“Now I’m protecting you.”

“I’d be all alone. I can’t do this alone.”

“You won’t be alone,” Tal said, and looked up at Elan again. Tal’s eyes were damp, too, and his gaze pinned Elan down.

“I’ll help you,” Elan said. “I’ll do anything I can. I’d do…I’d do anything for you.”

Jae didn’t even look at him, just buried her face in Tal’s shoulder. “I don’t care about anyone else. I don’t want to live without you.”

“But I want you to,” Tal said. “I want you to live, and go on living, and let everyone else live, too. And I want you to finish what we started, and I want you to swear to me that you will.”

Jae didn’t answer, but Tal wrapped his arms around her and stroked her back. He glanced at Elan, then away, and Elan ached because he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t take this burden from them, and he didn’t even know how to comfort Jae. Tal was the only one who could do that, and Elan would make a poor substitute at best. But he meant what he said: he’d do anything for her. If the best he could do was give them privacy, then he would.

He turned toward the opening in the tree trunk and mumbled, “I’ll find us something to eat,” and left them to the pain he’d never really be able to understand.

They built their camp under the trees again, this time closer to where the trees gave way to the cliff and the staircase down to the Well. It required shoving some bushes out of the way, breaking their branches until there was enough room for the three of them to sit and eat.

Jae was numb, and barely even tasted the roots Elan had laid out in a nest of embers to cook. She wasn’t hungry, but ate anyway, more from habit than anything else. She’d almost never had enough to eat before in her life; the idea of turning down food was just too foreign. A meal was a meal.

It would be Tal’s last meal.

She hadn’t even had time to accept what rebinding the Well would require when he’d volunteered to sacrifice himself, carving a pit out of her heart. It didn’t matter that what he and Elan said made sense. It didn’t matter that she’d be better able to protect Aredann, free the Closest, than Elan alone.

“You don’t have to…Everyone at Aredann might already be dead,” she said, her voice rusty.

Tal looked up sharply. “I won’t believe that.”

“It might be for nothing. You can’t—”

“You were going to,” Tal said. “For that same ‘maybe.’ And I don’t think they’re dead.”

“But—”

“And even if they are,” he said, pressing ahead, over her objections, “there are other estates with no water that might be abandoned. If I can’t save the Closest at Aredann, I will save the others, and give you the time to free them.”

Jae looked away from him. She knew she should be ashamed that she was so willing to bargain away other Closests’ lives for Tal’s, but she’d accepted that awful choice days ago, when she’d been willing to trade him for every other Closest at Aredann.

Tal tossed aside a fruit rind. “I think the fruit out here is better than anything in Aredann’s orchards. I visited them once, you know.”

“I remember,” Jae said.

Tal turned to Elan, somehow managing to smile. Jae knew it was forced, but it seemed to fool Elan. “We were infants when our mother was brought into the household to nurse Lady Shirrad. We came in with her. We were never supposed to leave the grounds, not unless we were ordered to. Which we never were.”

“But you found a way,” Elan said. To his credit, he didn’t ask how.

“Yes. I was…twelve, I think. It was before our mother died. Lady Shirrad said she wanted dates. Of course, she probably meant the dried ones they kept in the kitchen, but she didn’t specify, so I decided to find some that were fresh. Still on the tree, in fact.”

Elan gave a slight, awkward laugh. Tal’s smile broadened, and he cast his glance over at Jae. She tried to return the smile that Tal so obviously wanted from her, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Our mother was very, very angry when I told her. She asked where I’d been all day. I could have been caught.” He paused significantly, then leaned in a little to add in a conspiratorial whisper, “If any of the Avowed figured out what I was up to, they might have realized she got up to it, too. I’d have ruined it for all of us.”

“And I suppose all of the Closest did the same,” Elan said.

“Only a few,” Tal said. “Those of us who were more creative than others at how we carried out orders. And who paid a lot of attention to what the Avowed really said instead of what they meant to say. I learned it from her.”

Elan cast a questioning look at Jae, who shook her head. “I was never any good at it. But…” She cleared her throat. It didn’t matter what Tal confirmed now. “But Tal always stole enough for both of us.”

“I never stole,” Tal said. “The Closest worked the land, grew the crops, tended the beasts—it was as much ours as any Avowed’s, when you think about it like that. And it’s not my fault if no one ever told me not to take things.”

“It sounds like you’re very lucky no one ever caught on,” Elan said. “Though I’m sure you had a story ready in case someone ever did.”

“No story,” Jae said. “No lies.”

“Just a little bit of truth,” Tal agreed. Voice going high and tremulous, he said, “It’s just, Lady Guardian, I know you always mean to care for all of us Closest as part of Aredann. I only didn’t want to bother you with it!”

Jae actually did laugh at that, despite herself. Tal was mad if he thought Shirrad cared even a little—he had to, if he’d said it—but then again, Shirrad clearly cared for him. Maybe that made it easier for him to believe the rest, that all he’d been doing was taking care of the Closest for her.

He’d always taken care of them.

Jae’s laugh turned into a choked sob, and a second later his arms were around her, holding her close. But only for a moment before he stood up and offered her a hand.

“Come on. It’ll be sunset in a minute. Elan said it’ll be glorious.”