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“Then you’re doing a great job. You’re doing exactly the job I need you to be doing.”

“But I’m not going to be able to do the job you need me to do when the next Lesser Lord strikes,” Kat blurted.

“And why’s that?”

“This role has thrown a wall between me and the rest of the infantry. When I was fulfilling my role as the hinge spear of my decade, I knew they’d follow me because I was right there alongside them day in and day out.

They could trust me to know what was best for them—to do what was best for them.

But when I’m working on the administrative side all day long, I lose that trust. And if the first Lesser Lord made anything clear, it’s that I need that trust to lead all the decades when the time comes. ”

Adrien stared down at the map, looking worrisomely contemplative. “So your proposal…”

“I need to be out there with them, working side by side, whether it’s on a guard rotation or in the trenches digging the road. Not buried in admin, and definitely not waiting up every night for you to finish your work.”

The prince chewed it over for a long moment. “You can just say you don’t like hanging out with me,” he groused at last.

“I don’t like hanging out with you,” Kat huffed. “Just because you hate your friends doesn’t mean I don’t miss mine.”

“There it is,” Adrien said with an outright smarmy grin.

“Doesn’t mean what I said before isn’t true.

” Kat was tired—not just of keeping up with the prince’s deranged schedule, but of collapsing on her bedroll each night in the midst of her passed-out comrades.

She had no idea how Ziva’s flirtation with the kitchen girl was going, what book Javi was reading, and she hadn’t had a proper conversation—nor the improper one she was hankering for—with Emory since the road campaign got under way.

“I don’t hate my friends, though,” Adrien blurted. “I just wish they could be my friends with no strings attached, like you.”

Kat sputtered. “Like me ?”

He showed no signs of not being serious about what he’d just said. “You don’t have all this baggage I have to deal with. You’re always there for me—”

“—because you’ve demanded it, and I can’t say no—”

“—whereas they’re only following me around because they all want to marry me, even though I gave them jobs. ”

“Jobs, the horror,” Kat replied flatly. “Look, Your Highness, it’s not just about missing them. It’s about being able to work with them when the time comes. Because when it was me and the seventh and eighth against that Lesser Lord, I wasn’t prepared, and I don’t want to let that happen again.”

Adrien looked pensive. She didn’t like it. “You really felt that you were out of your depth?” he asked.

Kat nodded. “Surely you understand what that’s like?”

For a moment, she thought she’d cracked him. That there was a kernel of self-awareness underneath all those tokens. But the pause broke only with Adrien shaking his head. “Nope. Can’t relate. Clearly we need to figure out how to remedy this, but for the time being, I’ll allow it.”

She should have felt nothing but raw relief, but Kat didn’t like that the prince still looked like he was thinking. Thinking was never a good thing with Adrien. “You’ll allow…” she hazarded, scarcely daring to believe she’d gotten through to him.

“You can return to your decade’s rotation—after today, of course. There’s no point in sending you back when they’ve already gotten started for the day.”

Kat could have argued that there was, but she wasn’t about to risk how far she’d come already. “Very wise of you, Your Highness,” she said instead. Another thing she’d learned about Adrien over the past weeks was just how susceptible he was to positive reinforcement.

“It is, isn’t it?” the prince said, beaming.

Sometimes she worried profoundly about the future of Telrus and the inescapable fact that it rested in this hapless young man’s hands.

When she finally got the nod from Adrien, it took everything in her not to run.

She burst through the flaps of the decade tent, nearly toppling over the structure in the process and cueing a chorus of shouts from her comrades that fell away just as quickly when they saw how brightly she was beaming.

“Did the prince trip on his own tails?” Carrick asked, and Sawyer kicked him from the adjacent bedroll.

“He’s letting me come back,” Kat announced.

It was their turn to nearly take down the tent as Ziva pounced, Javi whooped, Brandt yelled in outrage as he was trampled by Gage’s scramble to get in on the action, and the whole decade fell into a chaotic rumple.

It terrified Kat a little, how much everything she’d been through felt worth it under the sudden crushing force of her comrades’ affection.

It scared her worse that she could be tangled up in them and know for certain whose hand was at her back, firm against her spine, steady, supportive, and never demanding more.

She caught Emory’s eye, snorting at the smile he was trying to hold back.

“What is it?” she needled, reaching through the scrum to jab him in the ribs with two fingertips.

“You’re just in time. We start a digging rotation tomorrow.”

Kat bided her time. She fought her exhaustion, waiting until the rhythms of her decade’s breathing had dropped to the steady marches she knew so well.

When she was certain all of them were asleep, she wriggled her hand into the pocket of her discarded pants, drew out her treasure, and nudged Emory awake.

“You shouldn’t have,” he whispered as he accepted the irrevocably squished strawberry-stuffed pastry she’d smuggled away from the highborns’ breakfast table.

The smile she could hear in his voice told her otherwise.