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Now five of them crowded around her, with several more lined up to take the spots they vacated.

Javi and Emory stood to the side, their bowls cooling in their hands as they waited for their usual seats to clear up.

Carrick and Sawyer had given up entirely and wedged themselves in with the second decade at the next table over to watch the show unfold.

“Look,” Kat tried to say firmly to her latest adversary, but the word had lost its luster after a couple hundred repetitions.

None of them were looking. They weren’t even trying to look.

“I don’t want you to miss your daughter’s birthday either.

But let me just put it out there that your contract seems to have a full three years left on it, which means that the prince’s offer is incredibly generous.

Think of all the birthdays that—okay, yeah, I get that ten is a big one.

Ten’s pretty important. Double digits is huge, I’m not going to dispute that.

What’s her name? Ayla. Lovely. I’m going to mention that to leadership.

I think it’s important that they hear this. But I’m also not making any promises.”

It had been a full hour of this. Her meal—her above average meal —sat cold in front of her.

Under other circumstances, she’d consider it an unforgivable sin.

She’d challenge these soldiers to a duel on the training field.

Some of them had legitimate concerns that tugged at her heartstrings.

A tenth birthday wasn’t something you could do over a few months later.

Others were…less sympathetic. One man considered himself the height of martial prowess after a full six months with the century and thought his talents would be wasted, absolutely wasted on road construction and guard duty.

Some inquired about transfers to other divisions of the forces that wouldn’t be working on the road—there were garrisons scattered throughout the land, after all, and wouldn’t they be light on soldiers after nearly every trained legionnaire had been summoned to the front for the march on the Mouth?

You’re not special, she wanted to shout.

None of us are special. But she’d been made special, elevated by the prince’s attention and her centurion’s punishment and the token hanging around her neck that made her inherently valuable.

Her job was to make everyone else feel special, even if they didn’t have tokens or attention or a punishment.

“My turn,” Emory announced suddenly, plunging into the gap left by one soldier with all the skill of a shieldbearer locking into the fore before another man could squeeze in ahead of him. “I have a complaint.”

“Do you, now?” Kat asked, suppressing a smirk.

“I have a whole litany, actually. And you’re going to hear all of them,” he declared, loudly and obviously. “My first complaint is that you’ve barely touched your dinner, so tuck in—I won’t mind if you chew while I talk.”

Kat didn’t need to be told twice. She nearly choked on her first spoonful, her throat raw from speaking about six times as much as she generally did in any given day.

“My second complaint is that there are an awful lot of people on the first decade’s benches who aren’t in the first decade themselves.” He shot glares up and down the knot of gathered soldiers.

“Centurion said—” the self-professed great warrior tried.

“Don’t give a fuck. You’ve been on the campaign for less than a year, yeah? Dinnertime is sacred.”

“The war iso—”

“The war may be over, but the mess tent still runs on a schedule. Javi?”

Kat startled as Javi dove into the gap between her and the soldier seated on her left, squaring himself to force room.

He plunked his bowl down on the table, drew his book out from where he’d tucked it in the neck of his tunic, and held it up, blocking the rest of the petitioners on the bench from Kat’s view.

The soldier next to him snatched for it, but Javi only flipped it closed, rapped them across the knuckles, and went right back to reading.

Sensing an opportunity, the soldier on her right said, “I have a religious objection to—”

She got no further before an arm looped around her waist and hauled her bodily up off the bench.

Carrick, it seemed, had forgone his shieldbearer training and leaped straight to wrestling, and as he hauled the kicking, protesting soldier clear, it was Sawyer who dove into the new gap with the precision of a spear.

“Hey,” he said, turning toward Kat so that his broad shoulders formed yet another barrier between her and the persistent masses.

“So I’ve heard you’re taking feedback? Personally, I think you should show Emory a thing or two again.

The man seems to think he can just butt into your important personal conversations. ”

Kat snorted around a half-chewed mouthful.

“I think you should start biting people,” Ziva offered from the far end of the table, where she, too, had snuckin.

Emory tugged his collar noticeably.

“You guys couldn’t have done this sooner?” Kat whined, but she couldn’t keep her smile down. Her decade. The people who’d carried her through battle after battle, who’d survived until the end and still fought for her—and none more so than Emory, who had marshaled them all to come to her aid.

It was going to hurt like hell to leave them behind, and in that moment Kat wondered—not for the first time, but with a level of seriousness that startled her—whether she might choose notto.

Whether this was where she belonged after all.

They snuck her out through the cookfires, dodging shouts and complaints from the kitchen staff cleaning up after a ravenous legion, which were softened marginally by the teetering stack of collected bowls and cutlery Emory deposited directly into the washbins.

Kat tried to thank them all for their delicious meal even as she was shunted past the cleaning rags they snapped at her and out into the chill of the night air.

“Not sure that was necessary,” she said, glancing around at her compatriots. Most of the century had lost interest once the first decade had begun to wall them off from her, and even the persistent ones had run out of things to say eventually.

“Nonsense,” Sawyer said, slinging a friendly arm around her shoulder. “Our new century representative needs strict security. It’s nothing but back exits from here on out.”

Carrick snickered, and Ziva swatted him before glancing forlornly back at the tent. “I should probably apologize to my kitchen girl.”

“And we heard a rumor there’s a man in the camp trail running the best dice game we’ve seen in ages,” Carrick added, tugging on his battle partner’s hem.

Javi wordlessly held up his book.

And then the rest of the decade scattered, leaving nothing but her, Emory, and the stars above.

“Your guard might be a little light, my liege, but I promise I’ll give it my all,” he said, knocking his shoulder into hers. “Where to?”

“Well,” Kat hedged, teetering on the edge of a dangerous suggestion, “Mira’s instructions were to report any grievances I heard to one of the camp scribes as soon as possible.

So I should probably do that, before I forget that Ayla’s tenth birthday is coming up and it’s going to be an absolute shame her father’s missing it. ”

“To the scribes’ tent, then.”

“Could be a bit of a walk,” Kat said. “They’ve set it up on the far end of the encampment. And it’s probably better to walk the outskirts—maybe take the route by the edge of the forest?”

“To keep the rest of the century from spotting you, of course?”

“Of course,” Kat replied, matching his knowing smirk.

Their previous misadventure in Mira’s tent was a testament to the lack of privacy in the war camp, but for those who were less discerning—or those who only needed minutes, not hours—the fringes were the next best thing.

The legions had dug in to what had once been their marching camp, not anticipating a long stay.

This had been an all-or-nothing push, and their fortifications amounted to a trench around the camp’s perimeter and a clear-cut of the forest edge limning them to put some open ground between cover and the guard posts.

Outside of the camp proper, the Silk Row had set up their tents, along with the host of traveling merchants who trailed the army’s movements.

Most of their escort had fallen off toward the end of the campaign, not willing to risk their lives for their livelihoods in such close proximity to the Mouth of Hell, but a few hangers-on gave any common soldier grounds to leave the camp’s boundaries without questioning.

Which wasn’t to say that Kat didn’t have her guard up.

Carrick and Sawyer had mentioned they were headed out here for that dice game, and she wasn’t sure how much Emory had told them.

If they found out about their little indiscretion, the consequences might be dire—and if they caught them out on their way to another, there’d be no hearing the end ofit.

And that’s what this was, wasn’t it? As they broke from the main path and onto a little foot trail that cut into the edge of the woods, Kat’s stomach swooped uncertainly.

Making a pact to check off food on the list they’d built was one thing.

This was a deliberate attempt at privacy—the first true chance they’d had since the night before the battle.

Emory seemed like he’d caught her implication, but she could never be too sure with him.

“So,” she started, her voice strained a shade higher than usual. “Nice night.”

“Mm,” he replied, and she resisted the urge to pinch him. They’d been in this together too long for him to be so opaque, but with the forest canopy blocking out the stars and the moonlight, she had little else to goon.

“Mira said the same thing you did.”

That put a stutter in his stride.

“She thinks I have potential. This aide role is a punishment, but it’s also an opportunity. A chance to get a feel for leadership.”