Tired… So, so tired…
But alive.
I don’t know what happened to me back there.
But one thing’s for certain: this has been the freakiest day of my life.
Chapter 4
K.
The storm broke an hour past dawn. It’s not the sun that tells me this—thick clouds swallow it whole—but the shift in air pressure against my skin, the way water no longer hammers the stone outside.
She breathes.
Four seconds in. Six seconds out. I’ve counted this rhythm so many times that the numbers have worn grooves in my mind. Her chest rises beneath the wool cloak, steady now. Nothing like those first ragged hours when her lungs kept forgetting their purpose.
I should move. Check the perimeter. But my body refuses. For some reason, leaving her side feels… wrong.
Her eyelids flutter, casting shadows across cheekbones too sharp beneath pale skin. The blue-tipped hair fans across the wool I layered under her head—strange coloring, that.Unnatural. Yet it suits her somehow. Makes her look caught between this world and something wilder.
The thought unsettles me. Not because it’s strange—everything is strange—but because I want to keep looking. To memorize where blue fades to dark, the exact curve where her jaw meets her throat. Things that have nothing to do with keeping her alive.
I force my attention back to her breathing pattern.
Assess. Observe. Wait.
The words arrive unexpectedly; old drill, I imagine. I have done this before—kept watch over the fallen. Somewhere with white walls and a metal smell. Or stone walls and ash. The images slide away before I can grasp them.
I flex my hands against my knees. Warm leather beneath my palms. Cold stone under me. The fire needs tending.
Rising takes effort, each movement measured not to disturb the silence I’ve built around her. Ten paces to the cave mouth. Gray light bleeds through mist that clings to the mountainside like smoke.
Rain drifts down in sheets. The peaks stand silently, utterly still. Watching.
Something in my chest responds to those mountains—recognition I have no right to claim.
I test the air. Wet shale. Cedar resin. Distant smoke. My body takes in each scent, each direction, each potential threat, without consulting the shattered thing my memory has become.
I have waited in places like this before.
The knowledge surfaces like something breaking water. Somewhere echoing with footsteps. Or thunder. I cannot tell which.
How long have I been here? Days blur. I remember light once that didn’t come from fire—bright, humming, reflected in something smooth. Glass maybe. Water. Both.
The image evaporates.
“Now,” I murmur the word to steady myself. Pull myself back from that blank space where my past should live. “You are herenow.”
The fire has burned low. I add two logs. Not three. Perhaps three days of wood left. Little food. The iron bird’s corpse might yield scraps, but it sits half a day’s walk downslope, and I will not leave her.
Not yet.
Not ever, whispers a voice I don’t recognize. I push the thought away.
Flames rise. I watch sparks climb, too bright. One coal pulses at the heart of the fire—crimson bleeding gold—and my chest tightens in response. I lean closer without deciding to.
Iron. Heat. A voice shouting orders in words I should know—
