“You’ve had worse luck with girls,” he points out, widening the rip in my pants leg so he can get at the plastic with the pliers. “Remember that time you tried to sweet-talk Mhairi and she laughed at you?”

I wince as he loses his grip on the remnants of the cocktail sword. “I was thirteen, shut up.”

“Or Aoife? Or Alejandra?”

“What are you talking about? Alejandra and I—”

“Poor girl felt sorry for you.” He huffs, pulling the thing free and holding it up for us both to take a look at it. It’s annoyingly small, the hot pink still visible beneath the darker red of my blood. He starts laughing again and grabs at the wall beside him for support. “No wonder you were able to capture her, if this is all she had to work with.”

“Just bandage it up, Sean, before I start listing your romantic failures. We’ll be here all day.”

By the time he’s done, his smile has faded. The laughter couldn’t last forever, but it was enough of a rest to let me breathe a little easier. Sean’s my pressure valve, my best friend as well as my cousin, but he’s as fierce a fighter as we’ve got. We lean against the rocky wall for a little, side by side, eyes on the unconscious soldier tied up near the far side of the cave.

“What the hell, man?” Sean breaks the silence, his voice quiet. “What were you even doing on their base?”

I hesitate. If I tell Sean about the facility I saw, he’ll insist we send scouts, and how can I tell him there’s nothing there anymore? “I got itchy, I was scouting. Things are getting tense, and I wanted to know what’s in the wind.”

He groans, tipping his head back to let it smack gently against the stone wall. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I know you know what happens if you of all people get caught. McBride’s just waiting for the chance to move while you’re off following a hunch. He nearly did tonight, without you there to speak against it. Where does the trodaire come into this?”

“She spotted me. I spotted an opportunity.”

“To bring her to our home? To risk discovery?”

“She has information we need, and think what we could trade her for.” I grit my teeth. “You think I should’ve killed her?”

“Yes,” he replies, exasperated. “Yes, I think you should have killed her.”

“And set them panicking about an assassination on their own base?” I can hear the snap in my voice and I swallow it down, carefully even out my tone. The idea comes so easily to Sean, one of the best, gentlest guys I know. Maybe it seems natural to him because it is natural. Maybe I’m as mad as McBride thinks I am, trying to settle a decade-old conflict with words.

Or maybe Sean’s good nature, the sweetness in him that’s been there since we were children, is fading. Maybe it’s one more casualty of this war.

The image of the secret compound is right there when I close my eyes—a wire fence, a small collection of prefab buildings built into the gentle slope of the island. I want to tell him I saw it. I want to tell him I went back and it was gone. But it’ll only convince him I’m losing my mind. He’s my greatest ally—my closest friend. I can’t afford to alienate him.

Sean sighs, eyeing the trodaire again. “What are we going to do about your girlfriend?”

“I’m going to get Martha to send word to the base. Lee Chase is valuable to them; they’ll trade for her. It’ll show McBride that my way gets results too, without bloodshed.”

“And if they refuse to trade?” Sean raises an eyebrow.

I square my jaw. “I don’t want her killed.”

“You’re too soft, cousin. If you were their prisoner, she’d never spare your life.”

“I know.” Even now, the words stab at my heart. We’re both thinking of Orla. “But if we kill her, that’s it for the ceasefire. They’ll come for us like they never have before, and we wouldn’t survive that kind of assault.”

“You wouldn’t make that argument with McBride, I bet.”

“Tell McBride he’s not strong enough to beat someone in a fight, first thing he does is find a way to justify punching them in the face.” I kick at a loose pebble, hearing it ricochet off the opposite wall of the cave. “He’d find a way to make it about me and how I’m afraid to fight.”

Sean hesitates. “You could lead us,” he says finally. “If it came to a fight. You could—”

I don’t find out what he might have said next. Fergal’s voice echoes down the corridor. “Uncle Sean, I need you to tuck me in.” He must have followed us.

Sean curses, leaping to his feet and leaving the cave and its unconscious occupant. “I don’t want him or the other kids to know about this,” he mutters. “You want to keep it hidden, fine. Just don’t let anyone find her, because then it’s going to get noisy.”

Though unspoken, I recognize what he’s saying: he’ll trust me. For now. “Sean—thanks.” We share a beat of silence, and then Sean heads back up the passageway to collect Fergal.

I retrieve the lantern, hoping darkness will make it harder for the trodaire to work out an escape when she wakes, and hurry away before anyone realizes we’re down here. The relief at having Sean’s support is short-lived; I know it won’t last. One of these days even Sean will run out of patience. Already I feel us drifting, sense it in the silences between us. But whenever that day’s coming, it’s not today. For now, I know he’ll follow me, because I asked him to.