She made herself remember Dancer attacking the prison as one of their two lead points. The Sentella had been significantly outnumbered, at least twenty to one. By heavily fortified League forces. No one should have survived such a reckless assault. Yet they had taken minimal casualties and put a major hurt on League guards and trained assassins. Dancer and Darling had led the others in. The TAM had paved the way for their troops.

But Dancer hadn’t been alone then. She kept returning to the fact that he was fighting this battle today with no one on his six.

Please be all right.

Even Darice was growing paler by the heartbeat as he kept looking back over his shoulder. “Thia,” he breathed, his voice cracking. “Tell me a story to give me hope.”

Thia had to practically drag the lorina with her. “Um… okay. Let me think.” She bit her lip before she drew a ragged breath. “Uh, there was this time on Broma, back when Uncle Syn lived there. It wasn’t long after he and Uncle Hauk had become good friends. To celebrate the fact that Syn had just finished his first residency, they went out drinking. After they’d been there for a while and were… let’s say consumed by excess, this really gorgeous woman came up and decided to give Uncle Syn a lap dance.”

Sumi arched a brow at where this story was headed. “Thia! They really tell you these things?”

She blushed. “No one in my family knows I have Andarion hearing. I get lots of good stories they don’t know I can overhear.”

Shaking her head, Sumi laughed. “And will we be getting the adult version of this tale?”

Thia flashed a cheeky dimple. “It’s appropriate, I promise. I’m editing as I go.” She turned back toward Darice. “Anyway, she hadn’t been there long when all of a sudden this shadow falls over them. He grabs her by the arm and snatches her off Syn’s lap then goes to slap her. Quicker than anyone can blink, Uncle Hauk catches his fist in his hand and glares a hole through him. In that deep, terrifying growl of his, he snarls to the man, ‘Boy, before you kick open the door, you better make sure you have on the right boots.’”

Darice scowled. “What does that mean?”

“It’s an old Triosan saying. It means before you start a fight, you better know you can finish it. But like you, the guy didn’t know that. Any more than Hauk or Syn knew he was the son of Balur Droug.”

Sumi sucked her breath in sharply at the name. Droug was second only to Idirian Wade when it came to cruelty and cold-blooded murders. He was a legendary criminal who had been captured and executed only a few years back. “Oh my God, what did they do?”

“Well, Syn is the son of Idirian Wade.”