Hector shook his head, looking around at the trees, the hillside, everywhere except at Anton. He was almost smiling, a bitten-off, rueful thing, and Anton felt defensive, like he was being made fun of.

“What do you want me to say?” Hector asked at last. “That I regret leaving? That I shouldn’t have done it? I might regret how it happened, but I had to leave. I never asked Jude to do any of that, and I meant what I said that day—I never should have accepted a place in the Paladin Guard. It was cruel, to both of us. He loved me, and I knew that he loved me, and I also knew that nothing would ever come of it.”

“Because you didn’t want it?”

“Because Jude didn’t.”

Anton stared at him, shocked. How could he even think that?

“He was never going to leave the Order for me.” The certainty in Hector’s voice was enough to keep Anton silent. “He would have kept me close, by his side, for as long as he could, and made us both miserable in the process. That was the only way it could end. You think Jude would have done anything for me, but you’re wrong. He would have returned to the Order—maybe in a week, a month, or a year, but he would have gone back. Chasing after me was just an excuse, a way to test, once and for all, his devotion to his duty. And I’m not saying it wasn’t sorely tested but—if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Jude could never walk away from his destiny. Not for me, not for anything.”

Anton’s mouth went dry as Hector’s dark eyes bored into his. His thoughts returned to the secret he was keeping from Jude, the true destiny that Jude didn’t even know of. Jude may have left the Order for Anton, but this, his destiny, well—Hector had said it, plain and simple. Jude wouldn’t walk away from it. Not for Hector. Not for Anton.

“Honestly, it kind of figures that the only person who could make Jude leave the Order was the Last Prophet himself,” Hector said. “You know, it scared me at first, how he feels about you. After Behezda, he would barely talk about it, but I could see it, bleeding out of him. He has so much faith in you. And I thought how dangerous that is. Here’s this person Jude’s been raised since birth to worship—to serve. ‘Above our lives, above our hearts’ and all that. But now, what? He loves you? It’s all tangled up for him. You see that, right?”

“What are you trying to say?” Anton asked, swallowing down his protests, his justification. Because when Hector put it like that, it was hard to dismiss.