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As dawn was risingthe next morning, I talked to the villagers who were tending their animals, while my soldiers ate breakfast. I asked why they hadn’t had a knight and his warriors to protect them. The villagers told me that the castle on the hill belonged to some minor noble, who had fled to the safety of Rylow, leaving their villagers behind in their thatched-roof cottages. If I knew my brother, that man wouldn’t be a noble much longer.
“Well, you’re safe now,” I told them. “My prey shifters hear and see everything, and they’ll be keeping watch. If Caris’s forces double back… we’ll block them.”
Their wariness was a gift. We’d know Kallus and his forces were moving long before he arrived.
“King Caldren?”
I turned to find one of my soldiers, who had once been a rabbit shifter. His face was bright as if he’d heard the compliment and it had pleased him, but then he bent his head. “You have guests arriving. We haven’t stopped them.”
“Honor.” The name sounded blunt on my lips but sang in my heart. “Bring her to me when she arrives.”
I had work to do. I was moving around the tavern, making sure everyone was fed, when warmth bloomed in my chest. I straightened, confused by the sudden feeling.
And then I saw her, standing at the back of the crowd in the tavern. She looked tired and worried and dirty, but she still smiled at me, that smile that could persuade men to move mountains. And I couldn’t help smiling back, before I went back to encouraging my troops for another day of making Caris miserable.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here starting trouble,” she teased me when I met her at the back of the tavern.
“Well, I can’t let you be the only one who causes trouble,” I said, putting a finger under her chin and tilting it up so I could kiss her.
She kissed me back, fierce passion in her lips and in the way her fingers swept up my shoulders. But it was a short kiss. There was not a lot of time for anything but bloodshed in the kingdom now.
“Is there somewhere we can talk privately? Jaik needs you, Caldren. We can’t hold Rylow alone…” She paused, looking up at me as if she knew it was an enormous thing to ask, to have the prey defend a city full of shifters who would gladly crush them under their heels.
“Of course. We can talk.” I took her arm and we moved toward the wall.
Nora stepped in front of me. “I see Honor, so I assume we’ve got new trouble.”
“Jaik needs help,” I told her.
“We’ve got to help Jaik,” she repeated in a tone of disbelief.
“When can we ride?”
She gave me an incredulous look. Then she shook it off. “It’ll take us forty minutes to be ready to ride.”
“Thank you,” I told her.
She nodded curtly and moved into the crowd, jostling and scolding them.
I led Honor in a quieter private dining room behind the main pub. It was full of maps and plans that Nora and my spies and I had been working on, tracking the most likely path Caris would take. Some of my spies followed him for me. Though we had taken the night to rest, he didn’t know the territory as we did. We would be able to meet him again and continue our campaign of harassment.
I’d been told I was a pain in the ass a few times in my life, and I was delighted I could be one professionally.
“Of course I’ll lead them there,” I told her. “But we’re best outside direct conflict. We can harass Kallus’s flanks and do far more damage than they will in a full-out attack.”
They’d spent two hundred years being primed purely to run when faced by danger.
She nodded. “I’m hoping to avert all-out war. I’d like to talk to Kallus. Negotiate.”
“Honor… no.” The thought of her going into Kallus’s clutches after everything he’d done sent a shiver of fear down my spine.
“Don’t worry, if I go, I’ll tell you.”
That was hardly a comforting thought. I didn’t want her just to tell me, I wanted her safe.
“I can’t convince you to stay safe, can I?”
