But there was something wrong, and it took a moment of silence and privacy to acknowledge what that was: Ramus. The other Serians would likely offer jibes and make fun of them if she and Beko were together, but Ramus was something else entirely. Their complicated friendship made other aspects of their relationship equally intense: the jealousies, the resentfulness. But I've never wanted him in that way. Not Ramus. He's too cold, too serious, too . . .

Too much like I want to be? The voice and thought were her own, and yet they seemed to come from elsewhere. Perhaps from the person she would have been had she returned from Ventgoria dying, not cured.

“Piss!” she hissed. “Piss on it all!” She should go outside, watch Rhiana cook and spend the evening with her traveling companions, doing her best not to let such concerns intrude.

After all, Rhiana had offered a meal that they would never forget.

“ IT’S THE LIVER that's poisonous,” Rhiana said. “Make sure you remove that whole and the rest of the meat is wondrous. Watch.” She had the dead lizard on the ground before her, laid across a few wide sheets of bark.

The others were leaning against their saddles, relaxing in the warmth from the fire and sipping the remainder of the root wine from their mugs. Only Noon was absent, sitting somewhere away from the camp, on watch. Ramus sat quietly against his saddle, his backpack within easy reach. He was not actively ignoring Nomi, yet since her return from the hunt he had not gone out of his way to talk to her.

Beko was as relaxed and casual as ever. He smiled at her, and everything seemed unchanged. She was glad. She would hate there to be tension between them.

Rhiana heated her knife in the fire, turned the lizard onto its back and sliced. With a few deft swipes of the blade the animal lay open and bare, steaming slightly in the fading light. The Serian leaned back to view the corpse then worked with the knife again, lifting out a glistening mass and dropping it into the fire. Then she took a root-wine bottle and poured a good slug into the wound.

“There,” she said. “All the nasty stuff burned away, all the good stuff left. Now to really make the meal.”

Nomi felt a brief sense of disgust when Rhiana chopped off the animal's head and legs, stripped its scaly skin and started slicing chunks of meat and dropping them into a pot. But she thought again of what Ramus had said, and disgust turned to satisfaction that she had at least been involved in the hunt. She'd seen the animal killed, knew that it had died quickly and cleanly, and now it was being prepared with casual skill by someone who knew the value of good meat.