“You are still weak.”
“I’m bored.” She shifts in my arms. “And you’ve been carrying me like a toddler. Your arms have to be tired.”
They aren’t. I could carry her for days without strain, and this knowledge sits as certain as the mountain beneath my feet.
Another impossibility. Another piece of wrongness I can’t explain.
“I do not tire easily,” I say.
She studies my face, and I see her processing this. Adding it to whatever mental list she’s building of my strangeness.
“Right.” She says it slowly. “Because of course you don’t.”
I find a flat section of trail and set her down carefully. She winces as her boots touch ground, and I keep one hand on her elbow until she’s steady.
“Better?” I ask.
“Much.” She tests her weight, rolling her shoulders. “See? Totally fine.”
The lie is obvious. But I recognize pride when I see it. She needs to prove she can manage, even if her body argues otherwise.
“We move slowly, then,” I say. “Rest when needed.”
“Deal.”
We walk. I stay close enough to catch her if she stumbles, far enough to let her maintain the independence she clearly needs.
When she slips on a loose rock, I reach for her hand to steady her. It’s small in mine. I file away each detail without deciding to—the way her fingers curl into my palm, the pulse visible at her wrist, the warmth of her skin against mine that somehow manages to register despite my own heat.
The terrain climbs steadily. Pine gives way to scrub, then exposed granite. Wind carries the scent of snow from higher elevations; sharp, clean, promising cold I won’t feel.
Mara feels it, though. I see her hunch against the wind, arms wrapped around herself.
I shrug out of the leather vest, drape it over her shoulders. It swallows her frame, but she pulls it close with visible relief.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
I nod and keep walking.
My mind hasn’t stopped churning since we left the crash site. The operatives below. Mara’s terror when she saw them. Her insistence that we hide rather than seek help.
They’re dangerous. Connected to things she can’t explain.
What things? And why can’t she explain them?
I study her from the corner of my eye as we navigate a switchback. She’s focused on the path, brow furrowed with concentration. But beneath that, I see the tension. The guilt.
She knows more than she’s saying.
The geological survey story never sat right. Too rehearsed. Too bright. And her reaction to those men… that wasn’t surprise. That was recognition.
She knows who they are.
She knows what they’re searching for.
And she’s keeping that knowledge from me, and every instinct I don’t remember developing screams at me to demand truth. To force her to trust me with whatever she’s hiding.
But I don’t. Because somewhere beneath conscious thought, I understand: if I push too hard, she’ll run. And the idea of her leaving—of losing her to danger I can’t prevent—makes something primal rise in my chest.
