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Kat couldn’t help feeling a pinch at that.

There wasn’t much that could be tidied. The house felt far emptier than when she’d left it, and not for the first time, she pictured her father sitting all by himself at a table that had once been reliably set for three every night.

Now Honnold settled the two of them at that same table as he fussed with the cookfire, hunting for an ember in the remains of this morning’s ashes. “You don’t have to—” she started.

“?’Course I have to. Your old dad doesn’t get a chance to play host all that often, much less one to heroes.

Now, is there a particular sort of tea you prefer, Emory?

Still got plenty of water in the pot from this morning, and I may not have much in the cupboards, but you can bet I’ve always got Katrien’s favorite brew on hand. ”

Something traitorous was happening in the back of her throat.

“Then that’s what I’ll have,” Emory declared, passing her a soft smile she wanted to pinch off his face.

“We’re not heroes,” Kat said. She’d meant it as a self-deprecating jab, but when her dad’s eyes squinted in confusion, she realized there may have been some critical context he was missing.

“I mean, surely you’ve seen all the fuss they’re making about the prince and his companions.

They were the ones who defeated the Demon Lord in the end. ”

“Oh, of course,” Honnold said, flapping a hand in a way that reminded her disconcertingly of Adrien. “But I’m told the real heroes on the battlefield were the Aureans who led the centuries. You must have done quite a lot of heroics in three years at war.”

Kat stared at her hands, folded together in front of her. She could feel a tremble starting up in them, one that was liable to shake the whole table if she didn’t get a handle on it. “It wasn’t…wasn’t quite like that.”

Emory, too, had gone stiff across from her. No doubt he was remembering the mission she’d been tasked with. The mission she’d failed. “Kat was absolutely essential on the battlefield,” he said, landing a comradely pat on her shoulder. “She held our line together too many times to count.”

Honnold had paused in his puttering, his brow furrowed. “But your token—”

“I didn’t start cultivating it until after the Demon Lord was slain,” she confessed, still staring at her hands. “I spent the whole of the war as a spearbearer on the front.”

Honnold nodded. “And, Emory, you were her battle partner? Her shieldbearer?”

“Yes, sir.”

Her father’s eyes darkened, his mouth going tight as the scales rebalanced.

“I see,” Honnold muttered, then straightened abruptly.

“It’s no small feat for both of you to survive to see the war’s end—especially not as infantry.

I…thank the hosts you weren’t lost. I can’t imagine how much death and destruction you must have seen. ”

“Dad, sit down,” Kat said, pushing herself up from the table.

Honnold had gone abruptly gray in the face, and he swayed slightly as he took her advice, staggering over to the kitchen table and plunking himself down at the third chair.

Kat scooted herself over next to him and wrapped a steadying arm around his shoulders. “I’m here. I’m okay.”

“But with your token…You were supposed to—”

“I…Dad, there isn’t a lot I could have done with a Light of Angels token.

It wasn’t like I could just present it uncultivated and expect it to act as some sort of ticket out of danger.

Even if I had known how to use it, I’d barely hold my own compared to some of the other Aureans on the battlefield.

Our centurion, Mira, she’s got ten, and even she had a few close calls. ”

“How many close calls did you have?” he croaked.

“More than a few,” Kat said, unable to stop herself from glancing down at the obvious scarring on her arm. She caught Emory’s eye. “Could you give us a moment?” she asked.

He softened. “I’ll be outside,” Emory said, rising from his chair—though before he moved for the door, he hesitated, his hands flexing at his sides.

She jerked her chin at him before he could do anything so drastic as try to comfort her.

Kat may have needed it, but she needed this moment with her father more.

When Emory had shut the door behind him, her father fixed her with a look that sank her heart like a stone. “You said. When you left, you said you’d make this into an opportunity. They drafted you into the infantry, but you had your mother’s token. You could have leveraged it—”

“I had an uncultivated bit of Aurean gold,” Kat retorted firmly. “They don’t just go around handing out opportunities to people with tokens.”

Even as the words left her mouth, she knew how false they were.

Her time at Adrien’s side had shown her just how much of the world could be laid at her feet for no other reason than the fact that she had inherited a bit of gold from her mother.

The only thing holding her back was herself—her own fear, her own hang-ups, her own exhaustion.

It was one thing to disappoint her father, another thing entirely to place on his shoulders all at once the weight of three years he should have spent fearing for her life.

She wanted to do everything in her power to spare him from it, but all she could do was feel it alongside him in the subtle shake of his shoulders and the shuddering breath he took as he finally turned to look her in the eye.

“You’re safe now,” he said after a long moment.

“You’ve cultivated your token. You found that bright spot in all this ugliness, and the war is over.

You’ll serve the rest of your term, but—”

Kat brightened. “Actually, the prince has vowed to release us if we choose. He’ll be announcing it at the victory ball later this week.”

Honnold gave her a weak smile. “That’s wonderful. Do I need to get your room ready, or do you have another opportunity lined up?”

Kat’s breath caught in her throat. She’d walked right into that one, but she couldn’t exactly tell her father the strange new path that had sprouted before her.

“I…There are a few choices I could make,” she said, sitting back in her chair.

“Developing my token after the war’s end opened some doors for me, but… ”

Her eyes betrayed her. She couldn’t help the glance she threw toward the kitchen door where Emory had disappeared, and she felt the moment her father’s gaze sharpened. “Katrien,” he said firmly.

“Dad,” she replied petulantly. Hosts, she sounded like Giselle.

“You—”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“No? Because I haven’t seen you this blatantly moon-eyed over someone since you were thirteen years old and desperately in love with that farmer’s daughter.”

“I’m not moon-eyed. ”

“I just think it’s telling that I asked about your future and you—”

“He’s my battle partner. We’ve been to the Mouth of Hell and back together. It would be stranger not to consider him.”

“But that’s not how you were considering him.”

“Do we have to talk about my love life?” Kat said testily.

“We might. I’m serious, Kat,” her father replied, leaning in and laying one hand over hers.

“I understand. I wish it had been otherwise, but I can’t change the fact that you experienced the war on the front lines.

But that doesn’t mean you have to stay a soldier, especially if it’s only to preserve something you forged in the heat of war.

You said you had other opportunities, opened by cultivating your token, and you made it sound like the thing holding you back was him. Do I have that right?”

Kat pursed her lips. “I’m an adult. I can make my own choices.”

He squeezed her hand. “I know that, Bean. But I just hope you’re not making the same mistakes as your mother.”

Kat had spent many a sleepless night imagining what it must be like to be a thrall on the end of her spear.

This was, perhaps, the closest she’d ever come to the sensation she’d imagined—asudden punch clean through the gut, so fast that the pain caught up seconds later.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked weakly.

Honnold shook his head. “When I met your mother, I found her humility striking. I’d always pictured Aureans as these lofty, brilliant, untouchable people—people blessed by the angels themselves.

When this clever, down-to-earth, absolute sunbeam of a woman revealed to me that she had a token, my first thought was that she must have stolen it from somewhere.

She probably should have been insulted, but instead she laughed herself hoarse. ”

The kitchen felt unbearably small.

“It was a miracle she fell in love with me after that, honestly. I couldn’t understand it.

She could have been a centurion. An illusionist. A fixture in the high courts of Rusta, not just because of her gold but because no one could resist her charm, myself included.

Instead, she chose a life as a blacksmith, covered in soot and surrounded by more and more blades by the day.

I never doubted her happiness—and I never want you to doubt it either.

We had a brilliant, beautiful life together.

But I could never shake the feeling that…

that I was the thing that had ruined her prospects.

That I dragged her down into a common life. ”

“Dad,” Kat croaked. “You don’t seriously think that.”

The look he fixed her with told her everything.

That he meant it. That it had haunted him for years.

That it was the voice whispering in his head when he suggested, as he consoled a shuddering, fearful, eighteen-year-old Kat when her name was pulled in the draft, that there could be a bright side to all this.

She’d known he had great expectations for her.

She’d let them drive her in the rush to cultivate her token over the past months, all so that she could come back and show her father that she’d made it.

That the time he’d spent sitting at this table alone had been worthwhile.

Now she saw that making it, in his eyes, could never exist side by side with coming back home. Not when he thought himself the dead weight that had sealed her mother away from a far grander destiny.

Kat pushed out of her chair and knelt at her father’s side, wrapping her arms around his torso and pinning his arms down like she used to when she was a little kid.

When she was small, he’d fight and gripe and pretend he couldn’t break her hold.

It always made her feel like the strongest girl in the world.

Now Honnold sat quietly, his chest heaving beneath her ear, and Kat squeezed him as if that alone could get her point across. “I know you want what’s best for me. But don’t turn yourself into a regret she never had to justify it.”

“Bean,” he said weakly.

“We’re haunted enough as it is,” Kat declared, giving him one last firm squeeze before shoving to her feet. “I think…I think I need some space. But I’ll be back after the victory ball. I have some things I need to sort out before then.”

She left just as the kettle he’d hung over the cookfire finally started to wail.