“I’m going to Captain Colchester too,” I said, perhaps a little too eagerly. “I mean, to his base.”

Merlin nodded, not saying anything for a minute. And then he said, “Do you think Captain Colchester is a hero?”

“He saved my life,” I answered. “He’s saved more lives than I can count. He always puts himself last, even as he’s thinking ahead. Yes, he’s a hero.”

“I agree with you,” Merlin said, as if I were the one who brought it up in the first place. “It would be a terrible thing, this war without Colchester.”

“I can’t imagine it.” I really couldn’t. I didn’t want to—it would be awful. “If we win this war, it will be because of him.”

It was a bold thing to say—some would say ridiculous in this day and age, when an army succeeded on their technology and strategy, and success didn’t depend on any one soldier. But anyone who’d fought with Ash knew better.

“So you would agree it would be an awful thing for Captain Colchester to leave the army?”

I stared at Merlin, baffled. “Of course.”

Merlin nodded, satisfied. “Then I can trust you’ll keep your relationship with him discreet.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. He knew about our relationship? How? “What?”

“I know about the emails,” Merlin said. “The ones he wrote to you and the ones you penned back.”

“You—I—those were private,” I said, my words crackling with anger along the edges. I burned with agony to think of the things a stranger—hell, who knows how many strangers—had read. “How dare you?”

Merlin wasn’t bothered by my anger in the slightest. “The contents are safe with me, and anyway, I only gave them the most cursory of reads. It’s my job to know these kinds of things, especially about Captain Colchester. He is crucial to this war, and I believe to what will follow after. I don’t begrudge you your ardor for each other, please believe that. This isn’t a moral issue for me. However,” he continued, voice deliberate and unmistakably clear, “I cannot say the same for your army. Even in wartime.”

I glanced away from him, troubled. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew we couldn’t have been in an open relationship in the Army, but to have it put in such stark terms, outlined with such heavy stakes. It was more than our jobs on the line, it was potentially the war. Colchester was simply too valuable to risk.

Finally, I nodded at Merlin. “I understand.” Resentment prickled my mouth as I said it, but as tempting as it was to hate Merlin for knowing things he shouldn’t know, for meddling where he shouldn’t meddle, I knew it wasn’t his fault. It was the world we lived in, a world that didn’t think twice about sending boys off to kill other boys but then cringed at the idea of boys falling in love with each other.

“It won’t be forever,” Merlin promised me as the train began to slow to pull into the station. “It will be a long time, certainly, and it may feel like forever, but it won’t be. And if you truly love him, then there’s nothing you can’t sacrifice.”

“Good to have you back, Lieutenant.” Ash shook my hand, put his hand on my shoulder, let go at the appropriate time. We were surrounded by the other soldiers on base welcoming the latest batch of newcomers, most of the men there grateful for any break from the incessant comings and goings to the outposts deeper in the mountains. A break from the war.

I also made sure to let go of Ash at the appropriate time, even though I wanted nothing more than to fist my hands in his shirt and crush my mouth to his lips. Shove my hips into his so he could feel what the sight of him did to me. But Merlin’s warning hung over me like a thundercloud, and seeing Ash here, surrounded by his men and these mountains, made that warning all the clearer.

Ash had to stay here. Ash had to have his career, his future. And my feelings were a very small speck in a seething world of pain and chaos. A world that needed his order and his control.

Late that night, as I laid in bed and my thoughts bounced from anxiety to anxiety, as I recalled in painful detail all the things I’d said to Ash that Merlin must have read, as I thought about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and wondered how big a risk it all actually was, my door opened. There was no knock, no permission, no greeting. My door opened and then it closed, and then Ash was on me, kissing and biting and impatiently pushing the blankets off my body.

“The bed squeaks,” I gasped into his mouth, and he grunted in response, hauling me off the bed altogether and onto the cold vinyl floor. His hands were trembling as he found the waistband of my boxer briefs and then he laughed to himself.

“I’m like a schoolboy,” he murmured, dropping a kiss onto my forehead. “I can’t decide what I want to do—or what I want to do first.”

“Do it all,” I whispered. “Do everything.”

“I’m going to, little prince. Don’t worry.”

But as he brought me in for a bruising kiss, the fear flared past the desire. I pulled away from his mouth. “Ash, we have to be careful.”

He followed me, leaning forward to kiss me again. “We will.”

“I mean it. No one can know. Your career—”

“I don’t care about that,” he said simply. “It would be worth it.”

My heart tore with fear, because he refused to be afraid for himself. “Don’t be ridiculous—”