Tosten laced his harp case and looked thoughtfully at my face. “Oreg told me Tisala accepted your proposal.”

I nodded.

“Ward, our chances of getting out of this aren’t good, are they?”

I stopped what I was doing. “No,” I said.

He finished lacing his harp. “We decided—Oreg, Garranon, Axiel, and I—that there was only room for four in the big tent.” He stood up and glanced at the smaller tent, set apart from the others. “And even that will be crowded. Since you’re the biggest of us, we decided you’ll have to share with Tisala.”

I gave him a slow smile, which he returned briefly. Then his face became serious and he put his hand on my shoulder, “Ward—” he began, before coming to an uncertain halt, unable to say the words. So he said something else. “Ward, I’m glad you are my brother.”

“Me, too,” I said. Then after he ducked into the larger tent, I said the words I was too much my father’s son to say to his face. “I love you, too, Tosten.”

“He knows,” said Oreg, coming out of the darkness where the horses were making quiet horse-noises. He tossed me my bedroll, which I’d left with my saddle, and took the camp shovel from me and finished banking the fire.

Wordlessly, awkwardly, I rested my hand on his shoulder.

Oreg set the shovel aside and patted my hand. “I know, too.”

He left me alone by the banked fire. Ilooked for Jakoven and found him in the same place he’d been for the last few hours, camped far enough from us that there was no chance he’d smell our campfire.

I stuck my head into Tisala’s tent, my bedroll under my arm.

“They told me there was no room for me in the other tent,” I said diffidently.

“Come in, Ward,” she said.

In the golden glow of my magelight, I pulled my boots off and set them just inside the tent next to hers. She waited until I had finished and was setting my bedroll beside her blankets before she pulled off her wool tunic to reveal only a thin silk undershirt. I saw a glint of pink shiny skin along her triceps where a sword had nicked her. She didn’t look at me when she untied her trousers and folded them for tomorrow. Like a boy, she wore silk shorts under the trousers, but like her top, it was thin and revealed the flesh beneath.

“I can keep my clothes on,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “We can sleep together for warmth.”

She turned to me then, blushing hard enough that even in the dim glow I could see it. “Is that what you want?”

No! Absolutely not,I thought.

“I will not use this to push you into something you don’t want,” I said, instead.