Hoping I’m still early enough to get a breakfast ration, I head toward the canteen wagon. When I get there, Adam, Elias, and Willow are packing up the last of the morning rations. Willow is laughing while Adam waves his hands around, telling a story in a voice free of the hostility I’m used to hearing from him. I beg a piece of oat bread and a healthy dollop of goat cheese from Elias, who stares at me like I’m up on the Claiming stage until I tell him if he can’t find something better to do with his eyes, I’ll remove them from his face.

Turning from Elias, who suddenly finds the task of packing up the food far more interesting than looking at me, I jump when Quinn suddenly appears next to me. My bread goes flying out of my hand and nearly slaps him in the face.

He leaps back and catches it before it hits the ground. “Throwing food at me?”

“You startled me.” I grab my breakfast from him and take a bite.

“Next time I’ll announce my intention to walk up to you at least three minutes before I actually arrive.” His face is as stoic as ever, but a gleam of sly laughter lurks in his dark eyes.

Huh. Quinn has a sense of humor. Who knew?

“I think you’d look good in goat cheese. Might be an improvement.” I poke his chest and take another bite.

His left brow climbs toward his hairline. “Did you just insult me?”

“Only if you disagree with my opinion.”

He smiles slowly. “Do you have plans this morning?”

I shrug.

“I was hoping you could help me decide which weapons to assign to which trainees.”

I look him up and down—battered leather pants, half-laced tunic, scuffed boots—and see no evidence of a weapon of his own. “And which weapon to assign to you, too, right?”

The laughter disappears from his eyes, and he starts walking toward the wagons. “I don’t carry a weapon anymore. And I’m getting tired of making that clear to both you and Logan.”

I hurry to catch up to him, stuffing the last of my breakfast in my mouth and swallowing quickly. “You need one. We have a lot of enemies—”

He turns on his heel and stops directly in my path. I nearly plow into him, and manage to sidestep just in time.

“No.” His voice is cold, but something burns in his eyes.

“I know you’re good. I saw it for myself when you fought Carrington outside the gate.” I look away for a moment as I remember his promise to stay by my side and sacrifice himself with me so I could have my shot at the Commander. “But you’d be even better with a weapon.” And by better, I mean safer.

“Do you really think I need a sword to destroy any threat that comes at me?”

I cross my arms and stare him down. “How should I know what you’re capable of?”

“Because I told you.”

It takes a moment to realize he means the conversation we had in the Wasteland when he told me he’d once killed a man he wasn’t sure deserved it. “You told me you—” A woman walks by us, a large basket of dandelion greens cradled in her arms. I lower my voice. “You told me you killed a man, but that doesn’t mean you can constantly fight trained predators without a weapon in your hand and expect to live.” I gesture toward his leg. “You got cut the last time you fought. Next time, it could be much worse. You’re good, Quinn, but not good enough to keep taking on armed soldiers and expect to survive. Be reasonable.”

“I can do damage enough with my bare hands. I’m not changing my mind on this.”

Oh, how cute. He thinks he can out-stubborn me.

“I’m not changing my mind, either,” I say, my voice a harsh whisper between us. “We have enemies. Real enemies. And a bunch of untrained people who will probably panic and forget which end of the sword to grab if we’re ever attacked. We need you to be able to help.”

“You don’t think I helped yesterday? And the day before?”

“You did. But how long could you have held out if they’d cornered you? It was only a matter of time.” I blow a wayward strand of hair out of my face. “Look, Willow told me you don’t like to even spar anymore, and now you’ve had to fight soldiers twice in two days. I get that it goes against your principles. I know I’m asking a lot, but—”

“But you know best?”

I jerk back as if he slapped me, but he isn’t finished.

“You know what I need? You know better than me that I should change my decision to remain unarmed?”

I open my mouth. Close it. Feel heat stain my cheeks.

His expression softens a little. “If we’re under attack, I’ll help, Rachel. I won’t let anyone down. But I’m not going to pick up a blade again, and nothing you say will change that.”

The heat in my face gushes through my body, and I grip my Switch as I step closer to him. “So you’ll just die, then? Just cling to your precious convictions and go up against men with swords to prove something to yourself? Fine. Go ahead. Die and be justified that you did it on your own terms. What do I care?”

I turn before he can see the tremble in my lips. Before the image of yet another person I care about bleeding to death in front of me can bring my breakfast up the back of my throat. I’ve walked five steps in the opposite direction when his hand descends on my shoulder.

I whirl and swing my Switch at him before I realize what I’m doing. He disappears. One second, he was standing before me, about to be hit with the weighted end of my weapon. The next, he’s rolling across the grass and coming up to stand a yard to my left.