There were a lot of people she was going to miss. And right on the top of the list was Eldan.

Her throat closed again, and she choked down a sob. I love him, and it would never have worked. I love him, and I’m never going to see him again. He probably thinks I deserted him under fire or something.

She’d been hoping for some kind of message from him when she reached the camp; he knew what her Company was, and messages moved swiftly through the aegis of the Guild. But there had been nothing.

He probably got back to Valdemar and came to his senses. He’s probably sitting with friends now, with pretty little Court ladies all around him, thinking what a lucky escape he had, that he could have been stuck with this barbarian merc with a figure like a sword and a face like a piece of granite. She blinked, and a couple of hot tears spilled down her temples into her hair. He’s probably so grateful I left that he’s burning incense to the gods. He’s probably even making jokes about me. Like, “how many mercs does it take to change a candle—”

More tears followed the first. It doesn’t matter. I love him anyway. I’ll always love him.

And I’m better off alone. We both are.

She turned over on her side and faced the canvas wall, with one of the blankets pulled up over her head so they’d think she was asleep if anyone came in. She muffled her face in her sleeve, and cried as quietly as she could manage, with hardly even a quiver of her shoulders to betray her; only the occasional sniff and the steady creeping of tears down into her pillow. And somehow she managed to cry herself to sleep.

When she woke, the tent was dark, and there was breathing on the other side of it. The steady breathing of sleep; somehow Shallan and Relli had come in and settled down without her being aware of it.

She didn’t wake very thoroughly; just enough to register that she wasn’t alone, and remember who it was.

I’m not alone. Somehow that was a comforting thought. I have friends. I can live without him. That was another. Holding those thoughts warmed her; and warmed, she fell back asleep.

It was raining again. A half-dozen of them were in the mess tent, attaching heads and feathers to grooved arrow shafts. Kero reckoned up the weeks in her head, and came to a nasty total.

“This is the winter rains, isn’t it?” Kero asked Shallan, as they reached for feathers at the same moment. “We’ve gone over into winter, haven’t we?”

Shallan’s studious inspection of the arrow fletchings didn’t fool Kero a bit. “Come on,” she said warningly. “I’m going to find out sooner or later. Cough it up.”