I do. I do and I hate that he is.
“You will follow orders,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You will not take point.”
“Yes.”
“You will not leave her side without permission.”
“Yes.”
“And if I tell you to turn back?”
He hesitates. Just a breath.
Then: “I won’t.”
There it is. The line.
I step back, jaw tight, anger sparking hot and useless in my chest. Not at him. At the inevitability of this. At the fact that forcing him would fracture more than it would protect.
“You are not ready,” I say.
“Neither are you,” he replies.
Silence stretches between us, taut and dangerous.
I look at him again—not as a problem, but as a variable. As something that must be accounted for rather than eliminated.
“Get that lochaber checked,” I say at last. “The binding on the shaft is uneven. It will twist on impact.”
His eyes widen just a fraction but he lifts the weapon and inspects it, seeing what I saw.
“Yes,” he says, and for the first time, there is something like relief in his voice.
I turn away before it can settle. This is not permission. It is containment.
As I walk back toward the shifting lines of preparation, one thought settles heavy and unwelcome in my chest, I am not the only one willing to burn for her. And that will complicate everything.
5
TALIA
Iwake before the camp does.
It’s the kind of waking that doesn’t feel like sleep ending so much as vigilance loosening its grip just enough to let me breathe. The valley is still dim, the red sky muted into bruised violet and rust as the suns climb toward the rim. Cool air presses against my skin, fragile and temporary, and I draw it in deeply before the heat remembers us.
The camp is oddly quiet.
Lanterns burn low along the support poles, their light soft and deliberate, shadows stretching long across packed earth. Somewhere, someone moves quietly—boots scuffing, fabric whispering—but there’s none of yesterday’s chaos yet. No raised voices. No arguments.
Departure mornings never shout. They hum.
I sit up slowly, listening to my own body. The ache in my bones is sharper than yesterday, a dull insistence that tells me I’ve waited too long again. I reach for my epis, pressing the plant’s softened fibers against my tongue and swallowing before the bitternesscan linger. Heat tolerance. Endurance. Survival, distilled into something purple-brown and unassuming.
I don’t trust what it does to us, but I like the alternative less.
