The question of Sorcha came up just once between us. I smoked at dawn and followed her into her tent as soon as we’d made camp. I’d watched her ride all through the night, the light of my lantern catching the silhouette of her body. She’d seen me smoking and smiled. I followed her into her tent, light-headed with anticipation, and leaned in to kiss her as soon as the flaps were tied shut.

Shayat darted back away from me. “Do you smoke with him, too?”

“We don’t,” I said. I ran my fingers down her forearm.

“Ariah, you can tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said, going to kiss her again. “We don’t.”

She let me kiss her, then took my face in her hands and pushed me back. Just an inch or so, just a little space between us, but enough distance to keep the conversation going. “You share a tent,” she said. “You shared a bed in Alamadour.”

“I’m telling you, we don’t.”

“You don’t.”

“No, we don’t.”

She laughed. I toyed with the waistband of her leggings. “Ariah, come on. He is handsome.”

My hand drifted to the small of her back. “Oh, I know. And he knows it, too, trust me.”

“And I see the way he looks at you.”

I sighed and dropped my forehead to her shoulder. My hands fell away from her. “Shayat. Why are you asking all this?”

I felt her blush rather than saw it. She burned with embarrassment, like a child caught stealing. She burned all the way down to her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m just talking. We do talk, sometimes, Ariah.”

I sat back, giving her space. “We can talk,” I said, though it made me blush right along with her. “We can talk about Sorcha if you want.”

She bit her lip. She let out a strangled laugh and peered at me from the corner of her eye. “It’s just…why wouldn’t you? With him, I mean.”

I looked away from her. “It’s not simple.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s not simple. If it were to happen, it would have to be a careful thing, and it would have consequences. The consequences keep us locked in this…I don’t know what it is, what Sorcha and I are doing, but there’s a line I think we’re both scared to cross. Him more than me, I think.” My gaze drifted while I spoke, landing on her dusty boots. I looked back over at her. “We don’t, Shayat, and it’s his preference that we don’t more than mine. Why are you so curious about this all of a sudden?”

“I was just curious. About him. And about you and him. Together.”

And it came to me all at once what she was curious about. “Oh. You mean with you. Us with you.”