We sit on opposite sides of the fire. Neither of us speaks. The only sounds are crackling wood and wind outside—though even that sounds different. Less violent. The storm abating.
I watch her gradually stop shivering. Watch her wrap arms tighter around herself even as warmth returns. Watch her stare at flames as if she’s losing herself in them.
Minutes pass.
The silence stretches. Not comfortable. Not hostile. Just… waiting. For what, I don’t know.
My wrists ache where the cuffs sit. The suppression creates a dull pressure that never quite fades. I’ve worn restraints before—field training, captured during operations—but those were temporary. Known endpoints.
This feels different. This feels like waiting for a sentence I don’t understand yet.
“Aurora will send teams.” Her voice breaks the silence. Quiet. Not directed at me. Just speaking to fill space.
I consider this. “For you?”
“For you.” She still won’t look at me. “When they learn about the attack. The convoy.”
“They’ll assume I’m dead.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She shifts slightly. “You’re valuable. An intelligence asset. They’ll want confirmation either way.”
She’s right. Aurora wouldn’t let a high-value defector disappear without investigation. Not when I promised information in exchange for sanctuary.
The Syndicate’s operational structure. Personnel files. Upcoming missions. Everything I’ve memorized over decades of service. That’s worth sending teams into a blizzard for.
“And when they find us?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer immediately. Just watches flames dance over brush.
“They’ll have questions,” she says finally.
“Will that be a problem?”
“I don’t know.”
Honest, at least. But I’m still no closer to learning why she’s here. Clearly on some sort of unsanctioned mission.
To kill me.
More silence. The fire settles into steady burning. Heat spreads through stone, warming surfaces that haven’t been warm in hours.
I try to calculate how long we’ve been here. Dawn can’t be far. Soon we’ll have to leave this shelter. Make decisions about what happens next. Soon, we’ll have to figure out who we are to each other when survival isn’t forcing proximity.
But for now—
For now, we sit in silence with fire between us and questions neither of us knows how to answer.
I lean back against the stone wall. Feel exhaustion pulling at edges I’ve kept sharp through discipline. The cuffs make restdifficult, but I’ve slept in worse positions. My eyes drift toward her despite my intention to give her space.
Firelight catches in her dark hair. Throws shadows across sharp cheekbones and that stubborn set to her jaw that hasn’t softened since I met her. She’s stopped shaking completely now. Color back in her skin. No longer in immediate danger.
But she looks just as lost as she did hours ago.
I should be planning. Working out my next move. Figuring out how to leverage this situation once we leave this shelter. That’s what the Syndicate trained me to do. Assess. Adapt. Survive. Instead, I’m trying to understand why it mattered so much that she was freezing. Why watching her slip away felt wrong in a way I couldn’t ignore. Why I notice things that have nothing to do with threat assessment—the way she breathes, how she holds herself, that flicker of vulnerability before her walls snap back into place.
The old version of me—the commander who rose through Syndicate ranks by being exactly what they needed—wouldn’t have cared. That man would have let her freeze. Or used the moment to escape. Or ended her when she gave him the opening. That man knew his function. Operated within parameters that made sense.
I don’t recognize who I’m becoming.
