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Riona put a hand on Dougal’s arm, and he did not have it in him to brush it away. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry they’re gone as well. They were our companions, our patrol, our teammates.”

“They were more than that,” said Dougal. “There’s something else I have to tell you.” He stressed the last word as he looked at Riona and fished out the locket around his neck. “Something I should have said before.”

Dougal opened the locket and sighed as if he hoped he might finally get rid of his last breath. “Vala,” he said, looking at the cameo. “Sweet, beautiful, wonderful Vala.”

“What about her?”

“We … were married, right before we left Lion’s Arch,” Dougal said, his words falling like hammer blows. “Vala was my wife.”

He looked up to see Riona scowling at him. Her eyes burned with anger and grief in the dying light of the setting sun. For a moment Dougal was sure she was going to strike him, and he wished she would.

But she didn’t; rather, she stood up and stalked off, grabbing her traveling cloak and wrapping it tightly around her. She settled in the doorway of the ruined house, her back to the rest of the group.

Dougal stood up now, unsteady and wet-faced, and took two steps toward her. Gullik looked at him, hard, and shook his head. Dougal froze, then nodded in agreement. There was no comfort he could offer her, not for this. Instead the norn picked himself up and walked over toward the shattered doorway, setting himself down against a crumbling wall, not so close as to crowd the human woman, but not so far away that if she wanted to talk, she would have to raise her voice.

Ember and Kranxx laid out their own bedrolls without comment and, with muttered good nights, stretched themselves out. Dougal sat by the cold fireplace for a long time. As the sun died, he knew he would not get any rest before they had to move on.

They moved through the night in silence now, Ember leading. Riona would not stay near Dougal: when he was near her, she would change her position in the group, sometimes leading, sometimes trailing the party. Gullik remained somber as well, and nothing that Kranxx said could coax him out.

The land grew more open and rolling, and the forests thicker and older, like spots of dark ebony in the night. In the distance Dougal could see fires from the camps and homesteads of the charr, but none of them were close enough to pose any threat. They also encountered fence lines, metal wire strung between wooden posts and interrupted by rusted gates, simultaneously a sign of ownership and a reminder that these paths were not often used. This was a land unvisited by the wars with the humans.

Dougal kept his silence as well, until Ember finally said, “I don’t understand you humans.”

Dougal looked over at Riona, her eyes forward, marching straight ahead. “Don’t ask me. I hardly understand us, either.” Her anger of the previous night had abated into a cold, dull fury, and she had said not more than three words so far in the evening’s march, and all of them to Ember.

“If I understand you correctly, you and Riona were, for lack of a better word, close,” said the charr.

“For lack of a better word,” admitted Dougal.

“Yet, she remained in Ebonhawke and you … left.” Ember skirted around the question of desertion. “And you and another friend became … close … as well.”

“More than close,” said Dougal. “We were married. We wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“And so you did, at least in her case,” said Ember, thinking it through but shaking her head. “What bothers me is that Riona was unfazed by the description of her friends being slain. Even when you had to admit slaying one of your companions to end his suffering. But when you admitted that one of them was your wife, then she got angry.”

Dougal looked at Ember’s shadowed form in the darkness. The charr seemed honestly curious. “Human relationships are hard to explain to other races.”

Ember snorted, “Oh, I understand. Charr relationships have all that stage drama as well. We