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“Maybe you should break the rules in more interesting ways,” Emory replied, leaning against the equipment rack as his attention slipped to Ziva, Elise, and Giselle’s dust-up.

With Giselle in the fray, it had turned to a kicking game, each of them trying to get distance and run with the ball long enough to scoop it up.

None of them could manage it without getting cornered by the other two, and all three of them were so focused on the intricate dance of it that they failed to notice the new threat lurking on the sidelines.

“Heads up!” Kat shouted, and all three of them turned toward her.

Carrick and Sawyer saw their cue.

Carrick went for the ball and Sawyer went for Giselle, who had just broken away with it.

Giselle shrieked as her fellow spearbearer scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, and she shrieked louder when Carrick snatched up the ball and broke into a sprint.

“Where’s the goal?” he wheezed as he tore past Kat and Emory with Ziva and Elise in hot pursuit.

“Don’t tell him!” Ziva wailed.

“No team-ups!” Elise shouted.

“Your battle partner’s right there,” Sawyer observed.

Giselle kicked her feet limply, floundering without a hope of escaping Sawyer’s grip. “C’mon, you guys. Gage always talks about this game—I thought I was finally going to get a chance to play.”

“If you really want to play Goal, play dirty,” Emory said.

“Noted,” Giselle chirped, flashing her mentor a grin. Sawyer’s smile dropped, and he let out a shout of dismay as her elbow went for the kill.

“You’re a terrible referee,” Kat said, pointing at the gap between the supply wagon’s wheels.

“But a great player,” Emory replied and lunged just as Carrick cocked his arm back and loosed.

Kat, unable to participate on this point, could only stand back and watch, beaming despite herself, as Emory snagged the ball out of the air, spun with its momentum, and pitched it through the wagon wheels.

“You weren’t playing!” Carrick protested.

“You think I’m going to let you two knuckleheads terrorize the rest of the decade?” Emory shot back, then pointed to one of the crates that had been left out after the tents were set up, now empty of the stakes it had carried. “Goal.”

The six of them were off like a pack of hunting hounds—Sawyer still trying to dislodge Giselle, who’d turned herself into dead weight in an effort to stall him, Carrick abandoning his battle partner to scrap with Elise and Ziva, and Kat fast on their heels, fresh after sitting out the previous round.

It had taken her the whole of her time on the front lines and then some to arrive at this moment where she finally understood this game—both why it was so fun for all of them and why Mira had put so much energy into keeping them from playing it.

Every element of the Telrusian army, from the legion down to the battle partner pairings that made up each decade, was optimized for cohesion.

It was only natural to prioritize unity and order when squaring against wave after wave of thralls and all the chaos that entailed.

Day in and day out, they were commanded to work in perfect harmony, and any threat to that harmony that didn’t impart a lesson, like Mira’s exhibition match, was a threat to the legions themselves—whether it be fighting, fucking, or stupid ball games that turned them against one another.

As a soldier, Kat understood that sometimes command was wrong.

They couldn’t be in synchronicity all the time.

The infantry needed to get rowdy on occasion, to bounce off each other a bit, if only to prevent the pressure on their shoulders from breaking them when it mattered most. But now she’d seen the other side—seen what happened when cohesion fell apart under her command as they’d squared off against the first Lesser Lord.

Even as she wrestled back Elise’s attempt to keep her from prying the ball out of Ziva’s grasp, she could feel a part of herself, in her own words, being the hinge spear.

There may not have been any more thralls to fight, but there were still two Lesser Lords out there.

She and Emory threw themselves into the fray anyway.

In some ways, it was the role of the hinge made manifest, to regulate the decade from the middle of its ranks.

In this case, it meant wedging themselves between Elise and Ziva anytime it looked like they were close to tearing each other’s hair out and between Carrick and Sawyer anytime it looked like they were close to teaming up unfairly against the rest of them.

And if they stole a little fun for themselves in the midst of their duties, where was the harm?

The harm, Kat reminded herself as she stiff-armed Giselle, is when Mira gets wind we’ve gotten the ball back.

She was ready to bear the consequences if necessary.

She suspected Emory would be ready as well.

The hinge’s job was also to keep the line together, whether it was against demon troopers or their own centurion.

It was something she’d been doing far too little of recently, with so much of her time and energy consumed by Aurean training, something that was at the front of her mind as the game picked up pace.

Carrick scored, then Sawyer. The moment the ball flew through the target his shieldbearer had declared, Kat caught Emory’s eye. Guard Carrick, she willed him to understand. Don’t let the two of them walk away with this.

But instead, Emory raced after the ball, neck and neck with Ziva, leaving Carrick to hang back near the open flap of the decade tent, which Sawyer had just declared as the next goal.

Kat frowned. Maybe Emory was getting swept up in the game, but usually he understood her better than that—usually he was the one thinking in troop movements while Kat thought in single targets.

She pushed in close to Carrick, jostling him with her shoulder as they both waited for the scramble to resolve itself. “Swear on the Seal, if this game just becomes you and Sawyer trading points…” she warned.

Carrick smirked, shoving right back. “Sounds like someone’s mad her battle partner didn’t give her an easy opening.”

Down the row, Emory broke away with the ball, staggering into a sprint as Elise, Giselle, and Ziva rounded on his heels.

“Speaking of easy openings,” Kat replied and shouldered hard into Carrick’s flank.

He pushed back, rooting with all the unerring skill of a shieldbearer.

It would take more than her bulk to ram him clear of the goal.

Later, Kat would wonder what possessed her to do it.

It was less a lapse in judgment, more rote muscle memory after a week under Mira’s unrelenting tutelage.

In the moment, the only thing she clearly registered was a bone-deep certainty that if she grabbed her token and sought alignment, she would findit.

She sidestepped Carrick’s next shove, grasped her gold, and called.

Light blazed from between her fingers, sending Carrick reeling back as he threw an arm up over his eyes. Kat dropped to one knee, leaving Emory with an unmissable shot.

Only, he didn’t take it. In the corner of her vision, she caught his boots skidding into a stop. Kat snapped her head up to find every member of her decade frozen in place, staring at her with expressions that ranged from incredulity to wary suspicion.

She pushed back to her feet, then reached out to Carrick, who was still blinking and scrubbing at his eyes. “Sorry,” she said through a grimace.

“I’m okay,” he reassured her, patting the hand she anchored on his shoulder. “Just looked into the sun for a moment—it’ll wash out. Wish Brandt had been here to see that. No way he’d say you don’t count as an Aurean after that display.”

Kat caught Emory’s wide-eyed stare and felt a part of herself crumble. “Too dirty, huh?”

He shrugged helplessly, still clutching the ball to his side.

The thing was, she hadn’t put him in an impossible position.

There was one correct call here, and no one would fault him for being the hinge shield about it.

The only thing staying his hand—obviously, in front of half the decade—was the fact that it was her.

“So the training’s working out,” he offered.

“You don’t have to—” she started, but faltered. “Look,” she tried again. “New rule. No Aurean magic allowed. I can take my token off, if it helps.”

But she knew it wouldn’t. The damage was done, and it had only taken a week to get here.

She’d set herself apart from the rest of the infantry by choosing to accept Mira’s offer, sided with the centurion instead of her own ranks, and this was the natural consequence.

Every bit of distance she felt from them now, she deserved.

And tomorrow morning, bright and early, she’d roll out of her bedroll ahead of the dawn horns and trudge to the training field to make it worse.