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Massi rolled her eyes. “Fine. But don't engage. We've got enough on our plate without you beating up the troops.”

“I won't beat anyone up.” But he did want to find out who was telling that particular story. Because it was unsettlingly close to the truth.

Chapter 3

They had made it off the steppes and onto the flat plains that formed the far north of Kassia three days ago.

No army had stopped them.

Ava heard there were a few scouts who rode away as soon as they saw the column, so someone would know they had crossed into enemy territory.

But it would be days at least before the news reached Fernwell.

Herron's war on the border of Jatan, to the west, had diverted all of Kassia's resources away from the far north border with Grimwalt and Venyatu.

That's what she'd heard before she left Grimwalt, anyway.

It looked to be true.

Ava kept to the front of the column and looked out over the sweeping grasslands. They were golden, the grasses dry after the long summer.

This was Cervantes.

Kassia had ambushed the people who lived here, decimated them, and rounded their children up into camps and called them the Chosen.

This was Luc's former homeland she was traveling through.

He had the light eyes and dark hair of his people, the broad shoulders and the height.

She lifted a hand from the reins and hugged herself as she thought of how he looked, staring daggers at her as he crouched, naked, in the river, and demanded she tell him what she had done to him.

She had not answered. And she had gone on to do even more.

Had that been wrong?

She had so little guidance in this but her own conscience, and it had felt right. Felt good to lay a working of health, speed and accuracy over him.

To give him something that would protect him.

She couldn't regret it, but he may well feel differently.

And soon she would be able to find out for herself.

Was that why she was suddenly nervous as they approached the Rising Wave?

Right now, she could imagine him as he had been at their final farewell, pulling her close for a desperate kiss.

What if she arrived and he had another woman? Had given up waiting for her?

Or perhaps worse, was angry at the workings she had woven into his very skin.

And then, of course, there was the matter of her lies to Deni and the other Venyatux she had befriended since she'd joined the column.

She did not want to hurt them, or lose their friendship, but she knew when the truth came out, she would.

“Avasu!” Deni's shout came from her right, and she turned in her saddle to look. She was using the name Carila had given her, and it made her think of him every time someone in the Venyatux column called her.

She missed the old man, and his raucous laugh.