“Is there somewhere we can take shelter?” she asked.
“Here.” He was already moving, gathering fallen branches from the stunted pines at the edge of the grove. “The stones will block the wind, and the trees will hide our fire from below.”
Our fire. Such a simple word,our,and yet it made something twist in her chest. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been part of anourthat didn’t mean her and Dani.
She watched him work while she examined the sunvines, trying to understand their structure. The ones she’d found before had been brittle and dead, requiring hours of careful soaking before she could work with them, but they’d responded beautifully once prepared, almost spinning themselves into thread as if eager to be useful.
These vines felt different, more solid. When she tried to separate the fibers, they resisted, clinging together like they were still alive.
“It’s not working,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
“What’s not working?”
She jumped. She hadn’t realized he was close enough to hear. He’d finished building a rough lean-to against one of the larger stones and was now gathering kindling for a fire.
“The fibers.” She held up the vine to show him. “The ones I used before separated easily. These won’t budge.”
He straightened, regarding the vine with those uncanny green eyes. In the fading light, she could see the faint luminescence she’d noticed earlier, a subtle glow that made him look distinctly inhuman.
Because he is, she reminded herself.He’s Vultor. Alien. Other.
“The vines you had before,” he said slowly. “Where did you find them?”
“Tangled in a fallen tree after a storm.”
“How long had it been since they were harvested?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but they were very dry and brittle.”
“Then they were long dead.” He took one of the vines from her hands, his long fingers surprisingly delicate. “Sunvine needs to be processed in order to be useful. Drying it naturally can take weeks?—”
“Weeks? I don’t have weeks.”
“But there are faster ways,” he finished calmly.
“So how do I process them?”
Instead of answering, he crossed to the fire he’d built and coaxed the flames higher. Then he returned to where she sat and arranged the harvested vines on a flat stone near the heat.
“They must be dried slowly,” he explained. “Too much heat and they burn. Too little and they rot.”
She watched the vines carefully, noting how they seemed to writhe slightly in the heat, as if trying to escape. “For how long?”
“Through the night. By morning, they will be ready.”
He straightened and turned towards the darkness beyond the firelight. “I will hunt. Stay here near the fire. Do not touch the vines until they are fully dried.”
“Wait—” The word escaped before she could stop it, and she felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. She wasn’t a child afraid of the dark. She’d spent plenty of nights alone.
But never here. Never deep in Vultor territory, surrounded by dangers she couldn’t see or name.
He paused at the edge of the firelight, looking back at her. In the dancing shadows, his features seemed sharper, more predatory.
“I won’t be long,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle. “Nothing will harm you here. This is my territory.”
Then he was gone, melting into the darkness with a silence that shouldn’t have been possible for someone his size.
She drew her knees to her chest and stared at the fire.
