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In the end, there was only so much they could do to make themselves decent—which wasn’t to say they didn’t give it their best shot.

Dirt was hastily beaten out of clothing, sticks and leaves were plucked from hair, but all the desperate finger-combing in the world couldn’t hide what was, at least to the two of them, flagrantly obvious.

“We’ll stagger it,” Emory said as Kat roved a light over his skin, rubbing despondently at what was either a persistent patch of dirt or a developing bruise she could do nothing about. “You go first. I’ll take a beat, then follow. Night air will do me some good anyway.”

“And when the decade asks what wild beast you got in a fight with?”

“I’ll tell them we took care of one of the Lesser Lords on the way back as a favor. They’ll be singing our praises.”

Kat snorted, knocking her shoulder into his. The giddy fizz in her bloodstream had her half convinced she could take out a demon general single-handedly, powered by nothing but raw joy and several good orgasms.

That fizz had sputtered out entirely by the time she’d reached the Third Century’s encampment.

At this hour of the night, there should have been more than enough rowdy noise to cover her return, with soldiers chatting around the fires and Adrien’s administration bustling at its usual clip.

The fires still burned, but the noise that skirted them was nervous and muted, and Kat found herself stepping soft to matchit.

So when someone shouted “KAT!” she nearly jumped out of her skin. Ziva was on her in an instant, grabbing her by the elbow and dragging her down the rows of tents. “We’ve been looking everywhere—where the fuck were you?”

“What’s going on?” Kat warbled, still at the mercy of a heartbeat that had been spurred into a breakneck gallop.

“What do you mean, what’s going on? We were attacked.”

“ Attacked? ” Kat yelped.

Ziva shushed her. “Mira’s told us to keep things orderly in case we get any unexpected arrivals. This time it’s going to be harder to cover up.”

What, exactly, they were meant to be covering up became apparent as they approached the far end of the officer tents, where Adrien’s ridiculous circus contraption of a living space had been setup.

The key word being had. The whole confection was ripped clean in half, leaving a raw, gaping wound flanked by fluttering, singed silken edges.

Great ruts had been torn in the ground surrounding it, the scars of a battle Kat could scarcely imagine.

The first Lesser Lord’s attack was a stealthy, precise strike—one that only required the cooperative silence of the scribes who’d witnessed it and the healers who’d dealt with the aftermath.

This was a detonation.

“Did…Is everyone…” Kat faltered.

Ziva gave her a grim look. “This way,” she said and pulled on Kat’s elbow.

Kat had never felt more relieved in her life to see a demon corpse.

It was unquestionably one of the Lesser Lords—no other spawn of hell could grow to such a size.

The body was riddled with spears, the ground beneath it muddy with black blood, as if the fiend had been stuck over and over again until finally it had been drained.

Next to it, Adrien looked impossibly tiny.

He lay on his back in the dirt, his hands folded over his chest, and for an awful moment, Kat thought he was dead.

Then she realized how utterly nonsensical it would be for anyone to leave the prince’s body laid out on the ground.

The soldiers of the Third Century who’d gathered to form a perimeter kept glancing back over their shoulders at the young man like he was a bit of roadkill they were trying not to think about.

“Is he…” Kat began.

“Being dramatic,” Ziva confirmed.

“Kat, is that you?” Adrien called.

She had the sneaking suspicion he was fully capable of raising his head and looking himself, but it seemed like the kind of moment in which he needed humoring. “It’s me, Your Highness,” she said. “I see you’ve had a bit of a night.”

“Oh, it’s been lovely. Got the coffee on, got dragged into a drawn-out tiff with a local stonemason, was just getting ready to tuck into the latest reports from the capital, and then wouldn’t you know it? The strangest thing happened.”

“Did it now?” Kat asked, staring unblinkingly at the body of the demon general. It looked molten in places. It was still steaming.

“This… piece of shit, ” Adrien spat, flopping an arm at the corpse, “came plowing through my tent. Already had a few spears in it by that point, so I think it just had a heading and ran. Wasn’t particularly smart of it, but I don’t think this one was the brightest of the bunch.

Luckily— hah —I keep my Luck of Angels attuned out of habit, and so its aim was just off enough.

Thank the hosts we didn’t end up needing you. Where were you, by the way?”

“Out,” Kat croaked. “Sorry, did you say it came through the camp?”

Adrien lifted an arm and pointed. Kat followed the line his finger drew and saw that the damage to Adrien’s tent was only the tip of the spear. The prince hadn’t been exaggerating when he said the Lesser Lord had a heading. The trail of destruction left in its wake was nothing if not linear.

That was troublesome. It was one thing for the generals to target Adrien, another thing entirely for them to target him precisely.

“My token kept me slippery enough that it couldn’t get a blow on me,” Adrien snuffled, as if that was even in question. “The Third closed in right after. They did… okay, all things considered.”

“What’s okay mean?” Kat asked under her breath, glancing sidelong at Ziva.

“Three,” she replied just as quietly. “All from the ninth decade, all in one bad hit, all at once. Beyond that, a few broken bones, some bruising and scraping. And I think Brandt’s concussed again.”

Kat’s stomach turned. She’d gotten used to peacetime.

To swimming in rivers and playing stupid ball games and hunting food carts through cities.

To the biggest source of stress and doubt in her life being the token hung around her neck.

The Lesser Lords were in the back of her mind all the while, but every time they camped near a city, she allowed herself to relax a bit.

There was no way they would strike so brazenly here, especially not with Adrien tucked safely in the heart of the camp.

And yet, one had charged right in, and now three good soldiers who should have had long lives ahead of them were dead.

Part of Kat tried to reason with herself that even if she had been here, there was probably very little she could have done.

She would have been just as caught off guard as the rest of them.

But she would have recovered. Would have done exactly what she’d been training for—would have taken charge. And maybe it would have made a difference this time.

She’d never know now.

“Katrien, would you mind coming over here a moment?” Adrien asked with so much feigned politeness that she nearly didn’t, just to spite him.

But too many soldiers were crowded around them, too many witnesses to a potential act of insubordination, and so she left Ziva behind with a reassuring pat on the shoulder and went to crouch next to Adrien.

Up close, the prince looked so tired that she might have given him a pass for lying in the dirt like a fed-up toddler who’d had a big day.

She’d always seen Adrien as one of those people who came pre-stocked with a boundless supply of energy.

Even if there wasn’t a magical explanation for his bottomless well, the amount of sludgy black coffee he was constantly sucking down could have done the trick just as easily.

In this moment, she didn’t have to ask to know Adrien had hit a wall.

That all at once, the mechanisms keeping him upright had crumbled.

Worse, she knew that by being allowed to see him like this in the first place, Adrien was only cementing the place he’d carved for her at his side.

For everyone else, he was impenetrable and assured.

But as Kat peered down at him, he stared back with watery eyes she could barely bring herself to meet.

“Someone did this, Kat,” he said, low and urgent.

“I can see who did it,” she replied dryly, jerking her chin at the smoldering pincushion of a demon corpse.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” he hissed.

“The first Lesser Lord attacked when I was in the scribes’ tent—vulnerable, on the outside of the camp.

The second took its shot straight at my personal quarters.

Which would be one thing if I was ever in my tent.

I’ll fully admit it’s not the subtlest of accommodations, but it has its uses.

Namely being a reliable signal fire for where not to find me on most nights.

The fact that they attacked now could be lucky, but… ”

Adrien palmed over a token in his array—the same one he used to insist that Kat was his lucky charm. Luck may have saved him tonight, but it didn’t feel lucky. Especially not when the demons had gotten lucky twice in a row.

“Someone’s giving them intel?” she murmured.

“It’s worse than that,” Adrien said, staring at the sky. “Only four people in this camp knew I planned to read those reports in my tent tonight. I’m sure you can guess which four.”

It was at precisely that moment Faye Laurent strode through the soldiers and dropped to her knees at Adrien’s side. “I’ve sent a rider down the road to the main body of the legion’s camp. They’ll intercept and redirect anyone approaching.”

Adrien flashed Kat a wary look. She wasn’t sure what to give him in return.

It was a serious accusation he’d just levied—and one currently at odds with Faye’s immediate, effusive effort to help cover up the impact of the Lesser Lord’s attack.

Could that itself be a cover-up for some part she’d played in this?

Faye laid her hand on Kat’s forearm, startling her from her thoughts. “Thank you for protecting him. It must not have been an easy fight,” she said, looking her up and down.

“Oh, I-I—” Kat stammered, then shut her mouth before anything else incriminating could come out of it. For all her earlier worries about sticking out like a sore thumb coming back from her tumble in the woods, Kat now blended right in among the battle-haggard soldiers.

“We’ll double your security,” Faye said decisively, her attention already back on the prince. “Four decades at all times. We can shift schedules. Pull them off digging.”

Adrien frowned even deeper. “I will take that into consideration,” he grumbled, then gestured to the path the demon had torn through the camp. “We’ll also need a good explanation for the damage we leave in our wake.”

“We could say it was a training accident,” Kat offered. When the suggestion earned her nothing but puzzled looks, she clarified, “An Aurean training accident. One of you practicing, and things got out of hand.”

“Daya,” both Faye and Adrien said in unison. Something told Kat that Daya would find it flattering she’d been the first one they’d thoughtof.

Provided Daya hadn’t orchestrated this in the first place.

Kat caught movement on the edge of the crowd—a new arrival among the soldiers. Emory had finally made it back to camp to find that their carefully planned staggering was completely unnecessary. Kat watched, her guts in a twist, as he tapped Ziva on the shoulder and bent to let her talk in his ear.

She had thought—with an optimism she believed she’d finally earned—that things would be different after tonight.

That she and Emory had finally figured out what they wanted from each other.

That they’d taken it, and all that remained was to hold fast to that dream until the end of the road and take all the pains they could not to be caught in the process.

But things were exactly the same. They stood on either side of a vast divide—Emory with the common infantry, and Kat with the prince of the realm. And she knew, with a growing sense of dread, that until the last Lesser Lord was defeated, this was where they’d have to stay.

Emory caught her eye. It felt brazen to hold his gaze, daring the whole century to notice the two people who hadn’t been involved in the battle but were smudged and rumpled anyway. But in it, there was a promise.

Even if nothing had changed, it still could. Someday.

Perhaps even someday soon.

“Help me up,” Adrien said, flapping his hands at Kat. As she took the muddy, blood-splattered hand he offered, the prince leaned in close to her ear. “Stick with me. Keep an eye out. Figure out who it is,” he whispered.

She pulled him to his feet and gave him a stiff nod. Orders received.

“Well, then,” he said brightly, turning and spreading his arms to the rest of the onlookers. “Two down, one to go!”