“Small ones. Thin as hair, but definitely roots. I think it likes me. Or it’s trying to absorb me slowly. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.” I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. “Welcome to my life—where even the furniture is becoming sentient and possibly carnivorous.”
“Burn it. Get a new one.” He said it like the solution was obvious.
“The realm will just make the new one sentient, too. Everything here is alive. I’m starting to think that’s the point—I’m supposed to get comfortable with being constantly surrounded by things that are aware of me.”
Silence settled between us, heavier than before. In the distance, something howled—long and mournful and definitely not from any Earth species I’d ever heard.
“You saved me today,” I said quietly, needing to acknowledge it even if he’d dismiss it. “With the construct. When it got past my defenses.”
“You would have managed. The healing was already starting before I intervened.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.” I met his eyes across the fire. “It was too fast, and I was too slow. I froze.” I hated admitting weakness, but he deserved honesty. “You used your corruption to destroy it. I saw how much it spread after—that’s accelerating your decline, isn’t it?”
“Probably.” He didn’t sound particularly concerned about it. “But you being dead would have been inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient. Right.” I tried not to let that sting. “Well, thanks for preventing my inconvenient death.”
“Don’t mention it.” His carved marks pulsed with dark light, and I felt a corresponding warmth in my own. That connection we kept pretending didn’t exist, humming between us like a string pulled taut.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked, shifting the subject with all thesubtlety of a battering ram.
“Besides the botanical chorus singing the song of their people directly into my consciousness? I keep thinking about tomorrow. About what’s coming, about the Crown forces, about how many different ways this could go catastrophically wrong.” I stared into the fire. “Hard to sleep when your brain won’t stop cataloging potential disasters.”
“Worrying doesn’t change the outcome. Just makes you more tired when the disaster actually arrives.”
“Says the man who never sleeps because he’s always watching for threats that might materialize from the shadows.” I gestured at his vigil. “How is what I’m doing different from what you’re doing?”
“I’m doing something about it. You’re just spinning in circles inside your own head.” He leaned back, shadows playing across the sharp angles of his face. “There’s a difference between preparation and panic.”
“And what I’m doing is panic?”
He studied me for a moment. “What you’re doing is human. Doesn’t make it useful, but it’s understandable.”
Despite everything—the danger, the exhaustion, the fear—I almost smiled at the backhanded acceptance. “You know, back home my ex used to say—” I stopped, suddenly aware of what I was about to do. Why was I bringing up Julian? What was wrong with me?
“Your ex?” Something sharpened in his voice, an edge I couldn’t quite identify. “The lawyer?”
“You remember that?”
“I remember most things. Especially the things people say when they think I’m not listening.” He stirred the fire again, sending sparks flying. “You’ve mentioned him before. Multiple times.”
“Have I?” I tried for casual and failed.
“You talk when you’re nervous. I’ve noticed.” He leaned back slightly. “Apparently you say a great deal when you’re asleep, too.”
“I do not—” I paused, remembering mornings where the crew had looked at me strangely. “Oh god. Fine. What else have I said in my sleep that I should be mortified about?”
“That he thought you were too much. Too intense, too dramatic, too invested in things that didn’t matter. That you needed to be controlled, shaped into something more appropriate.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but I caught something underneath. “That you spent two years trying to be smaller, quieter, less.”
Great. Apparently, I’d been having therapy sessions unconsciously. “Can we please forget I said anything? I’d like to retain some dignity.”
“Difficult, considering how much you talk. Both conscious and unconscious commentary.” He met my eyes. “Your ex sounds like he was an idiot.”
That startled me enough that I laughed. “Wow. Don’t hold back.”
“Why would I? It’s true.” He said it with the same casualness as commenting on the weather. “Anyone who tried to make you smaller was working against your nature. Doomed to failure from the start.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stood, wrapping my arms around myself. The night was cool, but the marks kept me surprisingly warm, like I carried summer underneath my skin.
