She broke away first, lips parted, eyes bright. “Is that allowed?” she whispered.
“In my world,” I said, “that’s just the start.”
She laughed, the sound shaky but real, and pulled me down for another.
“Do you really think we’ll make it?”
I kissed her forehead. “I think we already have.”
Scarlette
Dawn found us as it always did, prying open our lids with blue cold and a thousand tiny aches. The hut stank of sweat and wet wool and whatever wild thing Moab had hunted down after midnight, something with a pelt and the blood to keep us both warm until morning. He was up before me, already moving through the rituals of survival. He set the bones from last night’s supper in a row along the windowsill, then sat on his haunches and checked the line of traps strung between the back wall and the sheep pen, boots never making a sound.
I lay beneath the battered furs, counting each inhale and exhale, trying to decide if the dream, moon silver, violence, the taste of fur in my mouth, was still echoing in my head or if it had ever left. My ankle throbbed, a dull, clean pain now instead of the fevered spike I’d gotten used to. I flexed my foot and hissed. The bandage was still wrapped tight, a perfect spiral, the edges so even it looked surgical.
“You’re healing,” Moab said, without turning.
I propped myself up on an elbow. “I’m not a sheep, you know.”
He shrugged, still crouched by the hearth. “Sheep heal slower.”
The half-smile caught me off guard. He rarely showed anything that might be mistaken for joy; his face was all scars and angles, his beard a patchwork that never quite caught up to his jaw. But I could see it, the way his eyes creased, the way the dark blue lines of the wolf tattoo on his left arm seemed to brighten in the firelight.
He came over, ripped a crust of bread in half, and handed me the bigger piece. “Eat.”
I took it. The cold had stolen most of the flavor, but I chewed anyway. “Are you always like this in the morning?”
He shrugged again, pulling his jacket tighter. “You want to see me before coffee, you go first.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “What’s coffee?”
“Better than this,” he said, and glanced at my foot. “Move it a little. Need to check the skin.”
I gritted my teeth and lifted the limb, letting him untie the bandage with hands that were too careful to be the hands of a killer. He pressed his thumb to the swelling, then nodded once. “Almost there.”
“Then what?” I asked, voice low. Where do we go, with half the world hunting us?
He opened his mouth, but didn’t get to answer. Instead, there was a sound, like a shout, then a crash, and the world outside turned gold and orange, shadows racing across the window. My blood turned to ice. Moab was up in an instant, knife in hand, eyes gone flat and hungry.
I tried to scramble up, but my foot betrayed me. He was at my side before I could fall, pulling me upright and steadying mewith a grip that bruised. “Stay behind me,” he muttered. The animal in his voice wasn’t caged anymore.
There was another shout, closer now. The light outside strobed, flickering as torches circled the hut. Moab reached for his knife, checked the window, and hissed. “Fuck. We’ve got company.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew.
“Your old friends,” he said. “And they brought the whole damn village.”
I didn’t want to look, but I did. Through the gap in the boards, I saw a dozen men, maybe more. Some wore mail, others had only pitchforks and crude staves, but all of them burned with the same ugly certainty. At their center, mounted and cold as iron, was Sir Aldric. The cut of his silhouette was unmistakable: tall, square-shouldered, dressed in dark wool and too much pride. Beside him, in the shadow of the horse, was the man in black—a cowl so stiff it could’ve been carved, hands folded, head down. Brother Tomas.
Moab watched the window, then backed away. “We could run,” he said, but the tone meant we can’t.
I stood, grabbed a piece of kindling for a crutch, and steadied myself. “We won’t make it,” I said.
He met my eyes. His had gone amber at the edges. The tattoos seemed to ripple, the ink alive under his skin. “You’re sure?”
I nodded. “They’ll burn us out, if nothing else.”
He looked me over, something like regret moving through him. “You want me to fight?”
