The room was dark, blinds drawn over the windows, the single lamp unlit on a bedside table. At first Adare thought they were sleeping, then Birch raised his head weakly from the pillow, and she stifled a gasp. The lightning had burned him, too, but there was nothing delicate or graceful about the bright red weal smeared across half of his once-handsome face. Of the wounded eye, she could see nothing. It was either lost or the lid had burned shut. Any expression must have been excruciating for him, but he raised his brows.

“Come to finish us off, my lady?” He tried a grin, but his voice was thin as smoke.

Adare shook her head. “I wanted . . . I came to see that you were all right.”

“We’re fine,” Fulton cut in, although when he pushed himself up in his cot he looked anything but fine. The lightning had spared his face, but a rogue branch of the bolt had torn down his chest like a talon, ripping the skin apart. The bandages over the wound were heavy with seeping blood and pus, and he was even thinner than before the botched execution.

“Are they feeding you?” she demanded.

Fulton nodded. “Broth, at the moment. Neither of us can hold down much more.”

He narrowed his eyes, studying her. “Your face, your neck. You are well?”

“Well enough,” she said, nodding.

“Thanks be to Intarra,” the man murmured.

“For what?” Birch asked. “Grilling us like fish on a skewer?”

“For sparing the princess,” the older man replied.

“I thought it was prophet now,” Birch said. “Didn’t I hear something about a prophet?”

Adare nodded weakly. “That’s what some of the people are saying.”

“And what about us?” he asked, gesturing to his face. “Are we prophets, too?”

“We are soldiers,” Fulton ground out, warning heavy in his tone. “The same as we have always been.”

“The same?” Birch demanded. “I don’t think so.”

For a moment the two men seemed to forget that she was there, glares locked like the horns of rutting bulls. Adare could only watch, her legs too weak to carry her forward, her mouth too dry to speak. At last Birch turned his head away, shoved the blinds aside, and stared out the window into the rain.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, the words flimsy as wet paper, tearing apart even as she spoke them. “I’m so sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize, my lady,” Fulton said. “You did what you had to, and so did we. Everyone’s alive. In another day or two, we’ll be able to resume our duties.”

Birch kept his eyes on the window, and his voice was so low when he spoke that Adare wasn’t sure she heard him clearly.

“Speak for yourself, Fulton.”

“Forgive him, my lady,” Fulton said. “The lightning has—”