“On the ridge. Thirty meters above.”
“You watched me burn them?”
“Yes.”
“The fragment survived in the ash after you left,” he said. “Two words. Your handwriting.”
“And you kept it.”
“It’s stayed there since that night.” His voice barely held.
I pressed the fragment against my chest. The gesture came without permission, the same one I’d made with Lucian’s raven note, and I was starting to see a pattern in the way these men broke me open from angles I wasn’t guarding.
“You carried this against your ribs for weeks.” I looked at the two words. “You just let me rage and carried this the whole time.”
“Your anger was justified.Isjustified. Will continue to be justified for as long as you need it.” His eyes held mine. “The fragment doesn’t change that. It just means I had proof that beneath the anger, you missed me. And on the worst nights, proof was enough.”
I folded it. Put it back in the jacket pocket, over the left side, exactly where he’d been keeping it.
His eyes tracked the movement.
“It stays,” I said. “Keep carrying it.”
The rain eased. The downpour gentled into a steady fall and the light through the canopy shifted from dark gray to pale silver. The ravine was still flooded but the storm had passed its peak.
We stepped out from the overhang.
My foot caught a wet root. Balance tipped, arm swung out, and his hand was there. Catching my elbow, steadying me. His fingers released the moment I was stable, but my hand brushed his during the withdrawal.
I didn’t pull away.
We walked back toward camp through the mud, shoulder to shoulder, my hand close enough to his that our fingers grazed with every other step. Just existing in the same space without flinching.
Camp appeared through the trees. Farmon’s fire, Percy’s oak, Lucian’s cot.
Solomon stopped at the perimeter. I held the jacket for one extra second. Felt the weight of it, the warmth, the fragment pressed against the lining over his ribs.
“The fragment. Keep carrying it.”
I slipped the jacket off and placed it in his hands and walked into camp without looking back.
53
— • —
Lucian
I should not have been at the eastern perimeter.
The wound disagreed with walking. Every step pulled at the tissue the silver compound had eaten through, and the paste slowed the damage without reversing it.
I told myself this was tactical. A king assessing the extraction route Solomon had mapped.
The truth was less dignified. Solomon had mentioned Wyatt earlier. One sentence about the training schedule. And the name had festered while I sat against a tree pretending to recover.
If this was what fatherhood did to alphas, Veyndral was in trouble.
Besides, I couldn’t stay at one place for a long time and risk letting more of my thoughts run in my mind. The guilt was worse at night. Percival’s silence where his voice used to be. Farmon’s ruined hands by the fire. Solomon working maps beside a woman whose loyalty had complications neither of them would name.
