“If you say no, that will tell them everything they need to know. They’ll know whose side you’re on. They’ll suspect I’m alive, or at least that you know more than you’re saying. It will be your death warrant.”

“That wouldn’t ever work,” Amon said, stubborn resistance on his face.

“I didn’t tell you to actually serve,” Raisa said softly. “Just say yes when they ask, all right? Practice until you’re good at it.”

“Hmmmph,” he said, not making any promises. After a pause, he said, “How did you get away? After my father was killed, I mean?”

“After your father went down, Mac Gillen dragged me off so he could see to me personally. That probably saved my life. I killed him with your father’s dagger, took his horse, and made a run for it, hoping to make Marisa Pines before they caught up with me. After I was hit, I crawled in among some rocks. When I realized that the arrow was poisoned, I knew I was done for.” She tried to keep her voice matter-of-fact, the story brief and to the point. The guilt Amon carried was heavy enough as it was.

“That’s the last I remember. I guess we’ll have to ask Han Alister the rest of it. Apparently, he showed up out of nowhere, saved my life with high magic, and brought me here to Marisa Pines.” She sighed. “Elena and Nightwalker don’t seem to believe that story.”

Amon cleared his throat. “When you disappeared from Oden’s Ford, Alister and I—we talked some. I don’t know what to make of him. I don’t know what drives him, and I don’t exactly trust him, but…” He hesitated, but his relentless honesty drove him on. “He told me he was traveling back to the Fells to look for you. He’d go via Marisa Pines Pass, and I’d take the western route. So that explains how he came to be there.”

“I don’t know what will happen when he finds out who I really am,” Raisa said. “If he even survives.” She shivered, and Amon put his arm around her, drawing her into his steady warmth.

“It’s that bad?”

Raisa nodded. “He looked…he looked awful, Amon. Willo doesn’t know if he’ll…She’s worried about him. My mother died, and I never got to tell her that I loved her, that I finally understood—just a little, anyway. If Han dies too, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She was weeping again, surrendering to grief and pain and fear. “I lied to him, Amon. Day after day after day. I pretended to be someone I wasn’t. I allowed him to get close to me, knowing that we had no future together.”

“You had no choice,” Amon said.