“No,” Orfeus said, lifting her finger. Luga only smiled. Anger burned through her dilapidated veins: what a hateful, scheming old man, sitting up here and entangling her in plans without thought or regard for her opinion of it. Juggling in his hands who lived and who died and who killed. “No, you coal-selling, tree-cutting, strip-mining old bastard. People aren’t just tools to use, and I won’t do what you want. I want nothing more to do with this bloodstained place than I’ve had already.”

But that was another lie. Faol, and his strong arms and uncertain smile. Faol kissing like he’d never been kissed before.

She shoved those thoughts out of her mind.

“In the end, it’s your choice,” Luga said. She tried not to show how that surprised her. “But you’ve already proven you could make an adequate leader, in time, with a lot of work. In some respects, even my superior.”

Orfeus lifted her brows. “Ah?”

Luga prowled a step forward, then another. She took a step back, even though he wasn’t really that much taller than her. Something in his posture. “I did not deal with the threat that was Significance,” Luga said, cold and intent. Frost icing up the spine of a dead leaf, withered and curled. “I secured my position and xe was no longer a threat to me, and I had my hunters to protect. I did nothing, and by doing nothing, I am complicit.”

He stepped forward until he stood eye-to-eye with her, noses nearly touching.

“But you,” Luga said. “You hunted xem down, and you stopped xem.”

She had to fight tooth and nail not to shiver or step back or at least look away. “I suppose,” Orfeus said. “No thanks to you.”

Luga shook his head, slightly smiling. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m saying that you went after your prey and caught them. How else do you think one would prove Leadership of the Wild?”

Orfeus took a step back then, couldn’t help it, mind swaying. “That wasn’t what—that’s not what I set out to do. That’s not why I did it.”

“But you did,” Luga said. He smiled. It shouldn’t have looked terrible: it was the first time she’d seen him smile properly, and it looked almost warm, though also odd, like he wasn’t at all used to smiling. Maybe that was where Faol got it from.

Faol’s smiles were endearingly awkward grimaces, though. This, this was a bloodhunter’s grin.

“As I did, once,” Luga said. “Of course, I killed the Leader before me.” Then he looked at her, and maybe Faolan was used to this too, Luga looking at him with a heavy weight of expectation.

Orfeus swallowed. “What do you want from me here?” she said.