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Sorin was awake only in the sense that he was still moving under his own power. He garbled out an order for all soldiers who had ridden into battle to find their beds and for those who had remained at the castle to cover duties until those men woke—which had better not be later than midday.
    Orders given, he left his officers to take care of the rest. He snagged Koray and dragged him off. "This way," Sorin said with a yawn, stopping briefly when everything went gray and fuzzy, slowly moving again when he thought all might stay as it should long enough for him to reach his room.
    Forcing his mind to work, he tried to figure out where they could put Koray. Then he decided he was simply too bloody tired to figure it out. They could find a place for him in the morning. The afternoon. Whatever. "Come on," he said around another yawn, and tugged Koray with him up the stairs to his room. Inside, he locked the door and immediately began to strip, beckoning forward the young man who stood waiting to assist him. When he was free of his heavy armor and his weapons had been cleaned and put away, he dismissed the man and returned his attention to Koray. "Get in bed," he ordered, too tired to argue or deal with fussiness when he saw Koray still hovering, uncertain and hostile, by the door.
    Koray scowled. "I can sleep in the stable—"
    "Get in bed," Sorin snapped and did that very thing himself. "You can sleep in peace here, and we can find you suitable quarters in the mor—later on today. I swear to the Goddess, get in bed and sleep, or I will knock you unconscious."
    Looking at him in annoyance, Koray moved further into the room and said, "I cannot see why you would want to sleep with one who deals in death."
    "Right now, I'm so bloody tired that I would not care if I shared a bed with a corpse," Sorin said, eyes sliding shut simply because he was no longer able to keep them open. "Get in bed."
    He listened to the sounds of Koray removing his own weapons and clothing and wondered idly if he would remove them all—and realized belatedly that perhaps he should not have removed all of his. But to hell with it, he did not care. He was not sleeping in filthy clothes, and he was not getting out of bed just to find clothes to preserve modesty he did not possess.
    A brief chill struck his skin as the blankets were lifted, then he felt the weight of another in his bed—and jerked in surprise when cold skin briefly struck his leg. Sitting up, he looked at Koray through sleep-heavy eyes and asked, "Why are you so cold?"
    Koray turned away from him. "The dead leech my warmth. It takes time to recover it. Thank you for the bed, High Paladin. Good night."
    Bemused by the answer, startled by the display of manners, too tired to deal with any of it, Sorin settled back down and went to sleep.

Two
    Koray waited until Sorin was asleep before he slowly sat up. He pushed back the long, messy strands of his hair, wishing he hadn't lost the thong he used to tie it back.
    It was too dark to see much of anything, but Koray scarcely needed light to see Sorin's face; it was a face engraved in his memory, from the very first time he had seen the handsome, noble, much adored young high paladin.
    That moment had been roughly ten years ago, when Koray was … by his best guess seventeen, but he could be off a few years in either direction. Not very old, at any rate, and still training as a necromancer. Sorin could not have been much older, though he'd been old enough to be a full paladin. He'd not yet become High Paladin then, but Koray remembered overhearing whispers that he was marked for it.
    Koray saw him a second time a few years after that, not long after Sorin had been declared High Paladin. Though he had been admonished by other necromancers that it was foolish to think anything would change, Koray had let his hopes rise anyway … and felt his heart break when Sorin paid no mind as his paladins brutally drove two necromancers out of town.
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