. He said I couldn’t drink with the men and expect their minds to remain pure. Told me not to complicate their lives by entering into relationships—even though I kept telling him I hadn’t done anything to start a ‘relationship’ with Tarquin. The Commander was a little more sympathetic. He told me this was what would come of fraternizing with the rank and file, but said Tarquin should have known better. I guess he told the rest of the squad off of sexually harassing me, because that gradually decreased afterward.”

  “Yeah, he said something like that,” Tybalt said flatly.

  Volusia had told the men generally not to talk to her and to treat her as if she was an important guest rather than a permanent squad member or a friend.

  Not surprising that he’d want to take credit for defending her, when really, he was protecting his own secrets.

  The real protection had been the way word inevitably spread about what had happened to Tarquin.

  His thighs down to his knees had been horrendously burnt, the leather of his pants baked into the meat of his legs. The injuries had still been covered in bandages at the time Tybalt heard the tale. That was enough to put any man off of harassing the Lieutenant in any way more substantial than casually sexual remarks.

  But what had left a bigger impression on Tybalt had been the fact that she had simultaneously defended herself vigorously and managed to leave her attacker’s root and berries intact. Both Specialist Curtis’s and Tarquin’s accounts of what had happened agreed on that point. At a moment when most people would have probably tried to kill their attacker, she had been careful enough to avoid doing the most permanent damage possible. A mutilation like that could only be fixed by an extremely high level healer or a prohibitively expensive elixir.

  It was possible that even Mariella didn’t realize how unnecessarily restrained and merciful she had been. Perhaps it had just been her instinct to use the minimum violence necessary to deter the threat.

  Even at the time, Tybalt had thought that level of precision skill did not truly belong in the Army. Not the Army as he had experienced it, anyway.

  Tarquin still did belong, though. He hadn’t been punished at all. Far from it. He had transferred to another squad, and word through the grapevine was that it was at least a step up from beastfolk slaughter duty. A sort of compensation for having suffered significant injury at the hands of another soldier while employed in the Royal Army.

  “You wanted to know if it’s still affecting me,” Mariella said slowly. “Well, I haven’t gotten drunk since. Not around the squad, not even by myself. Even though I always carry wine with me wherever I go. I guess that’s an effect.” She let out a quiet, bitter laugh and rubbed her temple. He felt her trembling underneath the painful laughter.

  Tybalt sat up, ignoring the ache in his chest, and he put his arms around her. There were no words he could think to say that would be of any comfort. Nothing that was better than holding her, anyway. Hopefully she would feel the intent.

  Mariella pulled away for a moment. Then she seemed to think better of it. She leaned back and relaxed into his embrace. A few seconds later, she wrapped her arms around him in turn, and he felt her hot tears on his skin. He gently kissed her cheek, then nuzzled her hair. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he stroked her hair softly, trying to soothe what he had drawn out of her. Saying nothing, they held each other for a long time in the darkness.

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