I notice which side of camp he is on without looking. Notice whether his voice is calm or carrying. Notice whether he has seen me return safely from a task. Notice whether he has sent food, water, or one of the boys to fetch me before the day dips into evening.
At some point, without deciding to, I stop thinking of his tent as the king’s tent and start thinking of it as the place I go back to when the rest of the camp wears me down.
That is worse than wanting him physically.
Wanting his bed, his scent, his hands, at least makes sense in the straightforward bodily way I am slowly learning this world understands well. But this is something else. This is the beginning of it. My mind and body are starting to see him as the place I turn when everything else feels too harsh.
My person.
The phrase comes out of nowhere while I am rinsing a bowl at the water line near dusk, and it startles me so badly I nearly drop it.
When evening settles, and the fires are lit again, Oshara sends me off earlier than the day before with a short instruction to return at first light for dry goods inventory. I murmur understanding and head toward Kaiven’s tent with tired legs and smoke in my hair.
He is already there when I arrive. Sitting near the brazier, cleaning one of his blades with slow, deliberate strokes. He looks up the moment I step inside.
That look reaches me now in a place it didn’t before the basin. Not just fear. Not just heat. Recognition. My shoulders lower a fraction before I can stop them.
Kaiven notices.
He sets the blade aside and says, “You are tired.”
It is not a question.
I let out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “I think that’s the kindest way anyone here has said that to me.”
A shift touches his mouth. Barely there.
“Sit.”
Again, the command. Again, I do.
He pours water first. Then hands me food. Then, after a moment, he reaches toward the side of my sleeve where a streak of dried herb stain still marks the fabric from the afternoon work. His fingers stop just short of contact, giving me a beat to understand what he sees. Then he brushes the stain away gently, the movement practical and unthinking.
That tiny touch nearly wrecks me.
Not because it is seductive. Because it is so ordinary. The kind of thing a person does when they have already begun placing you inside their attention without effort.
Kaiven seems not to realize what that simple movement costs me. Or maybe he does. With him, it is getting harder to tell.
“You did well today,” he says.
I blink. “At what?”
“At remaining.”
The answer sits in the warm tent air between us.
My throat tightens unexpectedly. Because that may be the first time anyone in this camp has said out loud what I have been doing since I arrived.
I look down at the cup in my hands for a moment because meeting his eyes right then feels too dangerous. When I finally look up, his gaze is already on me, steady as ever.
And for the first time since I left Mars, the thought does not feel impossible.
Maybe I am not one of them yet. Maybe I am still more protected than accepted. Maybe the distance between those two things is still wider than I want.
But I am no longer only a stranger under his roof, either.
I am becoming real here.
