He did not kiss her. Instead, he pressed his forehead to hers, their painted arms entwined, and breathed her in. She felt the tremor that ran through him, the war he fought behind his eyes.
She wanted to demand more, but she’d seen how much it cost him to even get this close. She settled for touching his cheek, the scratch of stubble under her palm grounding her in a way no magic ever had.
“I need you to stay alive tomorrow,” he murmured.
She smiled, slow and real. “You too, Captain.”
Kael laughed, the sound low and broken. What had he lived through to become so guarded? What losses had he endured? Despite the hurt that still sat heavily in her chest, forgiveness rose like the tide, slow but inevitable. “Deal.”
They sat together until the fire in the camp burned low and the cold was too much for even their stubbornness to ignore.
He left first, the warmth of his hand lingering on her arm. Alina watched him go, the stripes he’d drawn on her skin glowing like a brand.
She waited until she was sure he was gone, then drew her knees to her chest and pressed her painted arms to her lips.
She didn’t cry. But she wanted to.
The hush of the woods around the camp broke with the crunch of boots and the hollow snap of a brittle twig. Alina looked up, still hugging her knees, to find Seraphina emerging from the darkness. She moved with the directness of a hawk dropping into a crowd of pigeons: one arm behind her back, the other hand resting easy on the hilt of her bowie knife, her eyes scanning the firelit edge of camp for her target.
She didn’t waste time with greetings. “We have a problem,” Seraphina called, voice pitched to slice through the night. “Circle up.”
Whatever peace had lingered at the close of the evening fled as the rebels clustered around the main fire, drawn by the promise ofgossip—or maybe just the chance to stare down trouble together. The lull in the air was charged, the kind of electricity that meant a storm was about to break.
Kael arrived at Alina’s side before she’d even stood, his shadow cutting across the ring of lanterns. He didn’t touch her, but he might as well have: his presence was a shield, and every rebel in that circle knew it.
Seraphina waited until the last stragglers shuffled in, then produced a scrap of yellowed cloth from her jacket. She held it up between thumb and forefinger for everyone to see. The fabric was marked with a crude sigil: three black lines crossed by a lightning bolt, the emblem of the royal signal corps.
“Found this tied to a sapling,” Seraphina said, “fifteen paces inside our perimeter. Same pattern as last week when the city patrol showed up a day early.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. Someone spat. Someone else muttered, “Bastards,” and got a grim chuckle in reply.
“Who else has seen it?” Marcus asked, voice calm but heavy as a hammer.
Seraphina’s eyes swept the circle, pausing on each face for a fraction of a second. “Tamsin found the first two. She’s checking the perimeter now. I found this one myself.”
The implications were as plain as the stench of woodsmoke in the air: someone in the camp was marking their position for the enemy. Alina felt the suspicion before she saw it—the tilt of a chin, the narrowing of an eye. She squared her shoulders, refusing to shrink, but her fingers curled tight into her palms.
It didn’t take long for the wind to shift. Maven stepped out from the back row, hand clasped before him, his expression unreadable beyond the faint sneer that cut his upper lip.
“Well, isn’t this familiar?” he said, letting the words unspool slow as honey. “Every time we move, the King’s men are waiting. But we haven’t had this problem until recently. Not until our… visitor.”
He turned to face Alina directly. The lanterns caught the silver in his temples, made his eyes look wolf-bright and predatory. “Care to explain yourself, Princess?”
Alina stared back, her jaw clenched so hard it might have cracked. She wanted to laugh, to throw his accusation back at him, but the crowd had drawn in and she could feel the heat of their gazes, the old resentments waking up in every hungry belly and bruised ego.
“I haven’t left the camp,” she said, forcing each word out clean. “I’ve barely left your sight. If you think I’m planting signals, you’re dumber than you look.”
A sharp hiss of breath, somewhere behind her from someone appreciating the boldness, or maybe just waiting for the fight to go bloody.
Kael stepped forward, planting himself squarely between Alina and Maven. “That’s enough.”
Maven looked at Kael, slow and deliberate, then back to Alina. “Forgive me, Captain,” he said, “but she is the variable. We’d be fools not to consider it.”
“She’s been vetted,” Kael said, his voice flat and final. “If you have proof, speak it. Otherwise, stand down.”
The tension in the circle doubled. Marcus glared at Maven but said nothing; Tamsin, returning from her sweep, hovered at the fringe, eyes narrowed to slits. Seraphina glanced between Kael and Alina, her face unreadable. It was obvious she did not like the accusation, but she wasn’t rushing to Alina’s defense, either.
Finn, standing a half-step behind Marcus, piped up. “It could be any of us, couldn’t it? Or someone new? There were those merchants last week…” He trailed off under the weight of the stares.
