to come—that Trix and Kade might not either. But if Trix’s plan succeeded? He and the others would be free. Sev could go anywhere, do anything, with no soldiers left to drag him back to the empire. As much as that was exciting, he ached to have a place to belong when all this was over. To have “friends and loved ones” like Trix. Now that he’d had a small taste of it, he wasn’t ready to let it go.
“Can’t sleep, soldier?”
Sev squinted into the darkness, and a second later Kade appeared from the shadows. Sev hadn’t heard his approach, which made him wonder how long the bondservant had been lurking there, just out of sight.
“Have you been eavesdropping?” he demanded as Kade lowered himself onto a log opposite him.
“There’s nothing Ilithya could tell you that I don’t already know. Besides, I didn’t want the old woman interfering.”
Sev settled back into his seat, wary. Kade’s presence always put him on the defensive. “She prefers to be called Trix.”
Kade snorted. “She’s just being difficult. When we first met, she asked me to call her Princess Pearl.”
Sev found himself smirking, and Kade grinned too.
“Are you sure you’re up to this, soldier?” Kade asked eventually, his smile gone. His hands were knitted together in front of him, and he spoke to the flames, not to Sev.
“You don’t want me involved,” Sev said, not at all surprised by the fact, though still put out by it. He had thought, when Kade argued against his dismissal after the llama incident, that Kade was looking at him differently. That maybe he’d wanted Sev around after all—or at least saw value in his skills. But Kade made no move to deny his words. He took up Trix’s abandoned stick and jabbed angrily at the fire. Obviously Sev was wrong.
“Well, you don’t have any other choice,” he said bitterly. “So you’re stuck with me.”
“We can figure something else out,” Kade said, shifting onto the log next to Sev’s, leaning forward as he spoke. “We can find another way.”
Sev continued to prod at the fire, but he wasn’t really seeing it. “I know I’ve made some mistakes,” he began, trying to keep his voice steady, “but I can do this.”
“We can’t afford mistakes, soldier. People’s lives are at risk.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Sev asked.
“You’re not thinking this through. You realize you’ll be poisoning your fellow soldiers, looking them in the eye right before you turn around and stab them in the back.”
Guilt gnawed at Sev’s stomach, but he refused to let Kade’s words dissuade him. Of course what they were doing was terrible, but they didn’t have any other options. Besides, if Sev didn’t do it, someone else would.
“Why can’t you see past it?” Sev demanded.
“Past what?” Kade asked, his brow furrowed.
“The fact that I’m a soldier. It’s not who I really am.”
“Did you see past it before you were one of them? Did you see past it when hundreds of them marched on your family’s farm?”
“Shut your mouth,” Sev snarled. “I am what the empire—what those soldiers—made me. A motherless, fatherless animage with nowhere to go and no one to trust.” He tossed the branch into the fire and lurched to his feet, stepping over the log and making to stride away.
Kade stood in front of him, blocking his path. “Do not make the mistake of thinking you are the only person here who’s had a hard life. That you’re the only ‘motherless, fatherless animage’ to be found in this camp.”
Sev stared at him, at Kade’s rising and falling chest. Was Kade a war orphan too?
Before he could ask, Kade huffed an exasperated breath and continued. “I understand that life has been hard for you, but people can only judge you by what they see. By your actions.”
“And what have my actions told you?” Sev demanded.
Kade shrugged and looked away. He was attempting to stay calm, Sev knew, but the strain was evident in the tense cords of muscle in his neck and the way his jaw clenched. He ran a hand over his short hair, then cast Sev a sidelong glance. “You’re a liar. You’re selfish and reckless. And you care nothing for our cause.”
Sev couldn’t deny the first three things. He’d lied about being an animage since he was four, and for years he’d only ever looked out for himself. If his two escape attempts weren’t reckless, Sev didn’t know what was. He used to loathe those parts of himself, the same as Kade,