“He could learn a trade,” she said. “And then…we could visit him sometimes.” She looked up at him hopefully. “Maybe…without training…the magic would just…go away.”

“You think so? Or is that what Reid says? Do you think Willo would send Dancer away if it was as easy as that?”

She shook her head. “No. Only…the Demonais don’t want Dancer to go to Oden’s Ford.”

A great cold fury was growing in Han’s middle, spreading into his extremities. “You don’t want him here, but you don’t want him to go to Oden’s Ford. You just want him to disappear, is that it?”

“No! I love Dancer. It’s just…Reid is worried about training up a wizard who knows the Spirits so well. Who is privy to clan secrets. What if he comes back…on the wrong side?” She looked at Han appealingly.

“I don’t know much about politics,” Han said, his voice brittle as river ice. “I just try to get by. But if you ask me, you’re treating Fire Dancer like the enemy. And I can’t think of a better way to drive him to the other side. You do what you want, but whatever side Dancer’s on, I’m there.”

That was what he’d been trying to tell Dancer. So he’d know he wasn’t alone. That Han would go with him, and help him if he could.

Han looked up and saw that Bird was crying, tears sliding silently down her cheeks. Han couldn’t recall ever seeing that before.

“Hey, now,” he said after a few minutes of this. “Come on. We’ve been together forever. We’ll work it out.”

“All I ever wanted…was to be a Demonai warrior,” she whispered. “And now, whatever I do, I’m betraying someone.”

“You just have to remember who your friends are, is all,” Han said. “Maybe you have something to teach the Demonais about loyalty.”

“I didn’t speak up for him at the ceremony,” she said, swiping at her nose.

“I didn’t either.” He sat next to her and put an arm around her, and she turned toward him, burrowing her face into his shoulder. He patted her back awkwardly, trying not to notice her chest pressed against his. She smelled of pine and leather and summer in the uplands.

Bird raised her head and looked up at him, her lashes wet and clumped together. She slid her arms around his neck, pulling his head down, and suddenly they were kissing like desperate people, like it was the last kiss either one of them would ever get. He lowered her down to the rock, kissing her nose, her eyelids, every part he could reach, and she slid her hands under his shirt, pressing him closer, her hands warm and rough against his back.

It was the first thing in a long time that made him happy.