She hadn’t meant it to be comforting, but oddly, after she said it she felt a little more ease creep into her heart. After so long with so many people intercepting their makeshift crew, coming and going and living and dying, it felt almost nostalgic to have just the four of them in a room again. Plotting like old times, readying to finish the battle they had started together.

It took Tavia back to the train journey, when they had first fled Creije and headed for Karam’s homeland of Granka. Just her, Wesley, Saxony, and Karam, interrupted rarely by odd buskers who’d count the hours for them, or look at Wesley like they wanted desperately for him to give them an order. Tell them how to piss properly or chew with their mouths closed. Just waiting for any kind of direction from a fearless leader they had learned to rely on. But despite those interruptions, it had still just been the four of them.

They had begun this journey together and now they would end it that way.

As a crew, except that they rarely agreed on anything.

As a team, except that they rarely trusted each other.

As a family, except that sometimes they hated each other.

Actually, Tavia supposed that made the family part even more accurate.

“Ashwood is in Yejlath because conquering the Halls of Government is a surefire way to cement his hold on the realm,” Saxony said. “So Schulze will want to make that a priority before anything else.”

“Ashwood will expect us to come at him in Yejlath,” Wesley said.

Saxony turned to him. “You don’t know that,” she said. “You just want to be right all the time.”

Wesley smirked. “Does that mean you’re admitting that you’re wrong all the time?”

Saxony threw her hands in the air and Tavia was half-surprised when fire didn’t erupt from them and head straight for Wesley’s face. She was showing a new restraint now that she knew Wesley was her blood. Saxony cared about him—she couldn’t help it—and Tavia understood that. Wesley had a way of making you feel for him, against all odds, in the face of all the bad he might have done. There was just something magnetic about him that made you want to keep him by your side.

Tavia had been longing for some alone time with him ever since he’d gotten back, so they could talk about the moment in the tree house when he had wiped the rain from her lips and looked at her like she was the only person he saw.

But war had a funny habit of getting in the way.

“Whatever we do, we need to have a way to take down the Loj-crazed army,” Tavia said.

“Zekia is still our best bet,” Wesley said.