It was still the early hours of the morning, so it was with some relief that he found his friends asleep. He tried not to think about what it meant when he saw his cot had returned to its original position, a shelf dividing it from Amber’s.

“Back, are you?” Amber’s voice came through the shelving as he settled down onto the lumpy, straw-filled cot.

Cade lay silent for a moment. “I had to sell the expedition to Marius,” he whispered back.

Silence. Then:

“You couldn’t have waited till morning?”

Cade winced, the question cutting through his deception.

“I … I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I’d dealt with it,” he replied lamely.

Even through the shelving, he heard her snort with derision.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

There was no reply.

He woke to Quintus’s face, and the boy’s thin hands shaking his shoulders.

“What?” Cade groaned, then caught Quintus’s expression and instantly sobered from the drunkenness of sleep.

“They are preparing an … expedition,” Quintus hissed.

Cade rolled from his bed and followed the young Roman, who was already almost out the door. They emerged from the keep, yet Quintus ran on, down the tunnel through the mountain.

When Cade emerged, huffing and puffing, from the darkness of the tunnel, he found Amber there, with Quintus beside her. Ahead, a crowd of Romans had surrounded Marius, who was standing atop a log, speaking rapidly.

“Your little chat with Marius sure lit a fire under him,” Amber snapped. “So much for our plan.”

Cade winced; he had no time to explain himself. Only to wade into the crowd, shoving and worming his way through.

“Who will go?” Marius bellowed.

Cade nearly fell to his knees as the onlookers jostled him, jumping high and raising their hands to volunteer. Whatever speech he had just missed, it had been a doozy.

“Marius,” Cade said, finally elbowing his way to the front. “What are you doing?”

The commander grinned at Cade and tugged at his arm, pulling him onto the log beside him.

“And we have our little mascot to thank for this revelation,” Marius cried, even as the Codex whispered a translation in Cade’s ear. “Once again, he brings weapons of another age to aid us. But this … this will win us the war. This will bring us home!”

The men cheered again, and it was all Cade could do to hiss in his ear.

“You should have spoken to me first,” he said, and Marius grasped his arm, raising it in forced triumph and pulling Cade close.

“I am the commander here,” Marius replied through grit-toothed smile. “You should thank me for even giving you credit.”

There was a mad excitement in his eyes, and Cade saw the corruption of desire there. And it was he who had planted it.

Marius had always seemed to Cade a man on the brink between benevolence and despotism. Teetering between a good person and bad. Cade had fed the worst of his desires, and this was the result.