“Their trees?” It was as though a stream of ice water shot through her, turning molten anger hard and sharp-edged. “They live in trees.”

“Not anymore. They live like Ivinscontians now.”

She pressed down the confusion. The anger was better, crisper, brightening her vision like daytime. “They would have been annexed anyway. If I hadn’t come up with a strategy, someone else would.”

“Frances nearly got the king to retreat,” Brella cried, wiping her eyes.

“Well, she didn’t, Brella.” The name was sticky hot in her mouth. “I can’t apologize for being good at what I do.”

“You are good.” Brella pressed her lips together, inhaling a steady breath through her nose. “You are. Come be good for Frances.”

That knocked her back. Her knees wobbled. “What?”

“You know what he did. I told you. Kyria and the Western Wilds didn’t want to be part of Ivinscont. He’s going to take more and more. You know what it’s like for them, now. You can’t pretend you don’t.”

“I don’t know why it should matter to me,” she said, feeling the lie cauterize whatever was open and bleeding inside her until it was nothing but numbness.

Brella stumbled back. “What?”

“You’re clearly not a soldier. You just gave up your whole plan. I can go back now. Sure, I’ll be thrown in a dungeon, but the king will free me once I tell him that his daughter left to build an army against him. That there’s a maid in his castle who is working for the resistance. That he should prepare for a Koravian invasion.

“Scratch,” Brella croaked. “No.”

“Pity I didn’t figure out who the contact inside the castle is. But at least I can tell the king to watch out for one.”

“Scratch, please. You’re angry. I get it. But this isn’t you.”

“How the hells would you know who I am?” Brella didn’t know her at all. How could she, when Scratch wasn’t even sure anymore who she was? Everything she had thought before the banquet, before the princess disappeared, before she had seen the end of her life on the executioner’s block—she had been right. If it hadn’t been for this small, insidious resistance group, Scratch could have had everything she wanted. A command. A life. Everything.

Everything she still wanted. Didn’t she?

Brella shifted, her eyes going cool. “You’re right,” she sneered. “I don’t know who you are. Here I thought you had realized what you’d done. How many deaths you’ve caused. But I was right all along, wasn’t I? Soldiers are cruel and mercenary and selfish. How could I have thought differently?”

Scratch could barely breathe. “I’m going back.” She made sure her knife was strapped in its sheath. “I won’t take you in. I’ll show you that mercy. But I’m going.”

“What about James?”