As I walk, citizens mill about, tidying up after the festival and trading stories of what new clothes they bought … or who they spent High Summer with. It isn’t an official tradition like staying up all night or lighting candles in every window, but it’s inevitable that I will hear of new couples and passionate flings in the coming days. Dances, wine, and the day off from warrior training tends to do that.

I blush, thinking of how Ox and I never got our dance. I’m not sure I would have been able to after what Callen said, anyway.

Skies, he had terrible timing. I hadn’t lied to him—I had thought about us before. Callen is as handsome as any other Leonodai warrior, his tanned frame lean with muscle. His messy gold-brown hair is longer than how most of the other male warriors keep theirs, but it just feels right for Callen.

Since he is a year older, he began his training ahead of me. He changed so much and was so busy in that first year that our off hours together were precious. That was when the first rays of a sunlit crush rose inside my chest. Once I wasn’t seeing him every day, I started to notice how much better everything was with him around. Still, he never made any sort of move. He was my best friend, and that was all I really needed. Now his confession is making me wonder: What is it that I want?

At last, I spot my fellow warriors-elect waiting in the shade of a tree near our assigned location. As I expected, Bel shrugs off my tardiness once I make up an excuse about going to Storm’s End first to check on my mother.

“I’m glad the sentinels told your mother and the other schoolmasters,” he says. “It’s important they know what’s going on. I think the whole city should.”

We split up to search our assigned area. The sun beats down on my back and neck as I pore over the ground, but the sound of the nearby Crescent River helps me focus.

If the sentinels aren’t telling the truth, I’ll have to go find it myself. And in order to do that, I would have to find who they were talking to—the deserter, Noam. He must be somewhere hidden in the palace, close enough so that the king could call for him at any time but not anywhere that would draw attention.

I’ve never gone into the palace by myself. It is off-limits unless you are assigned a post there, and those are reserved for fourth- or fifth-year warriors. A warrior-elect like me would have no business there. I could lie and say I was looking for Shirene, but on the chance someone took me seriously and found her for me, what would I say then?