“Good,” he said. “I’m not one.”
I didn’t want to. But I stepped past him anyway, boots sinking into the wet earth. Eryndor fell in a half a step behind me, not too close, not too far. A leash.
The path into Verdant stretched damp and narrow, stretched damp and narrow, roots veining across it like they wanted to trip me. Eryndor’s steps followed, steady, measured. Always a half a pace behind, the kind of discipline you can’t teach, the distance of a man who’s hunted enough to know how close is too close.
I pulled my cloak tighter, though it wasn’t the cold that prickled my skin. His silence weighed heavier than any accusation. It stretched between us, thick and watchful, leaving space for conclusions he hadn’t spoken aloud.
And I knew that silence would not end here.
It would be carried back to the Hall, shaped into something useful, something damning, until it no longer resembled what had passed between us at all.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low in the way of hunters—quiet but meant to carry. “The council worries for you. For your safety.”
The word caught sharply, like a thorn pressing through cloth. Safety. No one ever meant safety when they said it. They meant control. Containment. Just a leash dressed as kindness.
I didn’t answer. He tried again. “They say you keep to yourself. That you work your ledgers. That you want no trouble.”
I stopped just for a heartbeat, then moved again. Of course they’d been listening. Counting the quiet of my life as though it were a crime in itself. What were they expecting to find?
“Do they report on how often I sweep my floor too?”
His scarred mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “You sound like your father.”
My throat closed. I hadn’t expected him to know anything of my father. I hadn’t expected him to mention him at all.
“You knew him?” The words slipped sharper than I meant.
Eryndor didn’t flinch. “Not well. Hunters talk. Traders Talk. A man who carried storm in his voice is hard to forget.”
The leash pulled tighter.
“Never let them name you before you name yourself.” My father’s lesson rose, bright and sudden, like lightning finding the tallest branch. If even strangers still remembered him, what else had they carried back to the council?
I had buried that lesson long ago, pressed it down under ledgers and bread and silence. But now, with Eryndor’s shadow trailing me, it surfaced sharply. If I let them write my story in whispers, it would not be mine at all.
I looked forward, jaw tight. The brook ran louder, tripping quickly over stone. My palm prickled faintly, a silver shimmer just beneath the skin. I curled my fingers fast, hiding it, but his gaze flicked down anyway. His knuckles brushed the bowstring once more. Too ready.
The path narrowed, pressing us closer to the trees. Eryndor adjusted his bow against his shoulder, eyes never still. He scanned the underbrush as if every fern might leap at us, but I felt what he was truly watching.
His silence pressed heavier now, swollen with the weight of unasked questions. When he finally spoke, it was too measured to be casual. “They say storms follow you. That when thunder rolls, it listens.”
My pulse kicked. “Do they also say I call lightning down to burn fields?” My voice came out dry, but sharp.
He didn’t rise to the bait though. His scar twitched again.
“I don’t traffic in rumor. I watch and I see things I cannot name.”
As if in answer, the leaves above us rustled, though the air hung still around us. A hush dropped over the path, wrapping around us. Even the brook faltered, sound swallowed mid-current.
I felt it before I saw it. Silver pricking hot under my skin, crawling from palm into my veins. My steps slowed.
The hum wasn’t faint anymore. It was alive and insistent.
Eryndor stopped too, hand tightening on his bow. His gaze dropped again to my fist, clenched at my side, the light leaking between my fingers despite me.
His breath left in one harsh exhale. “Unnatural.”
The word cracked through me like stormglass under pressure, silent at first, then splintering everywhere at once.
