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He hadn’t found the Kassian forces to be that impressive as a whole.

When they had first taken the older Chosen from the camps and tried to integrate them into the main Kassian military, it had been a disaster.

Luc had seen to that.

He smiled to himself at the memory.

The low-level insults he’d had his fellow Chosen murmur to the Kassian while they trained, needling them until they snapped, working out what made them furious the fastest.

There were fights every couple of hours, bad blood on both sides, until things got so bad it was decided the Chosen would form their own units. Be separate from the main Kassian army.

Luc had had a hard time pretending to be angry when he’d been told by the major in charge of his division that they realized the Chosen weren’t civilized enough to work with the normal Kassian forces.

He’d lived under the eye of a rotating list of generals watching him as he was given the job of training his own people, and he’d had to be harsh to some of the younger ones who’d gotten a little too cocky and obvious about how happy they were to be back together.

He’d had his fellow Chosen all pretend to be a little less than they were. Not so much as to make the Kassian suspicious, but enough to look only slightly more impressive than the regular Kassian soldiers. Enough to make some of them wonder why the Cervantes children had been considered such a military prize in the first place.

He hoped that impression was still in the minds of the generals even after the Chosen had turned on them on the battlefield and wiped out the army the Queen’s Herald had sent to crush the Venyatu.

Better to be underestimated.

And in the end, he’d done what he’d set out to do.

Made the Kassian rue the day they’d invaded Cervantes and stolen away their children.

He would make the queen herself regret it, personally, when they reached Fernwell.

But however ordinary the soldiers he’d originally trained with after the camps had been, these scouts were hardened. Professional.

He and Ava had found a tree to mark where they’d meet back up, and then they had drifted apart. Ava to search the saddle bags on the horses, him to walk through the camp and find out how many there were, and what they had to say.

There were five horses tied to a tree, and Luc counted three scouts sleeping, one sitting watch.

The scout on guard shifted uneasily as Luc walked past him, looking over his shoulder and then shaking his head before turning back to watch the trees in front of him.

The horses nickered and the guard stood up and walked over, more alert than he had been.

Luc started moving toward the horses as well, hand up on the hilt of his sword, but the guard walked around the horses, patted one, and then went back to sit down.

“What’s wrong?” One of the men sleeping by the fire sat up.

“Nothing.” The guard rubbed at his eyes.

“Boris back yet?”

Luc went still, and then saw a shadow separate itself from the darkness and move toward the low fire.

“I thought we weren’t doing a fire?”

“They’re on the other side of the hill, B. Fuck’s sake. It’s freezing.” The man who had woken flopped back down. “Were you able to get close enough to hear them?”

“No.” Boris went down on his haunches by the fire and rubbed his hands over the flames. “They picked a good spot. I could see their silhouettes around the fire, but I wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying. They’re obviously on their way somewhere. One of their horses caught a stone or something and they stopped early, that’s all.”

“We’re just lucky they didn’t see us.” The guard turned to join in the conversation.

“Can you imagine?” The man lying by the fire spoke quietly, and for a moment, absolute silence descended.

Luc knew all too well what their punishment would have been if they had let themselves be seen by the Rising Wave and ruined the ambush plans. He’d been in the Kassian military long enough. And in the Chosen camps before that. The Kassian didn’t have any mercy to spare. Even for their own.