Fordham balled his hands into fists. “It’ll be closer to ten thousand soldiers. We’ve been fighting since we were old enough to carry a sword, and we know precisely what we’re doing. These aren’t young bucks. They’ll stop at nothing. They’ll slaughter us.”

“They don’t have dragons,” Trulian countered.

“Oh, shut it, all of you,” Zina said, jerking out of her trance. “Leave the boy alone. Six thousand or ten thousand. Dragons or no dragons. We’re all about to walk into literal hell. Let them get a good night’s sleep, and we’ll figure it out in the morning.”

“Zahina,” Trulian barked.

“You know we have the advantage, General. If you’re not going to give them the option of backing out, then what does it matter anyway?”

Trulian sighed at his daughter’s words. “Fine. Fordham, you’re dismissed. Kerrigan, I want you to work with Zina on your casting.”

“Of course, sir.” Kerrigan bowed and then followed Zina out of the tent.

Fordham stomped off away from them.

“He’ll be fine,” Zina said. “He just learned a hard lesson about war.”

“Yeah. Your dad is…”

“An asshole?”

Kerrigan laughed. “Um, I was going to say intimidating.”

“He’s just too stubborn to go into the abyss.”

“I am sorry that you had to hear about your mother the way you did.”

Zina shrugged. “He should have told me about her when it happened. Not a thousand years later. It was selfish. And look, it brought us right back to another battlefield.” Zina hopped into another hover. “Anyway, I’m not training you. I used it as an excuse to get out of that tent. You know all that you need to know for tomorrow. Just follow that boy before he does something stupid.”

Kerrigan’s gaze landed on Fordham, still heading back to the tent. She was afraid that Zina was right.

56

The Negotiations

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kerrigan asked when she found Fordham staring blankly into the fire.

Audria arched an eyebrow, but Kerrigan just shook her head. There was no point in getting her involved. Fordham’s hurt couldn’t be understood by someone who had never seen him with his people.

It was complicated. He hated the House of Shadows in a deep and personal way. He also loved his home and his people just as deeply. He was their crowned prince. He had always planned to serve as their king. Only everything had changed with his exile. He’d learned the hard way that things were both better and worse than he’d known.

“No,” he growled.

“Okay. I can just sit here then.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be training?”

“Zina said I knew everything I needed to know.”

He shrugged. “Probably true.”

“And anyway, she didn’t want you to do anything stupid.”