Better than good. He looked as handsome as he had the night of the Sun’s Ascendance when, dressed in full uniform, he’d swept her across the sky gardens in a flawless dance. She hadn’t been this close to him since. Hadn’t been able to wrap her arms around his waist or feel his chest rise and fall against hers. Or to watch his lips part, trace the edges of them and wonder how they would feel pressed to hers, the way they’d almost done that night…

“Did the king send you?” she asked, tearing herself from his arms. The last thing she needed was to get distracted—or dragged back into the king’s dungeons. Not now, when she was so close to home. Back where I belong, she reminded herself. Back with my band.

“Nobody sent me,” Vidal replied, too quick. The tension in his tone made her suspicious.

“You’re a Talon. You have to follow orders.”

“I… requested new orders.”

She frowned. “And your leader allowed that?”

He bowed his head. “Our leader is dead.”

Of course. Yasmin had led the Talons. With her dead and Andros incapacitated… “But your other commanders. Your captain, or whoever is in charge now…”

“I went over his head. Appealed to the source of power, so to speak.”

Her eyebrows rose. Last her sisters told her, that source lay comatose in bed. “My father?” she ventured, careful. She wasn’t sure whether word of his condition had spread throughout the Keep yet.

The corners of Vidal’s lips quirked. “Not quite. But Queen Rozalind and your sister Akeylah were happy to grant me leave to accompany you. They both agreed our army won’t miss one Talon for a few days.”

Zofi reached up to touch the silver sand-stepper’s nose, and he huffed out an excited breath, then stamped his hooves.

Vidal, for his part, watched with concern. “Your sister was worried about you. A Traveler alone on Kolonyan roads…”

“I can take care of myself,” Zofi replied. “I’ve spent my entire life on the roads, I might add, and my entire life being a Traveler, too.” She thought angrily about the innkeeper who asked her to leave. The traders she’d attempted to barter with, who had refused to sell her even a wizened old nag of a pony. That last thought, at least, softened her. “I’m grateful for the horse.” Zofi reached up to pat his flanks. “But you can’t come with me, Vidal. I’m not riding into my band’s camp with a Talon in tow.”

“At least let me escort you to the camp itself. If I can’t come in with you, then I’ll return to Kolonya City alone afterward.”

“I’ll stand out like a stubbed thumb with you riding next to me.”