Over Jonas’s head, Sel’s eyes meet William’s with a raised brow. William gives a stiff, tiny shake of his head. He wants him to wait. Let Alice work.

Jonas snorts. “Your best friend is the magical anchor to a centuries-old spell that’s given sixty generations nothing but misery.”

“She’s the reason this war can be won,” Alice counters calmly. “Bree will help stop Camlann.”

Jonas coughs into his fist. His voice is mocking, sharp. “This one, maybe. But nothing truly ends Camlann, girl.”

Alice sits for a moment, studying him. “You lost someone, didn’t you?”

Jonas looks up, and I think about what he must see when he sees Alice. Her earnest brows and downturned mouth? The focused gaze that makes you feel like she’s not thinking about anything else but you? A sixteen-year-old girl who can go completely still with attention, and who listens to people with her whole body?

The wind picks up behind us. William’s armor flickers lightly but holds. Clouds shift overhead as we wait for Jonas to respond.

His first response is a silent one. Tears, filling his eyes. “My Scion.”

Alice’s face falls. “What was their name?”

Jonas’s shoulders slump with something heavier than fatigue. Loneliness, the bone-deep kind, radiates from him. He’s been out here for who knows how long, away from the other Lieges, away from the battlefield and a clear purpose. Living in the grief and only the grief. When he speaks again, his voice cracks on three syllables. “Lydia.”

“I’m sorry,” Alice murmurs, and I tense at the same time Jonas does. Wrong thing to say.

His scowl grows. “What would you know of the Warrior’s Oath? You can’t be sorry about pain you’ve never felt or seen.”

Alice purses her lips, and I can see her brain recalibrating from her error. “I can be sorry about the pain I’m seeing right in front of me.”

“That’s why you can’t understand. It was my fault!” he says, and this time when his voice cracks, the cough returns. He struggles for a moment, then downs the water with an audible gulp, wincing. “I could have saved her. Should have. Instead, I watched her die, felt her anger, her fear. She thought I’d be there to stop the demon, and I failed her.”

Alice’s own eyes shine in the night. “I’d want revenge if someone I loved was murdered right in front of me. But why would you try to kill Bree?”

Jonas’s eyes sharpen on her, realizing what she’s done. How she’s maneuvered him. “I won’t live long enough for a trial, so don’t even try to get a confession.”