Amichen awoke with a start, feeling as if she had overslept and missed something important. It took her a minute to remember what had happened to make her feel that way.

When she looked out the window, the sun was still rising in the east, so it was only about mid-morning; she hadn't slept but an hour or so. And, thanks to the rest, food, and pain medicine, she was feeling much improved.

She went out of her room, intent on seeing Naissus, but she paused in the hallway, realizing she had no idea where his room was. She felt a sudden wave of guilt; she had not visited him yet, even when she might have managed to see him for a short while.

She went up to one of the hallway guards, standing as silent as an empty suit of armor. "Excuse me, but where can I find Prince Naissus' room?"

"All the way to the end of this hallway," he said, pointing past the central staircase. "Then turn right and go all the way down that hallway. His is the next-to-last door on your left."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure, Your Highness," he said warmly. The tone of his voice was so kind and friendly, Amichen did a double-take, as if she wasn't sure she had heard what she had heard. But he was smiling at her, so she knew she hadn't misjudged.

How odd that the Hyrulian guard should speak to her as if she was as beloved as the Royal Family.

She followed the guard's instructions, ending up on the exact opposite corner of the castle from her room. She checked to make sure that she had the next-to-last door on the left—there was no other indication that the room belonged to Naissus—then she gently knocked on the door. She didn't want to be too loud in case he had already gone back to sleep.

After a few moments—just when she was beginning to wonder if she should knock again—the queen opened the door.

"Oh, Amichen, I was just coming to check on you." She stood back, gesturing for her to enter. "Naissus has asked about you. Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Amichen replied, stepping into the room.

Naissus' room wasn't much different from hers, although it was not located on the corner of the building, so he only had one set of windows, and they looked west. And there was a bit more furniture and knick-knacks, so it looked more lived-in.

Naissus lay on the far side of the bed. Amichen noticed that he wasn't sitting up, though, so obviously he was still weak and only in the beginning stages of his recovery.

"I have some things I need to attend to, so I'll leave you two to visit," the queen said, before slipping discreetly out the door.

Amichen found her sudden departure a little unsettling. Under normal circumstances, she would never be alone with a man in his bedroom, but even her mother could hardly argue there was any suspicion in it; it didn't look as if Naissus could so much as lift his head.

But more than that, she didn't really know what to say or do. Their last conversation had been about going to the moors to survey what would potentially be their new home. If Amichen liked the lay of the land, then there would only be one more thing to do—meet all of his family—before she could give him an answer to his proposal.

They had been so close to finalizing their marriage plans and now all of that was gone. How did you talk to someone about that?

Amichen slowly crossed the room to the other side of the bed and sat down in a chair that had been drawn close.

Naissus studied her silently for a moment. With a clean bandage covering the left side of his face, he didn't look so bad—at least not as bad as the last time she had seen him.

"I've never known anyone who looks good in black," he finally said, "but you do, Ami."

"Thank you." Then she smiled a little. "You know, I've missed you calling me that. I had rather gotten used to it, and it almost sounds funny to me to hear people calling me by my full name now. But I daresay everyone in your family will be calling me 'Ami' soon enough; they seem to like nicknames."

"I guess we're just lazy that way," he said without a smile. Then he sighed, as if weary of pleasantries, and he looked up at the ceiling. "So . . . you went to the funeral."

"Yes."

"How was it?"

Amichen didn't know how to answer that; a funeral was never a good thing, even if it was perfectly and reverentially executed. "It was . . ." She searched for the right word, then finally had to give up. "I don't know," she said, looking down at her hands in her lap. "I didn't listen to it. I couldn't."

"Yeah," he said sadly. Then he sighed heavily again. "Father says they have a large force trying to track those murderers down."

"Yes, your brothers all went—right after the funeral. Or, rather, the other two joined Reni; he was already out there, but he came back briefly for the funeral."

"I'm surprised Father allowed Talent to go."

"He didn't want to—and your mother especially didn't want to allow it—but Talent insisted. He said it was a matter of honor that he go. They eventually gave him their blessing."

"It is a matter of honor," he said. "And if I could get out of this bed, I'd go with them and try to redeem my own honor."

"Redeem it?" Amichen asked, confused.

"I am disgraced."

"Who told you that?" Amichen demanded.

Naissus laughed bitterly. "No one told me that. No one has to tell me that; I know it. I violated all the rules of knightly behavior."

"How?"

"I lived."

His answer took Amichen aback. "You . . . lived? Living is a stain on your honor?" she asked in disbelief.

"It is when all the men under your command die. It is when a woman under your protection is violated and you do nothing to stop it."

"Naissus, how could you have stopped it?" Amichen asked. "You were unconscious—and I thought dead. You can't stop anything if you're half-dead yourself."

"I should have recognized that we were walking into a trap sooner. I should have instantly been suspicious of the tree across the road, rather than walking right up to it like an idiot. I should have had someone riding ahead, scouting the way. I knew that was the most dangerous part of the road. I knew that there have been highwaymen there in the past. But I got lazy. Everything had been going so well—without one complication—and I became complacent. I had my mind on wooing you instead of fulfilling my primary duty to you, which was to keep you safe. I already had my mind on the future instead of being in the present.

"Those are all elementary mistakes, Ami—the sort of thing a green squire might do. But I've had years of training—I'm a knight, for gods' sake; I knew better. But when it came time for me to be tested, I failed. I don't deserve to be called a knight," he said miserably.

Amichen would never want to speak ill of the dead—especially not a dear friend—but she felt that Rodger would not mind her using his name if it helped ease Naissus' mind. "Sometimes you can't win every battle, even if you're a knight," she quietly pointed out. "I mean . . . look at Rodger; he was overwhelmed as well."

"It wasn't Rodger's mission!" he shouted. "It was mine. I was the one in charge! He was following my command. And I got him killed!"

He suddenly broke down. "Rodger . . ." he moaned through his tears

Amichen knew that of all his companions, Naissus—just like her—had loved Rodger the best. Perhaps his sunny personality had just complimented their quiet ones the best. Or maybe everyone felt that way about Rodger because he was so easy to love and so free to give his friendship to others.

Amichen went around to the other side of the bed and crawled in beside Naissus. She put her arms around him carefully, not wanting to hurt his left arm, and she comforted him as his mother had comforted her the first evening she had been at the castle.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled between racking sobs. "So sorry."

Amichen wondered if he was apologizing for what had happened to her, what had happened to Rodger and the others, or if he was just apologizing for crying in front of her—or maybe all three at once.

She laid her cheek against his unruly blond hair and closed her eyes, silently holding him while he cried.

She was sorry for many things, too.