The retort catches me off guard. I look up again, and he’s watching me with something sharper than his usual grin.
“You heard that?”
“Heard you moving around. Didn’t want to interrupt.” He shrugs. “Figured if organizing supplies at three was helping, who was I to stop you?”
The consideration is unexpected. Uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do with a man who crashes through doors but respects the sounds of someone coping at three in the morning.
“Why do you care?” The question emerges before I can stop it. “You don’t know me. I’ve been cold and dismissive for days. Why are you still here?”
His grin fades. Something more serious moves behind those bright eyes.
“Because I’ve been where you are.”
“Have you?”
“Different circumstances. Same result.” He leans forward, elbows on knees. “Three hundred years ago, give or take. After my first real battle—not a skirmish, a real fight, with real casualties. I watched dragons die because I wasn’t fast enough. Spent weeks afterward trying to control everything I could because the things that mattered were beyond my control.”
I don’t respond. Don’t know how to respond.
“The lists help,” he continues. “The organizing. The systems. They help because they’re something you can fix when everything else is broken. But eventually, you run out of shelves to organize. And then all that shit you’ve been not feeling comes crashing down anyway.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“It’s supposed to be honest.” He holds my gaze. “You’re going to fall apart eventually. Everyone does. The only question is whether you do it alone or whether you let someone be there when it happens.”
“I don’t need?—“
“Everyone needs, Aisling.” My name sounds different in his mouth. Not formal. Almost gentle. “Even stubborn veterinarians from Cork who think they can organize their way through trauma.”
The accuracy stings. I feel my walls rising, feel the cold defensiveness that’s kept me functional since the mountain.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you haven’t cried once since you woke up. I know you’ve been having nightmares every night but you haven’t told anyone. I know you’re holding yourself together with lists and schedules and the sheer Irish stubbornness that convinced you to become a vet when your parents wanted a lawyer.”
I go still. “How do you know about my parents?”
“Selene mentioned it.” He doesn’t look apologetic. “She also mentioned they don’t know you’re alive.”
The words land like a blow. I feel my carefully constructed walls tremble.
“That’s not?—“
“Your business? Maybe not.” He stands, and suddenly he’s too close, taking up too much space, making it impossible to retreat into my comfortable distance. “But I think you’re sitting in this room alone because it’s easier than facing what happened. And I think you’re making lists about Valdris because analyzing the monster is less terrifying than admitting she terrified you.”
“Stop.”
“I think you’re so focused on being useful that you haven’t let yourself feel anything about being hurt?—“
“I saidstop.”
The fire comes without warning.
Not the careful flicker I’ve been practicing—a surge of flame that erupts from my palms, racing up my arms, wreathing my body in golden light. I stumble back, horrified, but I can’t stop it. Three weeks of suppressed terror, three days of forced calm, all of it igniting at once.
Rurik doesn’t flinch.
He steps forward, into the flames, and catches my wrists.
