Late in the afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds, briefly treating David and the werewolves to a rainbow that felt like a mockery of the blood they kept spilling. When they arrived at the designated campsite, everything smelled of wet grass and leaves, and David’s headache faded a little as the Rot disappeared back to wherever it went. He couldn’t tell if that was because of the change in weather, or because he was surrounded by most of his force.

The werewolves were keeping it simple: just a few holes to light fires in, and bigger ones for latrines—well away from where the food was being prepared. They had no tents, or bedrolls, no rum rations or cooks to prepare food, nor any of the other accommodations the Valoise dragged along. Nobody complained, though. The older werewolves were used to doing without, and the unsettled ones were getting used to sleeping as wolves quickly.

David wandered around, checking on his guard postings, and the unsettled veterans, with Vigo following him around closely as a bodyguard. New moon was coming fast, and he could never trust that none of the unsettled ones would lose themselves to madness ahead of schedule. Once he was happy with their security, he found Fleur, who was in charge of the goods they had raided—both the silver armour and the food stores—to see what they had left and what he wanted from that. Supplies weren’t a problem yet—they were still getting plenty of food from the villages they burned every day ahead of the Valoisian army. And of course the pisscoats’ own supply trains.

In fact, he had just sat down to roast some meat on a stick, when Ragna and Rust returned from one of their runs. Their human faces and hands were covered in flecks of dried blood, roughly scrubbed off. Just from killing lifestock, David hoped, but he didn’t ask.

While they settled down with their own food, he just hummed to himself, one of the more catchy hymns of the Valoise. It had been stuck in his head since he had heard it sung in the camp at Port Neaf.

“Do you believe in Mithras?”

David blinked at the question. He’d been very carefully not to think about anything beyond dinner. The werewolves had even liberated some salt from one of the farmhouses. Apparently, Ragna’s question hadn’t been an idle one, though. She was looking at him across the fire pit with intention.

David shook his head.

“Why not?” Ragna wanted to know.

“Sorry?”

The Elder waved the knife at him that she had been using to scrape the worst dirt of a carrot. “Lots of hunters are in it for religion, right? And even the ones who aren’t, they still use Mithras as a justification, don’t they? For killing us.”

“Lip service, if anything,” David shrugged. “Lots of Loegrians don’t really believe. My mother’s gods are older than the Church of Mithras. And my father doesn’t believe in much at all.”

“So what about you?” Ragna asked.

David turned the skewer over so his meat wouldn’t burn. “I believe in fire,” he said finally. “And silver. I believe in the moon and the Morgulon, because I have no other choice at this point than to pray she can rid this land of the Rot we unleashed. Somehow.”

Whatever she thought she had seen in him—whatever strength she had thought he possessed when she had asked for his oath—he prayed she was right. That he really could make a difference. However small it would be. That he hadn’t damned hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians to death for nothing at all.

“The Red might help,” Rust said slowly from his other side. “He’s skittish, and he doesn’t trust humans, but if we clear out the Valoise, he might help. If the Morgulon asks him.”

If they cleared out the Valoise.

There were barely two hundred werewolves with him, and still close to sixty thousand pisscoats, despite their best efforts.

“You didn’t tell me, though,” Ragna returned to her original question. “Why you were hunting us.”

Oh. So that was what she was after.

“Just—same reason everyone else went out there,” David said.

Ragna scoffed. “No way. I know greed is a powerful motivator. But there is no way you became ‘the Relentless’ for money.”

“Money.” David considered that. “That’s how it started, sure. My mother and Greg came down with the plague. My uncle—my father’s old partner—had died recently, and he was far less successful alone. Also, quite sick. But mother and Greg… They wouldn’t have survived without magic. Which was expensive, in the middle of a plague. So I stole my father’s crossbow and went to kill a werewolf.”

He poked at the fire. “I saw a lot of amateurs try their hands at it. Watched some of them get bitten. Even let one get away myself. Was also the one who discovered the village he massacred a week later. You could call it a bit of a—formative experience. Given that I was fourteen at the time.”

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He stared down at the stick in his hands. “I swore to never let that happen again. And I didn’t. Until it was Greg.”

“Not having much luck in life, do you?” Rust commented. He leaned forwards, closer to the fire than David had ever seen him get. “So tell us. What’s with you and the duke?”

“It’s not unusual amongst the packs in the mountains,” Ragna added, before David could even try and deny anything, or come up with a lie. “Even more so since so many more men get bitten than women.”

Morgulon hadn’t said anything to them, had she? That wasn’t like her?

“If you already know,” David replied, “why even ask?”

“We know he’s been chasing after you,” Rust said. “And that you’re not principally opposed. But you are also known to look at him like you want to strangle him anytime he opens his mouth.”

“I’m tempted to do so a few times a day, yes.”

Unfortunately, the levity didn’t make the two elders let up.

“Ever kiss him?” Ragna asked.

“That is none of your business.”

“Well, in some ways it is,” Rust said. “We’ve been wondering, you see. You told the other two lords that whoever survives the war of you three might become king.”

“Yes,” David sighed. “So?”

“Well… What if the duke also survives?”

“I don't see how he could. And I don't see how it would matter, either way. It’s too late to change course, and he will hardly thank me for setting the Heartlands on fire.”

“What if we’d prefer you as king over him?” Ragna asked.

David rubbed his face wearily. “Do I get a say in that question?”

When the elders just tilted their heads, David groaned. “Look. I don’t want the crown. My time as ‘head of werewolf affairs’ were some of the worst months of my life. The last thing I want is to have to deal with all the policies, all the damn time.”

He took a deep breath. “If I have to, I’ll do it. Or rather, I’ll probably make Greg do it and just glare until people do as he says. And it’s going to be bad, because I’ll be effectively a tyrant, ruling through fear. The people of the Heartlands are even less likely to forgive me for what we’re doing here than George Louis, and unless they die by the thousands—millions—they’ll still be making up the majority of Loegrion’s people. But I’ll do it. If that’s the way to keep you all safe, I’ll take the crown.”

He poked the fire. “It’s far more likely to make your situation worse though—eventually. There will be backlash against me, sooner or later. One day, I’ll be old and less scary, and I doubt I’d be succeeded peacefully by an heir of my choosing.”

He doubted he’d even have time to become old and frail, but he didn’t say that. Ragna and Rust were already nodding silently.

“If I have to take the crown, I’ll do it,” David repeated. Because he needed them to believe he wouldn’t bolt at the final hurdle. “But I’m the worst option, I think. I picked you over the Heartlands. We need someone who can unite the country. Maybe deVale can do it. Or even deBurg, though I doubt the northern nobles would follow him.”

“So that’s why you sent deVale away?” Ragna asked.

David shook his head. “I didn’t really think of all this until we started burning the villages.”

Until he had seen the devastation they were leaving behind.

Could Lane be that uniting influence by his side? Or would she be linked too closely to him? If they really did marry.

Could Greg do it?

The rustle of paper pulled David back into the here and now. Rust held a crumpled newspaper in his hands.

“Here’s why we were wondering about the duke,” the elder said.

When he unfolded it, the first thing David saw was a picture of Lane, standing outside the palace of Deva, hands clasped behind her back. Morgulon was there, too.

“Werewolf Miracle,” the headline said. “Victims of deathcap on the mend,” followed underneath.

“We knew there was something going on,” Ragna said. “I think Pierre and the Morgulon fought. Right before full moon. Pierre stopped trying to call us back, afterwards. And there was some big magic somewhere north. When we saw this…Well. I think I can guess what happened.”

David barely heard her. Imani—did this mean she lived, too? Her, and George Louis, and maybe even deBurg’s wife and daughter…

Was that even possible?

“How…do you really think Morgulon could have enough magic to save them all? There weren’t enough healers in all of Breachpoint to save Rover…And there had to have been, what, half a dozen people lying sick?”

“More,” Rust said. “At least your fiancée makes it sound like there were more. And it does sound like they were all saved.”

“Don’t forget that they have half a dozen elders older than me at Deva,” Ragna pointed out.

“Living sources of magic,” David muttered, skimming the article.

It really did sound like all the sick were saved. And yes, that included Lady deBurg. So that meant Imani, too, surely? And George Louis…

“What are you going to do now?” Rust interrupted his thoughts.

“Nothing,” David said. “Or rather, nothing I wasn’t going to do anyways. We still have to beat the Grande Armée. George Louis being alive doesn’t really open up any new options for us.”

It would just make it more painful if they named him a traitor and stood him in front of a wall, once the war was over.

“What if the duke tries to get rid of us after the war?” Ragna asked.

“He won’t,” David said softly. “He can’t. Not until you contained the Rot for him. Which is going to take decades, I reckon. It might well be his son on the throne by then. Who was quite eager to meet his werewolf-mother.”

“So…” Ragna said slowly, “the worse we let the Rot-infestation get here…”

“There are sixty thousand enemy soldiers out there,” David reminded her. “And we’ll have to kill most of them. How can we possibly let this get worse?”

He shook himself. “Let's get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be hard enough. Can I keep this?”

When Rust nodded, he rubbed the picture on the article. They had pulled it off, hadn’t they? Lane, beating the Valoise with their own faith. And the bloody Morgulon.

He should have trusted in her power. He really should have.