"You're certain?" he asks, his gray eyes searching my face for any sign of doubt or reluctance.
"I'm certain." The words carry absolute conviction. "We're part of this clan now. Part of your life. That means accepting all of it—the pleasant traditions and the difficult necessities."
Something shifts in his expression—surprise, perhaps, or relief at finding acceptance where he might have expected resistance. He lifts our joined hands to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to my knuckles in a gesture that speaks to gratitude beyond words.
"You continue to amaze me," he murmurs against my skin. "Your strength, your understanding. I don't know what I did to deserve you."
The comment makes warmth bloom through my chest, spreading outward until it reaches places that have been cold for longer than I care to calculate. Not just physical attraction or practical gratitude, but the deeper satisfaction that comes from being truly valued by someone whose opinion carries weight.
"You saved us," I remind him. "Not just from Redmoon, but from a life of hiding and scraping and never quite having enough. You gave us a home."
He cups my cheek. "I'd give you both anything."
22
NELRISH
The first snow of winter arrives like a whispered judgment, fat flakes drifting through the gray morning air to settle on the packed earth of the settlement. I watch from the longhouse doorway as the world transforms beneath nature's quiet hand—each surface receiving its burden of white until the familiar geometry of buildings and pathways blurs into something softer, more forgiving than the harsh realities that wait within.
But today offers no forgiveness. Today, justice demands its due.
Korrash emerges from the shadows between buildings, his massive frame cutting through the falling snow with purposeful strides. The burn scar that bisects his face appears more pronounced in the pale light, his clouded left eye reflecting the gray sky like tarnished silver. He stops before me with the kind of rigid attention that speaks to years of military discipline, though his expression carries undertones of something darker than routine duty.
"It's time," he says, his voice carrying the weight of finality.
I nod, pulling my heavy cloak tighter against the cold as we make our way through the settlement toward the holding cellscarved into the hillside behind the armory. The snow muffles our footsteps, creating an odd sense of isolation despite the activity beginning to stir throughout the clan grounds. Windows glow with firelight as families prepare for the morning meal, but today's breaking of fast will wait until justice has been served.
The holding area consists of three chambers hewn from living rock, their iron-barred doors speaking to construction completed during more prosperous times when metal wasn't quite so precious. Only one cell shows signs of recent occupation—scratches in the stone where desperate fingers have clawed at unyielding surfaces, stains that speak to bodily functions performed without dignity or privacy.
Sareen huddles against the far wall of her prison, her once-pristine appearance transformed into something that barely resembles the woman I've known since childhood. Her dark hair hangs in matted tangles around a face made gaunt by three days of minimal rations. The fine leathers she wore during her final betrayal are torn and stained, bearing witness to her attempts to escape through methods both futile and destructive.
But her eyes—her eyes still burn with the same stubborn defiance that characterized her even as a child. The same refusal to accept consequences that drove her to increasingly desperate measures when the world failed to arrange itself according to her desires.
"Nelrish." My name emerges from her lips like a prayer, though whether seeking salvation or delivering curse remains unclear. She rises on unsteady legs, gripping the iron bars with white-knuckled intensity. "Thank the ancestors you're alive. I thought—when they told me you'd survived?—"
"You thought what, Sareen?" My voice cuts through her babbled relief with the kind of controlled coldness that makes even Korrash shift beside me. "That your poison had failed? Thatsomehow I'd recovered from the nightshade you slipped into my water during our last hunt together?"
The color drains from her face, leaving only the hollow desperation of someone whose final gambit has crumbled to ash. Clearly, she thinks I don’t know it was my water skin that poisoned me, that I heard the words she said as she left me on the ground. But still she doesn't break, doesn't offer the clean admission that might have earned her a quicker death.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispers, though the tremor in her voice betrays the lie even as she speaks it. "I would never—you know I would never hurt you. We're friends, Nelrish. We've been friends since we were children."
The words trigger something cold and sharp in my chest—not anger, exactly, but a kind of crystalline clarity that cuts through any remaining sentiment I might have harbored for our shared past. Friends don't betray sacred trust. Friends don't ally themselves with enemies who've sworn to destroy everything you've built. Friends don't slip poison into water you drink without question because you've never had reason to doubt their loyalty.
"Friends," I repeat, tasting the word like something bitter. "Is friendship what drove you to share our patrol routes with Redmoon scouts? What convinced you to feed them intelligence about our defenses? What made you think death by poisoning was an appropriate response to romantic rejection?"
Each accusation drives her back from the bars until she's pressed against the stone wall with nowhere left to retreat. Her mouth opens and closes soundlessly, searching for words that might somehow reconstruct the narrative she's built around her own actions.
"You don't understand," she finally manages, her voice rising toward hysteria. "You couldn't see what was happening. Redmoon was growing stronger, expanding their territory. Theywould have crushed us eventually. I was trying to save the clan, trying to find a way for us to survive what was coming."
"By murdering your chieftain?" Korrash's voice rumbles with barely contained violence, his scarred hands flexing as though imagining the satisfaction of closing around her throat. "By selling our people to slavers and butchers?"
"By making the hard choices that he was too honorable to consider!" The words burst from her like venom finally released from a festering wound. "Nelrish's precious honor would have gotten us all killed. Someone had to act, someone had to?—"
"Someone had to betray everything we stand for?" I step closer to the bars, close enough to see the tears that have begun tracking through the grime on her cheeks. "You misjudged everything, Sareen. The strength of our people, the depth of Redmoon's weakness, the price of abandoning the very principles that make us worth preserving."
She stares at me through the iron barrier, perhaps finally beginning to understand that no words will save her from the consequences of her choices. The desperate calculation in her eyes speaks to a mind still seeking escape routes that simply don't exist.
"The Redmoon clan is gone," I tell her, my voice carrying the finality of absolute truth. "Burned out. Scattered. Their leadership dead by my hand and Korrash's blade. Your allies—the people you thought would protect you in exchange for your betrayal—can't help you now."
