“Not what?” I close the distance between us. Three steps. Her chin lifts as I approach, but she doesn’t back away. “Not keeping you safe? Not wanting you here?” My hand curls around her waist. Pulls her closer. “I lost people. I’m not losing you too.”
“Zoric—”
“You didn’t cause this.” I cut her off before she can argue. “Oreth caused this. The curse caused this. You were just—” Isearch for the right word. “Carrying it. The way a ship carries plague without meaning to infect the port.”
“That’s not exactly a flattering comparison.”
“It’s accurate.” My thumb traces circles against her hip, a small motion I can’t seem to stop. “You didn’t choose the curse. Didn’t ask for it. You were surviving, same as everyone else. Same as me.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then her hands come up, settle against my chest. Not pushing away—resting there, feeling my heartbeat the way she did this morning.
“I should leave.” Her voice is barely audible. “Before I bring more trouble to your door.”
“No.”
“Zoric—”
“We face what’s coming.” I cup her face, tilt it up so she has to meet my gaze. “We don’t run. Not from bounty hunters, not from angry survivors, not from whoever’s sailing toward us on that supply ship.” I let the words sink in. Let her hear what I’m saying and what I’m not. “We. You and me, in this until the end.”
Her expression changes. The armor cracks. Underneath, I see fear and hope and a raw hunger that mirrors my own.
“You’ve never said ‘we’ before.” Her voice catches. “It’s always been ‘I.’ I’ll handle it. I’ll protect you. My responsibility.”
“It was.” I tilt her chin up, holding her gaze. “It’s not anymore.”
She kisses me. Fierce this time, her fingers fisting in my shirt, pulling me down to her level with a hunger that makes my blood sing. When we break apart, we’re both breathing harder.
“Later,” she says. “When there aren’t dead to burn and survivors to manage.”
“Later.” I steal one more kiss—brief, promising—before stepping back. “Let’s get to work.”
The day passesin a blur of grim labor.
We inventory what’s left. Salvage what can be salvaged. The Warden’s Spire is dry—a high point in the keep, farthest from the flooding—so we move supplies there, creating a defensible position if it comes to that. The Great Hall becomes our staging area, its broken windows covered with salvaged canvas, its cracked floor marked with the careful paths of people trying not to fall through.
Aviora works beside me. Not because I ask her to—because she insists. She has experience with salvage, with inventory, with the unglamorous work of turning disaster into something survivable. She moves through the keep with purpose, directing the able-bodied survivors, making decisions without waiting for my approval.
I watch her. My eyes keep finding her no matter where I look. The way she bends to lift a crate, gauging its heft before committing. The way she pushes hair out of her face with the back of her wrist, hands too dirty to touch her skin. The way she laughs at something Brek says—a surprised sound, genuine, cracking through the grimness of the day.
Every time she passes close, we touch. A brush of fingers when she hands me a manifest. Her hand on my arm when she needs my attention. My palm at the small of her back as I guide her through a narrow passage. Small gestures. Easily dismissed. Except that neither of us dismisses them.
“You’re staring again.” Salt Margit’s voice is dry as she settles onto a crate beside me, her injured leg stretched out in front of her. “Not sure if you know that.”
“I know.” No point in denying it. Margit’s survived too many years to be fooled by lies.
“She’s trouble.” The old woman’s gaze follows mine to where Aviora is helping Brek secure a tarp over the damaged roof. “Twenty-five thousand gold worth of trouble, if Thorne’s reports are accurate.”
“Thorne’s reports are always accurate.”
“Then you know what’s coming.” Margit shifts, grimacing as her leg protests. “Whoever posted that bounty isn’t going to stop looking. They’ll send people. Professionals. And when they find her here, with us—” She shrugs. “We don’t have the numbers to fight them off. Not anymore.”
“You think I should let her go.”
“I think you should let her make her own choice.” Margit’s voice softens. “She’s not cargo, Captain. She’s not a hostage. If she wants to run, you can’t stop her. If she wants to stay—” She pauses. “Then she stays knowing what it might cost.”
“She knows.”
“Does she?” Margit heaves herself upright, steadying herself against a pillar. “Does she know you’d die for her? Does she know what that means to you? Because from where I’m sitting, Captain, you’ve been alone for years. Punishing yourself for sins that were never entirely yours. And now there’s someone who sees you—really sees you—and you’re terrified of what happens if you let yourself want her.”
