“We tried to warn her not to overdo it,” Shanti was saying in a hushed voice from around the corner. “She’s exhausted, and rightfully so. She hasn’t given her body any time at all to recover from the battle and the miscarriage.”

“Tell me,” Philige prompted.

“Standig, I’ll let you fill him in,” Shanti excused herself.

“Standig?” Lolo didn’t need to see Philige’s face to know that he was beside himself with worry despite Lolo's insistence that she was just tired.

She heard Standig sigh heavily. “Ok. I'll give it to you straight. Lolo’s been amazing, Philige. While you've been out, she’s been running the Bear Tribe and the military, and cleaning everything up after the battle. All that in addition to her primordial responsibilities, interrogating Tamkhee, and passing you energy every night. Plus, I know that she hasn’t been sleeping well, and you saw her condition after the battle.”

There was a lull in the conversation during which Lolo heard someone slide down the wall.

“Lolo’s tough, Philige. She’ll pull through this. She just needs some rest now that she knows you're ok.” Lolo heard another body sink to the floor. “You haven’t told me how you managed to beat the poison yet.”

“Jadu told me that he’d been trying to extract poison from some of the soldiers using his blue fire in an effort to get a clean sample for his research, but it wasn’t working. He had the idea to try it on me, knowing that Lolo had been passing me energy. He thought maybe that would help, and, at that point, trying couldn’t hurt. Apparently, Lolo’s energy had already been isolating the poison throughout my body, so when Jadu went to extract it, he extracted all of it without hardly trying. He got his clean poison sample to run tests on, and the poison was completely eliminated from my system.”

“Like her energy was shielding you from the poison already,” Standig snorted. “That heart bond thing is really something.”

“It’s already saved my life twice,” Philige agreed. “Not to mention all the soldiers that were with me when the shield activated during the battle and all the soldiers it will save by helping Jadu develop an antidote.”

Another lull.

"Philige, there's another matter we need to discuss," Standig said. "I told you that Lolo's been interrogating Tamkhee."

"Right?"

"We need to call a tribe leader's meeting to discuss his information."

"'Want me to call it?"

"Lolo was going to write up the invitations after her meetings today, but-"

"I'll take care of it. When should I call the meeting?"

"The sooner the better."

“How about this weekend?”

“So, what? Five days? That would work.”

Lolo heard the guys stand up to walk out, and, relieved that Philige was awake and well, Lolo smiled and rolled over to accept the sleep she’d been ordered to get.

***

“You’re awake!”

Huo Lohse opened her eyes and was surprised to find herself in her own room. “Ulana, what’s going on?”

“According to Shanti and Jadu, you’re the worst at taking medical advice. They warned you not to overdo it. Going for a run when you can barely even walk is generally not recommended.”

“No, I remember that part. I mean, why am I waking up in my room? I fell asleep in the hospital.”

“You’re not injured or anything, just tired, and maybe a little anemic still. Shanti figured that you might rest better in your own room than in the hospital (you kept tossing and turning in the hospital), and your husband wasn’t exactly torn up about bringing you home,” Ulana winked.

“How long was I out?”

“About twenty-four hours.”

“Oh…. Where is Philige?”

“Well, let’s see. It’s lunchtime, so he should be walking in to check on you right about-”

There was a short knock on the door and it swung open.

“-now,” Ulana grinned, impressed by her own timing, and stood up from the chair pulled next to the bed. “I’ll just see myself out.”

“Thank you, Ulana,” Lolo called after her, and Ulana waved over her shoulder without looking back before shutting the door behind her.

Both Philige and Lolo were too relieved to see each other alive, awake, and generally well to find much to say. Neither of them knew how to express their thoughts or feelings adequately anyway, so neither of them tried. It was enough just to be together.

“Are you going to come here?” Lolo eventually broke the silence.

Right. Philige was content to gawk at her from across the room, but holding her sounded even better. Obediently, he sat down next to her on the bed and pulled her into his lap. No words were necessary as they held each other and cried.

***

“Eureka!” Jadu jumped out of his seat.

“What?!” Shanti ran to look over his shoulder.

“As you know, I previously identified two toxins in this poison that, honestly, should make you feel miserable and will cause the symptoms we’ve been observing, but they don’t account for the lethality we’ve been seeing. I thought that they might be interacting in a way that made the poison lethal, however, there’s a third, especially deadly toxin in much lower quantities that’s been masked.”

“What is it?”

Jadu almost laughed. “It’s The King’s Snare again.”

Shanti gave him an odd look. “Really? That’s super treatable, but we haven’t seen any symptoms that would make sense.”

“... because they’ve been masked by the other toxins. It’s quite clever, actually. Deliver poisons that mask the one that’s actually deadly. Makes a very treatable poison a lot harder to diagnose in time to cure.”

“If you say so,” Shanti shrugged.

***

“Captain,” Lolo nodded in greeting.

“Huo Lohse, what brings you here?” Tamkhee asked, surprised to see her.

“I’m here to invite you to a tribe leader’s meeting in two days. We leave tomorrow.”

“I’m not a tribe leader.” With his face healing, Lolo could identify the annoyance in his expression.

“But you are our informant. You said you want to stop this war.”

“I did.”

“Then help me stop it.”

“By going to a tribe leader’s meeting, as a prisoner and the son of everyone’s greatest enemy? What will that accomplish?”

“Tell everyone what you told us. I’ll vouch for you.”

Tamkhee snorted.

“And you won’t be attending as a prisoner. You’ll be attending as our informant.”

“As a turn-coat, you mean.”

“As one of the bravest men I’ve ever met.”

He laughed a half-hearted, ironic laugh. “Brave? I’m no hero, Huo Lohse. Most people will see me as little more than the traitor to my own tribe that I am.”

“But you don’t honestly believe that, captain. And neither do I.”

Tamkhee studied her face. He couldn’t perceive any hidden meaning or ulterior motive behind her words. He wasn’t used to such candor and ingenuousness.

“I’m offering you an opportunity, captain. Come to the tribe leader’s meeting, help us defeat the Dragon General, and we will help you reclaim and rebuild the Dragon Tribe... your home.”

“My home?”

“Yes. The people and place you were willing to risk torture and death to try to save. You’re no traitor, captain. Will you come?”

“I… I’ll come.”

Lolo smiled and turned to leave, nodding to the two guards to give the order to have Tamkhee released. As she walked out, the guards, still suspicious of him, unlocked Tamkhee’s cell and brought him outside where he was marched to a cabin for a bath and a change of clothes.

“I see that you took the deal.”

Startled, Tamkhee wheeled around to find Standig lounging on a chair in the corner of the room. “Standig, what do you want?”

Standig stood up, raising himself very intentionally to his full height. “I’m here to give you a warning, Tamkhee Yudha.” Taking a few steps closer to force Tamkhee to crane his neck in order to look him in the eyes, Standig continued, “Lolo might trust you, Tamkhee, but I do not. Take one step out of line, hurt one hair on her head, and I will crush you.”

There was absolutely no question in Tamkhee’s mind that Standig would and could follow through on that promise-- most likely literally.

***

Tamkhee was uncomfortable at best as they walked along the north road to the tournament grounds for the tribe leader’s meeting, collecting dignitaries from the smaller tribes along the way as they went. For starters, Standig had become his personal shadow, and there was no denying how intimidating he was. Second, apart from Jadu, who really didn’t count anymore, Tamkhee was the only dragon invited to attend this meeting. For another thing, the Bear Tribe soldiers accompanying them seemed to regard him with a particular brand of annoyance, mistrust and something along the lines of disgust. He couldn’t exactly blame them, but the disgust was hard to swallow. The soldiers seemed particularly offended every time he tried to interact with the wolf princess. Sure, the princess was young and pretty, and she undoubtedly inspired them with her considerable skill and approachable charm, but this extreme of a reaction was befuddling. Tamkhee did his best to ignore it, but he had this nagging suspicion that he was missing something obvious.

His suspicions were confirmed when Philige stopped the group to refill water bags in a clean mountain spring.

“Tribe Leader,” the lieutenant commanding the guard approached Philige, “how are you holding up? I understand that you and the queen were injured in the battle? Ms. Bhuje made me promise to check in with both of you periodically.”

Philige, the Bear Tribe leader, was married?! How had he missed that?!

Philige smiled, “I’m doing well. How are you, sweetheart?”

Tamkhee didn’t hear her response. Huo Lohse?! Huo Lohse Lang was his wife?! That would make her the-

“Bear Queen, I was told that you called this meeting,” General Starkam said. “I was wondering what the plan is and if I needed to be aware of anything.”

Tamkhee couldn’t believe that he’d missed this. How long had the Bear Tribe leader been married? How had the dragon military’s intelligence network failed to report such a high profile event? A wedding between the Bear Tribe leader and the Wolf Tribe princess?! That’s huge news! That’s a permanent alliance! No wonder the bear soldiers seemed so repulsed by his interactions with Huo Lohse. He had been treating her as he always had, casually using her name, dropping all formalities. And, like an idiot, while they were beating him for information, he’d just kept repeating that he needed to speak with Huo Lohse Lang, the Wolf Tribe princess. It was almost comical.

The expression on his face must have been very interesting, because Fortus Arum was studying it with the same look Tamkhee used when he was assessing someone’s emotional reactions for tactical information. He and Fortus were cut from a similar cloth, both raised by their military general fathers. The difference was that Fortus’s father had actually loved him. In light of recent events, Tamkhee wasn’t sure if his own father ever had.

“You didn’t know,” Fortus stated simply.

“Know what?” Tamkhee deflected automatically.

“I knew that you hadn’t heard the news when you surrendered to us, but I’m a little surprised that you didn’t piece it together before now.”

“How long?”

“Have they been married? Beginning of June.”

“Four months?!”

“Your spies didn’t bother mentioning it?” Fortus chuckled.

Tamkhee was deep in thought. “No. Actually, now that I think about it, I haven’t heard a report from our intelligence network in quite a while. Not since before the Wolf Tribe battle.”

Now it was Fortus’s turn to think. “Did something happen to your network?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“No intelligence reports at all for over eight months? Did the dragons simply stop caring about gathering intelligence?”

Tamkhee couldn’t believe that and shook his head. “That would just be stupid. Unless….” It dawned on him. “... unless the reports no longer mattered.”

“You mean, unless the Dragon General was already certain that he was going to win?”

“If who lives and who dies doesn’t make any difference to him, intelligence reports wouldn’t matter.”

“His hidden army is created using the souls of the dead,” Fortus completed the thought. “It doesn’t matter if those souls are from the Dragon Tribe or elsewhere.”

Tamkhee nodded solemnly.

“We don’t have much time,” Fortus realized out loud. Tamkhee couldn’t agree more.