It was while they were on the way back that Mariella finally told Tybalt the rest of her train of thought for why she should return to the Kingdom.

  As the background moved against the moon and stars, the litter they rode on gently transporting them across the desert, he listened quietly. The necromancer nodded and made little noises of understanding but maintained a neutral expression until she was finished.

  It’s nice that he’s hearing me out patiently, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking at all, she thought nervously.

  The only reassuring thing about his manner was that he held her hand the whole time and stroked the back of it for much of her explanation.

  “So, you see, in addition to honoring my obligations to my family, I’d really be serving your interests,” she finished quietly, her eyes darting back and forth between trying to gauge his reaction and avoiding direct eye contact. “Trying to get my family to help you?” She realized she had finished on a note of uncertainty, her voice twisting as if she was asking a question, but she also couldn’t help it.

  He turned and kissed her softly.

  “I think you’ll probably never come back if you leave,” Tybalt said after a moment. “The idea of building an alliance is intriguing, but it’s not our only option. Plus, even if your family is powerful, and I know that your father is, the Divine Trust is more powerful. They’ll have put a target on my back, and they’ll go after anyone who’s important to me. We can’t assume that their methods of knowing what’s happened are limited to eyewitness reports when the gods are involved, either. The more I think about it, the more I think your assumption that you’ll be safe is unfounded. You’d be the only logical target for them right now.” His eyes darted away as if considering other possible targets, then returned to staring deep into hers. His gaze bored into her so intensely that she almost wanted to say she would do what he wanted just to change his expression. He wasn’t even angry, but it was hard to endure the feeling of being both the center of the world and a cause for concern. “I don’t want you to die, Ella. Or be tortured until you comply with their twisted demands. I want you in my arms.”

  Using that nickname like this… It made her want to lean into his offered protection just a little bit more. But I don’t need it. Right?

  “I swear, I will come back to you. My family can protect me, I can protect myself, and no one outside this place knows how I feel about you anyway… They would never torture a noble without solid evidence.” She wasn’t quite certain of that, but Tybalt seemed so sure of himself that she found herself matching his level of certainty with her reply. She lowered her voice and spoke in a sad tone. “The only real doubt I had was that I couldn’t be sure if I’d return as a friend or an enemy. If my father told me to go and guide the Royal Army to find the necromancer, what would I do then? That’s what I’ve been worried about.”

  “Well, you’d never be an enemy,” he said. “That’s not my concern.”

  “I’m not saying I’d fight you,” Mariella said, turning slowly crimson. “I don’t think I could ever do that seriously, not now. But if I show up with an army that’s been sent to hunt you down?”

  “Then I would kill everyone else and have you brought before me in chains.”

  She shuddered quietly as the image filled her mind. In her own brain, for some reason, she was also chained up in her underwear instead of armed and armored for battle.

  She struggled not to say something inappropriate. Tybalt’s face had been matter-of-fact, the topic of discussion was nonsexual and even grave, and the necromancer still looked serious, though it was sometimes hard to tell with him.

  “That’s quite an image,” she managed after a moment. “Probably fair to do that, if you needed to.”

  “It could actually happen, since you turning on us and leading the Army back here is one of the best case scenarios for what happens if you go back. At least then, you’d survive. And you know how quickly I grow. Give me a week, and I’ll be stronger than the squad was with the blessing. Give me a month, and I’ll be stronger than five squads. Give me six months, and I’ll be strong enough to take on anyone in the Kingdom. Give me a year—”

  “And what, you’ll punch out a god?” Mariella asked, laughing. She stopped when she got a look at Tybalt’s face.

  “No… but I’ll certainly be ready to overthrow the Kingdom.”

  He will, won’t he? she thought. And I… I think I want him to succeed. Is that…?

  She wondered, slightly embarrassed, if she mainly supported his ambition in her heart because he had shown her so much affection over their brief time together. Was it that simple? Was she that easily controlled?

  “What if… what if I insist on leaving?” Mariella said, her heart racing. She recognized that a part of her expected him to stop her. Not a dominant part, but some area of her mind was still suspicious of her lover.

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  What would I even do if he says he won’t let me? she chided herself silently. If he says he’s going to stop me from leaving? Asking that question out loud puts us in the position where he has to think not only about whether he thinks I’m so stupid that I’ll get myself killed, but whether he ought to restrain me for my own good like a madwoman.

  “I respect your choices, of course, Ella,” Tybalt said. The necromancer was trying to be affectionate and understanding, clearly, but the words sounded slightly tortured. “I told you that before. If you have to leave, I’ll say I’d prefer that it be as soon as possible, so you can return as soon as possible.”

  “As you wish,” Mariella replied. She sounded a little sad. She realized she was disappointed. “I’ll leave right after the banquet the villagers want to throw for us.”

  What, did I want him to fight more to keep me from leaving? Did I want him to say, ‘Then I’ll put you in chains now!’ or something? What is wrong with me?

  “But what I’d really like,” Tybalt said, “is if instead of making this decision on your own and taking all the lumps that come with it, you’d let the four of us make a decision together as a kind of family.”

  She looked at him, a little surprised by this turn in the conversation.

  “You know, when I asked, at first I thought you’d say you wanted me to trust you to make the decision,” she said after a moment.

  “No. You’d probably do what I asked, if I made it clear it was very important to me and that I wouldn’t accept you doing what you preferred, but I don’t want to run our lives that way. Not when I don’t need to.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  This is the side of him that makes me want to just instinctively do whatever he says, Mariella thought, her heart fluttering. I can tell he means it. He doesn’t want to just control me… which means that if he does tell me to do something, I should do it. Because he wouldn’t abuse that.

  “We’re not actually a family, though,” Mariella objected in a quiet voice. “Not yet. We discussed this before.”

  “No, but—I would have liked to ask this question under different circumstances, but I guess I have to do it now—do you actually want to marry me, Mariella? Because I want you. That’s why you’re here right now. That’s the only reason we’re out here together instead of me finishing off the miners on their own. Because I want you, and I wanted to spend time with you.”

  “Yes. I want to marry you.”

  Please. I really want to marry you. Every time we talk, you touch different parts of my heart, and you remind me of why I want to be yours. She couldn’t say that out loud, of course. It sounded too desperate in her head.

  “Well, wouldn’t this be a considerate act, respecting the needs of your other future family members? They don’t share your confidence or your strength. They’ve lived in fear of the Kingdom for their whole lives.”

  The foxgirl’s gentle faces sprang to Mariella’s mind.

  “That’s—”

  “And I know just how much the powers that be back in the Kingdom hate me, what I’ve become. They won’t respect any boundary that keeps them from hurting me. So, the entire time you’re gone, the rest of us will be mourning your death. That’s my guess. We can confirm with them that they feel the way I think we do. If we can think of a good method of distance communication—like if Vidalia can connect you to your father through dreams, or if we can send physical correspondence in code—and if Vidalia and Victoria share my same concerns, will you please stick around with us? People who… care about you, and only want you to be safe?”

  “All right, we’ll do it your way,” Mariella found herself saying. She thought her heart might have stopped. There was definitely a strange feeling in her chest, her throat, and her eyes. She’d had to speak through a bit of a lump in her throat.

  She didn’t realize she was crying until Tybalt wiped the tears from her cheeks. She didn’t even know why, whether it was the blatant emotional manipulation that she recognized was happening or the simple fact that she was willing to go along with it, willing to, if only partially, turn her back on her birth family. She didn’t know if Tybalt was right or wrong. But she knew she would do what he wanted.

  No one else can do this to me, she thought with a strange, savage affection. No one else can twist me the way that you do.

  She turned her head, lunged in, and kissed Tybalt deeply.

  He pushed her down onto the mattress, and they lay, exchanging physical affection, for a long time as the mattress litter moved through the valley, until they had to be transported up the side of the mountain.

  Once they were up the cliffside, on the path they had taken to the beastfolk village and back on top of the makeshift litter, they had sex again, bodies eager, mouths hungry for each other. It was quicker this time—and they both had to try to keep quiet as the zombie litter navigated in a wide semicircle around the beastfolk village—but Mariella felt as thoroughly consumed and possessed by Tybalt as she had in their previous encounters.

  It was only when they were within sight of the Twinleaf hut that the two disentangled and dressed again. Mariella gave Tybalt shy, furtive, affectionate looks while he smoldered at her as if he wanted to take her again.

  “I’ll see if they’re still up for this conversation,” Tybalt told her, caressing her hair. “If we can finish this talk while we still have the energy and the thread of the discussion fresh in our minds, I’d like that.”

  She nodded and smiled.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Mariella knew in her heart she wasn’t going anywhere, and she felt oddly relieved and grateful for the realization. She was no seer, but even if she had returned unscathed as she imagined, she felt something critical might have been lost in the interceding months.