The ringing in my ears faded slowly. My heartbeat filled the silence, too loud, too fast. I lowered the rifle. Uncurled my fingers from the stock, one by one, and found them stiff from hours of tension.
I scanned the ridge. Nothing moved against the lightening sky.
Nothing.
My chest tightened. I told myself it meant nothing. He was careful. He was trained. He wouldn’t silhouette himself against the dawn like an amateur.
But the silence stretched, and the ridge stayed empty, and the words I’d said kept echoing in the hollow space behind my ribs.
I climbed down from the loft on legs that didn’t want to hold me. My knees shook on the ladder. I had to grip the rungs hard enough to hurt just to stay upright.
The barn floor was a mess. I stepped around it without looking too closely. Pushed open the door and stepped into the cold morning air.
The compound was empty. The fields were empty. Everything was silence and aftermath and the copper smell of blood mixing with dew.
I started walking toward the farmhouse. Rifle still in my hands because I didn’t know how to put it down. Eyes tracking every shadow, every shape that might be a body, might be a threat, might be him lying somewhere I hadn’t thought to look.
Don’t die.
I’d said it like it was nothing. I’d said it like I meant the mission, the farm, the Regalia. But my hands shook and my throat was tight. If he was dead on that ridge I didn’t know what I would do.
He appeared around the corner of the house.
Blood on his face. A dark smear across his temple, trailing down his cheek. Blood on his hands, dried brown in the creases of his knuckles. He walked like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just spent the night killing men in the dark.
I stared at him. At the blood. At the red eyes that found mine and held them, steady and calm and alive.
“You’re hurt.” The words came out sharper than I meant.
“Not my blood.”
Relief flooded through me so fast my knees almost buckled. I had to brace a hand against the doorframe just to stay standing. Physical, visceral, humiliating.
I turned away before he could see it.
“Tea,” I said, walking into the farmhouse with my spine straight and my face carefully blank. “I’m making tea.”
The kettle wouldn’t stay still.
I gripped the handle with both hands, trying to hold it steady under the pump, but my fingers had their own ideas. They trembled against the metal, making the water splash and sputter.
“Damn it.”
I set the kettle down. Pressed my palms flat against the counter. Breathed.
Behind me, I heard him come in. The soft tread of his boots. The creak of a chair as he sat at the table. He didn’t say anything. Just waited.
The domesticity of it was absurd. An hour ago, I’d killed two men. Twenty minutes ago, I’d listened to Turnip tear a third apart. And now I was standing at the kitchen pump trying to make tea like this was any other morning.
I got the kettle filled on the second try. Set it on the stove. Pulled two mugs from the shelf above the sink.
The fire had burned down to embers while we were gone. The house had gone cold. But I could feel him behind me, and where his presence pressed against my awareness, there was heat.
I brought the mugs to the table. Set one in front of him. Sat down across from him with my own cradled between my palms.
Neither of us drank.
My fingers still wouldn’t stop shaking. Adrenaline with nowhere to go, pooling in my muscles, making everything twitch and tremble. I pressed my palms flat against the ceramic, trying to absorb the warmth. Trying to look like I was holding myself together.
