Doryan nodded slightly. “If that’s where she is… she might not want company, Scar.”
The nickname caught me off guard, landed in my chest like a stone.
I blinked hard. “Or maybe,” I said quietly, “she just wants someone to come looking for her.”
Doryan’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t reply.
I wrung my hands as I stepped closer. Nerves crawled up my spine. “One more thing — can a sword be forged to match these?” I unsheathed my daggers; the blades gleamed under the forge’s light.
Balveer set his tool down and reached for one dagger, twisting it in his hands with a careful eye. “Should be possible. Can you leave one here while we work on it?”
I sheathed the other dagger and nodded, grateful. Then a door at the back of the smithy creaked open. I spun around, heart still pounding.
Shayde stood there shirtless, sweat and soot streaking his skin as he wiped down an arrowhead. His warm brown eyes met mine and locked. His hair had grown longer since I last saw him, unkempt and curling behind his ears. The dragon mark on the left side of his head had faded beneath his longer hair, but I still knew exactly where it was.
Because I’d traced it with my fingertips.
My throat closed. I looked away quickly, cheeks flushing at the too-intimate memory — at the too-bare reality of him standing there.
“What’s wrong?”
Shayde’s voice yanked me backward—to bonfires and Sanctuary parties, to laughter, to the time he gave me his extra clothes when Pehper ruined mine with iced coffee.
Pinky promise me that if you ever do need saving, you’ll let me. Okay?
My eyes burned. I shut them quickly, traitors that they were.
“Nothing,” I whispered. Then louder, as I turned to leave, I borrowed the nickname I’d heard Fallon use a dozen times. “Thanks, D.”
Rhodes was instructing Davis in self-defense when I arrived at the sparring ring. I pressed on, heading southeast along a worn path between the huts. The sun had fully set; the sky was black and starless. Light from the sconces inside the huts bled through curtained windows, casting flickering glows that guided my steps.
I heard my sister before I saw her.
Rounding a corner, I came upon an old training yard, nearly swallowed by weeds. The space mirrored the ring where Fallon had once knocked me out, but this one had long been forgotten. Wooden dummies stood crooked in a circle, targets painted on chests now moldy and faded with time.
Fallon was kickboxing one of them, a cracked, battered cushion strapped to its midsection. Her fists landed like thunder—each strike making the dummy creak on its rusted hinges, like it might topple any second. But she didn’t stop. Blow after blow, kick after kick, she poured herself into a fight that wasn’t there.
River lay off to the side in the tall grass, eyes half-lidded, tail flicking lazily with each of Fallon’s strikes.
“What are you doing here?” Fallon growled between kicks.
Honestly? I had no fucking idea.
“I—I came to check on you.”
Fallon laughed, sharp and humorless, raining a flurry of punches down on the battered dummy. “I’m fine. Bye.”
Her words yanked me back to that rooftop with Laney. That moment right before I told her everything. Right before I let myself unravel.
Fallon landed a hard right hook and finally turned to face me. A loose, sweaty strand of hair clung to her cheek. She blew it away. “Did I stutter? Bye.”
My skin burned. Every instinct screamed at me to walk away, to leave her spiraling. But this—this was exactly what I did to Laney. Fallon’s not angry. She’s not cold. She’s scared. She’s pushing me away because she doesn’t think she’s worth chasing.
I’d never been on this side of the conversation before. So I borrowed the words that had reached me when I needed them most.
“Nobody would be fine after how he spoke to you,” I said, voice steady.
Fallon’s chest heaved. Weeds curled tightly around the ring, like a cage. “I’m fine,” she spat.
