Darun looks at me, really looks. “Why’d you stop?”
I swallow. “Truth felt louder.”
He nods. Like he gets it. Or wants to.
We fall quiet again. But not the tense kind. The kind that wraps around you like a blanket that still smells like someone you used to love.
Eventually, I feel his weight shift beside me. Not away—closer. His shoulder brushes mine.
“You’re insane,” he murmurs.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m still alive.”
That gets him.
A short, surprised bark of laughter breaks out of his throat. He catches it too late, like he can’t believe it escaped.
I blink at him. “Was that a laugh?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Takes one to know one.”
We sit like that until the stars tilt above us and the cold sinks into our bones. There’s no fire. No blankets. Just our armor and what warmth we can bleed through stubborn proximity.
Eventually, he sets up a watch near the broken entrance. I curl up a few feet away, tucked in behind a crate, jacket bunched under my head.
I don’t want to sleep. Not really.
But my body doesn’t ask permission anymore.
The dream hits hard and fast—flashes of the canyon, Sira’s scream, fire licking at the sky. Then the noise, deafening. My lungs fill with smoke. I reach for my recorder, but it’s melting. My fingers blister. I scream, and bolt upright with a gasp.
It’s dark.
I’m in the depot.
Darun’s silhouette is posted like a sentry, still as stone, backlit by the dying moonlight filtering through the ceiling.
His tail…
It’s stretched behind him, curled not around his own boots, but looped loosely in my direction. Not touching. But close. Like instinct pulled it toward me.
My heart thunders.
I don’t say anything.
He doesn’t move it.
I settle back onto the floor, heart slowing. Watching the curve of his tail, the slight twitch of his fingers as he listens to the wind. My nightmare’s still buzzing under my skin. But that curl of scaled muscle between us…
It feels like armor.
And I let it stay.
