Rhys wasn’t able to unwind one bit until the group was safely back in Springen’s fold, with Dorothea being tucked in at the Novak residence so she would have people less busy than Rhys, Shark, and Rhys’ parents to watch over her the following day. Shark had stayed behind to care for her, and Cerid stuck with the two of them for his own reasons. That left him alone with Ariana as they headed home, to his great joy.

He didn’t have the energy for pretenses anymore. None of it seemed to matter in the face of what he had done that day. “So. What will you tell Iree?”

She wore a rare smirk when she turned to him. “Don’t worry. She’ll hear that you did a perfect job.”

He definitely didn’t like that look on her face, though it suited her more than anger. “What’s funny, Ariana?”

“Seeing you squirm. It’s not a good feeling, is it? Not having a place.”

Rhys kept his tone mild despite his anger. “Whose side are you on?” He understood having to prove himself, but it still stung to have Iree and Ariana so obviously against him.

Her gaze was level, unbothered. “My own. Don’t act like it isn’t the same for you. If Iree could still trust you, neither of us would be in this position, and if you had an ounce of conviction, none of this would have happened. You have no idea what I would do with power like yours.” She laughed. “And that’s an interesting question, you know. Whose side am I on? Seriously? I owe you nothing. I owe Sacer and Ghuria alike nothing at all. You’re only pussyfooting around because you yourself feel like you owe something you’re not willing to give. It’s insufferable.”

It was hard to think of a good comeback to something so undeniably true. “What would you have me do?”

“Pick something to fight for and just do it. Absolute fool,” she muttered. “By the way? Your suspicions of me are something I’m used to. It’s never changed anything, and it won’t now.”

As she turned, Rhys croaked, “Is Sirpo really gone?”

She didn’t stop moving, and the reply that drifted over her shoulder was just as casually bitter as the others. “Of course it is. Don’t ask useless questions.”

It was a warning, telling him not to go somewhere he wasn’t meant to. Or maybe that was his paranoia talking, and she was telling him not to be an idiot and challenge something that was fact. Either way, he wasn’t sure. An unquenchable anxiety stirred in him and, despite how the need for sleep was clinging to his very bones, he followed the impulse to turn around and right back out into the forests and trudge towards a region of snow and mountains.

When a hand clamped down on his shoulder from behind, he almost screamed.

“And don’t forget you’re being watched,” Ariana whispered, then drifted away just as silently as she had come.

Rhys covered his mouth to muffle his panicked breathing and checked over his shoulder a few times. He hadn’t known she could sneak so well, or maybe he was just getting dull from being so tired in every which way. But her words were far more important. If she was to be his enemy, why warn him of this? Was he truly under surveillance, or was it a bluff? Could the whole thing be a convoluted trick to make him overthink and fear as he was doing right now? As he turned towards home, overwhelmed by a wave of despairing cowardice, he was hit with the stark truth that the number of people in the world he could trust with his everything had lately decreased, without mercy, to one.