Jacob stopped when he saw his horse, and stood utterly still for a moment without speaking. His hand tensed around hers.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, the words inadequate but sincere, laying her free hand over her chest.
“Aye,” he answered, just as quietly.
They did not linger. Jacob marched on, tugging Elena behind him, soon after angling them into rougher ground where stone gave way to scrub and tall grass, away from the river. Elena wondered if they’d only followed the water as long as they did because he hoped they might have stumbled upon his steed.
“Like as nae, they’ll think us dead,” Jacob said after a time, his voice low, pitched carefully so it would not carry. “But I willna stake our lives on that as a certainty.”
Elena nodded, too cold and too weary to argue, content—relieved, even—to let Jacob do the thinking for them both. She followed where he led, her gaze fixed on his back as he moved ahead of her through the darkened ground. There was something unmistakable in the way he walked, a deliberateeconomy and easy grace to his stride, as though every step had already been considered before it was taken. His shoulders stayed level despite the uneven land, his weight shifting smoothly, never wasted, never hurried.
She watched him for a long while, the rhythm of his movement settling into her, and realized with quiet certainty that she would know him anywhere—at a distance, in a crowd, even in poor light—by that shape alone, by the shape and breadth of his shoulders and the controlled way he carried himself through space. It was not just how he looked, but how he moved.
They walked for what felt like hours, keeping to ground messy with debris, avoiding clean paths. Jacob moved deliberately, choosing stone over soil, bare earth over grass, and even before he mentioned the reason for it, Elena understood that he walked intentionally where the ground would not remember them.
“Horses are easier to track, being heavier,” Jacob confirmed. “But we can be careful, and slow them down if they are still in pursuit.”
They went on like that, step by measured step, the land closing softly behind them, their passage light enough that even the night seemed willing to keep their secret.
The cold was relentless. Her wet clothes clung damp and heavy, and her fingers ached dully despite the effort of movement. Jacob set a steady pace, not fast, not slow, the kind that could be endured.
Night was coming on by the time Jacob slowed and then stopped completely.
Elena stared ahead, wondering what gave him pause.
It took her a moment to see what Jacob had, a structure built directly into the slope of the hill. Only a single wall showed itself, and even that was easily mistaken for little more than a break inthe hillside. The wall was timbered, rough logs and wattle dulled by weather and age, their surfaces darkened and softened until they scarcely stood apart from the earth pressed hard against them. Grass and creeping growth had worked their way up the sides, blurring edges and swallowing corners, so that from any distance the structure dissolved into the slope. The door, however, was what gave it away, the hard corners and pale, aged wood just light enough to interrupt the line of the hill. In the failing light it barely registered, and Elena knew with certainty that once night settled fully, it would vanish altogether.
She would have walked straight by it, she was sure of it, the dwelling being so entrenched in the landscape.
Jacob studied it for a long moment before speaking. “It’s a risk,” he said at last. “There’s nae escape. They might come down from the cliff,” he went on, thinking aloud, “but I’d wager they wouldnae press this far before morning.”
Elena agreed with more hope and desperation than certainty. “Aye, I’m sure of it. It’s hardly noticeable at any rate.” The idea of sanctuary invigorated her.
They approached with care, Jacob circling once to be certain the place was empty before easing the door inward. Inside, the shieling opened higher than Elena had expected, the roof pitched steeply enough to shed weather, its timbers blackened with old smoke. The walls were thick, simply hard earth, holding back the wind so thoroughly that the sudden quiet drew her attention. The air was dry, blessedly so, carrying the faint, familiar scent of ash and long-cold fires.
Signs of use lay scattered about in quiet disorder: old straw pressed flat where someone had slept, a broken crook abandoned in a corner, a shallow wooden bowl turned on its side near the hearth, its rim chewed by time. Nothing recent, nothing living—but not abandoned to ruin either. The place felt paused rather than forgotten.
Elena sagged the moment they crossed the threshold, the tension bleeding out of her so quickly she had to brace a hand against the wall to stay upright.
Jacob reached inside his soaked tunic, fingers working at the cord tied tight against his ribs. From a small leather pouch worn close to his skin he drew out a firesteel, one of the few things a man did not trust to saddlebags alone. From a niche beside the hearth, he gathered what remained of old kindling—dry splinters, a scrap of bark left by someone that had known the same need.
The spark came quickly.
The fire he coaxed to life was small and carefully kept, little more than a steady glow, but the change it brought was unmistakable. Light crept across the walls, lifting the shieling out of shadow, giving shape back to stone and timber and the simple certainty of enclosure. The darkness retreated to the corners, and with it some of the fear that had clung to Elena since the river.
Jacob shut the door then, closing out the last of twilight and barred it with a stout length of wood that had been left leaning near the wall, testing it with a hearty tug before turning his attention inward.
“We need to get dry,” he said from behind her.
Elena glanced down at herself, at the darkened fabric clinging to her legs, the weight of it dragging insistently with every shift. She knew he was right—knew it in the same practical way she had come to understand many things over the past days—yet something fluttered nervously beneath her ribs at the implication of what must follow.
Here, in the enclosed space of the cave, with the firelight casting long shadows along the walls, the idea was daunting.
Jacob seemed to read the pause for what it was. He turned away at once, presenting her with his back as he shrugged out ofhis own sodden tunic and wrung it out with a sharp twist of his hands.
“Wet clothes will steal heat faster than the night ever could,” he said.
Still, when she gathered her courage, and stood, turning her back to Jacob, and slipped the plaid from her shoulders, she found herself unsure where to put it. The shieling was small, the fire lower than she expected, and for a moment she simply stood there, the weight of the wool bunched in her hands.
