There were a million good reasons why Lina wouldn’t have ended her engagement right then and there—these eavesdropping cads being one of them—but still, it stung.

Lina returned, sitting beside Bri and picking up her cards. Her knee pressed into Bri’s from under the table, and the tightness in Bri’s muscles eased as she pressed hers back. It was all Lina needed to do to let Bri know she understood what Bri must be feeling.

“Swifthill has eyes out for Cole,” Lina announced to the table as if they didn’t already know.

“The guards last spotted Cole racing southeast,” Rua said. “I don’t think he’s returning to Swifthill. It looked like he was cutting inland toward the High Mountains.”

Remy snorted. “A terrible idea.”

Hale idly rubbed his thumb up and down the outside of her arm. “He clearly has no plan if he’s headed that way. There’s nothing but unforgiving forests and icy peaks. He’ll sooner freeze to death than get up and over one of those summits.”

“I don’t understand what made him bolt like that.” Lina considered her cards and then Hale. “What truth had we been circling that made him abandon his ploy?”

“Something about his ancestor,” Rua said, shaking her head. “But he’d been so forthcoming. . . . It’s bizarre.”

Bri’s hand dropped under the table and she squeezed Lina’s knee. Lina pulled her bottom lip between her teeth at the action before Bri released Lina’s knee and returned her hand to her cards.

Talhan sneezed—a fake sneeze. It was convincing enough that no one else noticed it, but Bri knew. It was something they’d made up as children to mean “I see you.” He’d spotted her hand drifting below the table and was calling her out on it in a way only he could.

She gave him a sideways glance and he smirked. When was the last time they’d used that little code? Probably when she was pickpocketing from their father’s coin purse or swiping her finger through the frosting of an uncut birthday cake. They’d created so many little shorthands between them over the years that sometimes they had people convinced they could truly read each other’s minds.

Relief cracked through her again that they were no longer fighting. Talhan knew her like nobody else. He’d seen the way Bri was treated as a child. He knew how hard-won becoming the person she wanted to be was.