For the rest of the day, the King’s forces followed Suti al-Suri’s scouts through the desert. During the night, they stopped for a few hours of rest. By the flickering light of their campfires, they fed themselves and cared for their mounts. Then they sprawled on the cold sand to sleep under a broad sweep of stars and a fragment of moonlight.

For reasons of her own, the devotee of Spirit took King Bifalt aside.

She was little more than a shape in the night. It covered her features like shadows. But her robe seemed to gather the starlight, transforming her to a faint shimmer among the dunes.

Behind them, only the sentries stirred. Too frustrated to rest, Prince Jaspid watched over them. Everyone else had fallen like stones into pools of sleep. There were no sounds from the camp apart from the snuffling of the horses, the soft hiss of sand under the mounts’ hooves, the cracking of embers.

Bifalt expected Amandis to ask for the tale of the war. He was ready with a blunt, foreshortened version. The direction of her thoughts surprised him.

She stood half facing him, gazing away across the camp at the opposite dune. Her voice was a whisper in the night.

“This is difficult for me, King, but I must endure it. You have earned more respect than I once gave you. Now I am troubled by questions of arrogance. I will tell you a thing that only Elgart knows.

“I have never been beaten, not once in my life. But the Archpriest overcame me.” Seen from the side, her eyes reflected a hint of flames. “Much as I struggled to refuse him, I was not enough. If Elgart had not saved me, I would have sacrificed”—she made a helpless gesture—“everything.

“I am here to make amends.”

Bifalt resisted an impulse to hold his breath. By Elgart’s account, his role in Makh’s defeat had been trivial. The most holy devotee saw it differently.

But she was not done. While he absorbed that revelation, she offered another.

“I have seen my sister in Spirit Lylin.”

Involuntarily, he flinched. He could not hear that name without reacting. Yes, Lylin had saved Estie’s life more than once. But she had also beaten Jaspid almost to death.

“She came to our homeland from the Last Repository while I was there. Her tale is her own. I will not share it. But I will tell you a thing that Elgart does not know.

“She has refused our men. That is uncommon. Our men are more than desirable. Like our children, they are precious. Many approached her. She refused them all. When I left our homeland, she did the same by a different path.” Amandis shrugged. “She did not say why. I did not ask. But now I begin to suspect that she also seeks to make amends.”