Tybalt and Mariella’s eyes met for a moment.

  Then they moved as one, both darting back toward the safety of the cliffside. In the open ground of the valley, that was the only chance of evading detection.

  She’s slowed down a bit with that arrow in her shoulder, Tybalt thought.

  The footsteps above drew closer until they were as near as the other beastfolk’s had been before that first group decided to climb down and search the valley from closer up.

  The voices of the new arrivals carried down to the two soldiers.

  “So, they killed three of us,” said the first to speak, a deep-voiced male.

  “They’re with Lord Mudo now,” said a second, another male with a calm, steady voice.

  Tybalt felt a bit of frustration boil up at the way they referenced the god he served. The recent slaughter felt even more pointless, hearing those words spoken out loud.

  I wish I could have used my status as Lord Mudo’s chosen necromancer with those guys… but then I would have had to announce it in front of Mariella.

  Revealing that Tybalt was effectively the high priest of an ‘evil’ god seemed likely to alienate anyone raised in the traditional religious beliefs of the Kingdom, including the noblewoman beside him. Openly revealing his connection to Vidalia had a similar problem. It could suggest that he had been betraying the squad for far longer than he actually had.

  And carefully winning Mariella over was objectively far more important than preserving the lives of the three beastfolk she and Tybalt had beaten.

  “I don’t need them with Lord Mudo,” replied the first speaker. “They had more work to do with us!”

  “Andric,” said the second speaker uncertainly.

  “Remember that we killed a dozen of theirs today,” said a third man whose speech sounded thin and reedy.

  “We care more about ours, Selvig,” Andric replied. “Remember that. To the Kingdom, these soldiers are throwaways. Dregs with no future. I’m beginning to think I was overconfident, coming out here with just a maiden’s prediction to guide us. And honestly, I don’t think she was even trying to help us…”

  His voice drifted off just as Tybalt’s heart was beginning to race.

  A maiden’s prediction? That has to mean Vidalia! Is she playing both sides? Well, she told me she warned her people that we were coming, but… is that all she told them?

  “Do you want to climb down there, Andric?” asked a fourth speaker, confident and energized. “See if we can trace their steps?”

  Tybalt could almost hear it as Andric probably shook his head with what Tybalt imagined was an expression of annoyance.

  “I just finished saying that we don’t want to put our people at risk, Mikkel,” he said. “There are just five of us here now. What are the odds we do better than the three down there who clearly died without killing a single enemy?”

  The others grew silent.

  “What next, then, fearless leader?” A female voice, high and sarcastic.

  “I think we should return to the rendezvous point,” Andric replied without a hint of annoyance. He was apparently used to this female’s sass. “Then we meet up with the rest of our people, and we go after the ones who killed our three in force. At least send ten of ours. The rest of us can track the remainder of their squad without engaging.”

  “Hmph, sounds like you don’t want to fight yourself,” the female observed.

  “As a leader, my presence is most useful wherever the bulk of our enemies are. If we can’t react quickly to new events with their main force, it endangers our civilian population.” His voice turned hard. “Remember, Tatiana, they’re my kin on this mountain. Not yours. Since they’re closest to the fighting, I have to keep looking out for them at all times.”

  “Mm hm,” Tatiana replied in a tone of skepticism.

  “Let’s move out,” Andric finished.

  There was the sound of the group of them walking away, and now Tybalt heard a noise he hadn’t picked out before, of a large pair of wings flapping.

  One of them was a harpy, he thought, swallowing. That could have gotten dangerous, if they’d decided to send that one down to scout. Fortunately, they assumed we moved on… I hope.

  Andric hadn’t seemed foolish. If anything, he came across as overly cautious, but given the actual threat that Tybalt and Mariella posed at full strength, that caution was more than warranted. And perhaps some part of what he’d said had been calculated in case he was overheard.

  In any case, I need to check my quest progress and see how how much of the squad is left.

  Almost half the squad is gone now. I never expected the beastfolk to be so effective… I wonder how much my undead contributed to that.

  Mariella suddenly stepped forward, away from the cliff, distancing herself as if the area around Tybalt was on fire. Or as if Tybalt had the plague.

  He noticed that she was giving him an ugly look—and were those tears in her eyes?

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  Right. The bone knife.

  “Mariella.” Tybalt moved closer to her, palm raised, trying to signal her to calm down.

  She shoved Tybalt in the chest with both hands. The push took the wind out of Tybalt, but it seemed to have a worse effect on Mariella. As he stumbled backward, he saw her wince. It seemed the pain from the arrow in her shoulder was much worse than she’d noticed before, and from what Tybalt saw, she didn’t seem to be able to lift her right arm properly anymore. She had still packed plenty of force into pushing him away, but it wasn’t nearly what he knew she was capable of.

  Is there a broken bone in there? Yeah, there has to be…

  It was hard to be certain how much weaker the arrow had left her. If she had actually meant to hurt him with that shove, rather than just being upset, she could undoubtedly have still broken a couple of his ribs.

  But that little wince signaled some degree of vulnerability that he could exploit. If he needed to fight her, maybe now was the time.

  I’d rather just talk to you, though…

  “You’re really just—just as bad as all the others,” Mariella hissed, keeping her voice low despite her anger. “What, are you taking trophies to remember your kills by?” She threw the fingerbone knife that she had confronted Tybalt with at his feet. “What else have you lied to me about? Did you—did you assault the women too?” Her voice broke, and her face contorted as she accused him of the worst crime she could conceive of.

  “I told you I could explain the bone knife,” Tybalt whispered furiously. “And I don’t know how you could accuse me of that! I’m the one who told you about all this. They kicked my ass over it, remember? Why would I go through that if I was just one of the guys, having fun killing beastfolk and…?” He didn’t finish the sentence. “I hated every minute of it! That’s not a trophy!”

  “Why would you do it?” she repeated. “I… I don’t know.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, I have one idea.” She tried to cross her arms in front of her chest, but the right arm still refused to fully cooperate, so she ended up doing it one-handed. The body language still conveyed the intended message: she looked as if she was trying to distance her body from Tybalt by any means necessary. “You thought that you could make me trust you. You wanted to win me over.” She looked distraught.

  Tybalt could practically hear her thinking, You almost succeeded.

  “You must think I’m the worst scum that ever walked Abadd,” he said, allowing his own bitter feelings to come through in his tone.

  “Tell me I’m crazy,” Mariella said in a half-hopeful, half-skeptical tone. “Which part did I get wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” Tybalt said, his mouth moving slightly faster than his brain. “But you have to swear never to tell any living soul.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “The first thing you have to know is that I’m not actually classless.” He bent down and took a precious few seconds to pick up the bone she had thrown at his feet. He deliberately took slightly longer than he needed to, just to have an extra moment to think. She stayed silent, listening.

  He held up the fingerbone blade in front of her.

  “Watch closely,” he said.

  Scrimshaw.

  He channeled mana through his arms and into his fingertips, applied his power to the bone, and pressed softly with his fingertips like he was thinning out clay. Then he brought it close to her face, his hands only inches away, so that she could see it more clearly. The bone was as thinned out as a piece of paper.

  “Magic,” she said. “That’s right. I could see you were doing something with mana at the beginning of the fight. What—what is that…?”

  “My class is called Bonesaw,” Tybalt lied. “I can manipulate bone with just a bit of mana and pressure. I think I’m supposed to get more complex skills later on, but I don’t know much about having a class. Just the stuff everyone knows.”

  “How…? Why…?” She took a moment to gather her thoughts, and Tybalt stayed silent and let her. If his fake story was going to break down under questioning, it wasn’t going to be because he rushed into the conversation. His mind raced, inventing answers to hypothetical lines of interrogation.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you,” she said after a moment.

  What? She trusts me that easily now?

  “If your ability really is to manipulate bone, then carrying around bits of human remains is just a natural means of self-defense for you,” she continued slowly. “That’s different enough from taking trophies.”

  “Mariella.” Tybalt allowed all his relief to come through in his voice. She looked at him with her red, slightly teary eyes, and he couldn’t help himself. He dropped the fingerbone and gently touched her cheek with the hand he’d been using to hold it. She looked conflicted at his hand on her, but she didn’t move away.

  “Tybalt, I—”

  He closed the distance and kissed her firmly on the mouth.

  The world seemed to still for a few seconds.

  He saw and felt each bit of Mariella’s reaction. How she closed her eyes instinctively. The way she leaned slightly forward, into him. He smelled the fresh, clean scent of her, like rosemary. And he felt her full lips caress his for a long moment.

  Then she pulled away. Tybalt didn’t try to move in closer again. She was visibly flustered, and he didn’t want to force her to accept or reject him on impulse. For a moment, he just observed her reaction.

  “I told you not to think of me that way,” Mariella said quickly, breathing heavily. “We can’t—”

  “No, I think you told me not to look at you that way, Lieutenant,” Tybalt replied with a smirk. “I’m not sure any officer has ever ordered me to change the way I think before.”

  “Be that as it may, Specialist,” she said, cheeks reddening. “I’m telling you now.”

  “Mariella, we could have died three times over in the last half hour,” Tybalt said quickly. “But we survived, by quick thinking and luck. Luck that I pushed you out from under the rock slide. Luck that the arrow you saved me from didn’t kill you. Luck that the other beastfolk didn’t try to come down and finish us off while you were injured and I was unarmed. After all of that and the last two and a half years with this damn squad, I’m done being ashamed of who I am or how I feel. Just because you’re a noble, and I’m a bastard, or I’m enlisted and you’re an officer, that’s no reason for me to pretend that I’m thinking something different from what I am. Under all that societal crap, I’m a man, and you’re a beautiful woman. And the last few days that we’ve been talking woke something up in me. Something I thought might have died over the last two and a half years I’ve been serving.”

  He swallowed. He felt more nervous than he’d expected. There was more of himself in his words than he’d intended. It was supposed to be bullshit, but was it? “I admit I don’t know everything about you yet, but… I like you. Those feelings might be inappropriate to my station, but they’re mine. I understand if you don’t feel the same way. I think there’s something between us, but I’m not going to try to force you into anything, no matter what you may think of me. But if I die today, it won’t be with these words unspoken.” The ending was corny, he felt, but judging from the Lieutenant’s face, it wasn’t ineffective.

  “I’m sorry again for what I said before,” Mariella said. “I was upset. I certainly shouldn’t have accused you…” She couldn’t seem to find the words she wanted, and for a long moment, they stood in shared silence, just looking into each other’s eyes.

  Then Mariella took two steps closer to Tybalt, stood up slightly on her tiptoes, put her functional hand on his chest, and slowly, hesitantly, returned his kiss.

  They shared a short, sweet embrace. Tybalt closed his eyes and just let himself enjoy it without thinking for a few seconds. Gently biting and sucking on her lower lip. The feel of his hand on her waist. The weight of her pressing slightly against him. Everything felt right.

  As their lips separated, he smiled genuinely.

  “So, you do feel the same way,” he said, face hot.

  I didn’t think I would feel so intensely about this. She is gorgeous, but this was supposed to just be a strategy to keep her from becoming an enemy. To win her over to my side. His chest was pounding as he looked down into her deep brown eyes. My heart doesn’t seem to have gotten the message.

  She lowered her eyes and bit her lower lip.

  “Regardless of how I may feel,” Mariella said slowly, “I can’t be what I think you want me to be. Not right now, at least. I’m sorry.”

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