"I do not... dance," I rumble, my voice low.
"Oh, come on!" Jessa laughs from across the room. "A big boy like you must knowhowto move!"
My face feels hot. This is a new form of torture.
Aurora pulls again, her small hand insistent, her eyes bright. The other women are watching, laughing. This is a new, strange, and terrible kind of battle. To appease her, I try a tiny, shuffling movement with my feet. It is stiff. It is awkward. It is terrible. I am a mountain trying to be a leaf.
The women laugh, a genuine, warm, happy sound.
I have never felt more alien in my entire life. I stop, my face burning.
But as Aurora laughs, a real, free laugh that makes my heart ache, the fated bond hums, warm and content.
I do not understand them. Not at all.
20
AURORA
Amoon has passed.
It is a strange, new life. The farmstead, which we now call the Scildborg, is no longer a refuge; it is a home. The air no longer stinks of fear and zhisk. It smells of woodsmoke from the cookfire, of taura hides stretched and curing in the sun, and of the sharp, clean scent of the lye soap Myra taught us to make.
I wake every morning not to the sound of a slaver's boot, but to the sound of Othic's roar.
"Again!"
His voice booms across the yard, a raw, guttural command. I peek from the farmhouse door, my hunting pack in my hand. Jessa, her face streaked with sweat and tears, scrambles to her feet. She is holding a heavy, rusted slaver's sword that looks too big for her hands.
"It is too heavy!" she cries, her voice breaking.
"Then you are dead," Othic states, his voice flat and devoid of pity. He is fully healed, a two-armed mountain of lethal patience. "An enemy will not wait for you to be ready. Grip it. It is a part of your arm. Feel its weight. Again."
Jessa lets out a high, frustrated shriek and lunges at the straw-filled dummy he built. This is our new routine.
While Othic forges the women into a shield, I am the arrow. I hunt. Every sunrise, I slip into the woods, my own dagger at my hip. I move like a shadow, just as I did in Privis's halls, but now I do not hide. I seek.
Othic’s training for me is different. He does not teach me to block and parry.
"You are small," he rumbled to me one evening, his large, calloused hands covering mine, guiding my grip on the dagger. The heat of him was a solid wall at my back. "You will never win a fight of strength. You do not fight. Youend."
He turned me to face the straw dummy, his arm a possessive, heavy bar across my stomach. His other hand guided my knife. "You do not stab the chest. You do not aim for the arm." His finger tapped the dummy's knee. "Here. The back of the knee. A severed tendon makes a giant fall." His hand moved up. "Then... the eye. The throat. You are a shadow. You are a blade. You do not fight. You execute."
Now, in the woods, I am that shadow. I return with suru and pouches full of fialon berries. I am his partner. He protects the home; I provide for it.
On the last night of the moon, the Scildborg is bright with firelight. A wild taura strayed too close to our perimeter three days ago. It was Myra who saw it, Jessa who set the snare Othic taught her, and Rilla, the quiet one, who finished it with a steady, practiced knife to the throat.
Tonight, it roasts over the main fire pit. The smell is thick and rich, mingling with baking bread and stewed tubers. They have made a feast. A farewell party.
Inside, the farmhouse is warm and loud with laughter. It is not the hysterical, terrified laughter from the night of the uprising. It is a deep, genuine sound. Jessa is no longer flinchingat shadows. Myra is no longer just a victim; she is a leader, delegating, her voice strong.
I watch Othic at the head of the table. He looks completely baffled by the celebration, a mountain of awkward, silent muscle. But he is here. He is present.
I see him watch me across the table, his amber eyes soft in the firelight. He is not the pale, terrified 'Lady Doll.' He is a woman, vibrant and whole. He is my mate.
And tomorrow, I am taking him away from this.
The guilt is a sharp, cold knife under my ribs. He built this. He made this safety. And I am asking him to leave it, to hunt for ghosts in the dark.
