Benni’s fingers curled into the leather of his gloves. He told himself it was just the air – just the waiting, the slow grind of a campaign poised on the edge of its next breath. But the unease had been building since dawn, and no amount of rational thought could quite explain the weight pressing down on the back of his neck.
He saw them before the watch did—two figures cresting the ridge from the southern rise, the light behind them turning them to silhouettes stitched from shadow and road dust. The horses moved with a soldier’s pace, their riders upright despite the long journey. Even from a distance, he could tell it was them. Astrid’s seat in the saddle was unmistakable – bold and relaxed, her red braid snapped behind her like a whip, unfurling in the wind. Daen rode beside her, quiet and still, the way mountains were quiet and still, and just as unmovable.
Benni was already moving before they reached the foot of the hill, his boots biting into the frost-softened earth. Relief struck him—unexpectedly but keenly— at the sight of familiar faces after too many days of smoke and strangers. He raised a hand in greeting, the wind pulling at his cloak as he closed the distance.
“You look like piss,” Astrid called down to him as she swung out of the saddle in one fluid movement, the lines of fatigue in her face undercut by the crooked grin she always seemed to wear.
Benni barked a laugh – short, sharp and genuine. “That’s Captain Piss to you.”
Astrid snorted and clapped him hard on the shoulder, the kind ofgreeting born in barracks and long campaigns, not formality. Daen followed slower, dismounting with the same quiet precision he did everything, and when he reached Benni, the two men clasped forearms – no words, only the familiar weight of it.
“I thought you were weeks away still,” Benni said, glancing between them. “Didn’t expect you until the new moon.”
“We pushed through,” Astrid replied, brushing the dust from her gloves. “Had the pleasure of some logistical overseeing for the supply lines from Irongate to here. Can’t tell you how much I detest administration. Unlike this one.” She nodded at Daen who rolled his eyes. “We would have been here sooner without his infuriating perfectionism. I mean, it’s grain, for goodness’ sake, not gold.”
“You can’t eat gold.” Daen said. “And you’d be unbearable if you didn’t have your rations.”
Benni grinned then, a wry, tired thing that barely reached his eyes, and only because it was them—Astrid and Daen, faces carved into the bedrock of his memory, steady as tide and stone. “Glad you’ve arrived before I had to start boiling boot leather. We’ve rationed harder than I’d like. Ara will be glad to hear –”
And then suddenly, he realised he was counting three when there were only two.
He turned slightly, almost unconsciously, scanning the road behind them with a casual glance that wasn’t casual at all. But the path lay empty, winding back through the hills and over the bare-topped ridges like a trail that led nowhere at all. There had been no space for the thought at first. But now, in the pause that followed the laughter, it hit him all at once. He looked back to Astrid, then Daen. “Wait. She’s not with you?”
Astrid blinked, slow and uncertain. Her brow furrowed beneath the grime of travel, and when she spoke, it was with a dazed confusion, as though the question itself had arrived from the wrong direction.
“She left before us,” she said, the words drawn. “Two – no, three days earlier, at least. She wanted to get here ahead; guess she couldn’t stand the thought of another day of politics or grain-counting. She was supposed to be –”
She didn’t finish the sentence, and the words hung heavy between them. Benni shifted back slightly, shoulders drawn in, as the realisation settled in: something vital had shifted out of place and left no room for doubt.
She should be here.
Not just in the way that plans sometimes falter or delays creep in unnoticed. This wasn’t the kind of lateness that carried the irritation of poor timing. This was the kind that felt unnatural, that settled into your chest and made itself at home – not because of what you knew, but because of what you didn’t.
“Did she say what route she’d take?” he asked.
Daen’s eyes narrowed slightly, his focus sharpening as if he were tracing a thought to its end. Then, he said, “She took the eastern route.”
“You’re sure?”
“She told me.” Daen’s voice had the quality of memory now, precise and clear. “Said she’d had her fill of diplomacy. That she wanted the open road, and she’d make better time alone.” He reached into the inner fold of his cloak, pulling free a folded scrap of paper, creased and softened from the journey. “She gave me this. Said it was where to find her, and you.”
Benni took the note, barely glancing at the familiar scrawl. He already knew what it would say. His signature, the usual half-jokes they passed between them to make the weight of their work seem lighter. But tucked within them, the location had been precise, their plan clear.
She had meant to be here.
“She should’ve arrived days before you,” he said at last, the realisation slipping from his mouth like something that tasted rotten behind his teeth. “If she left three days ahead, if she rode even half the pace she usually does…”
Astrid shifted, her boot scraping against the gravel. “Maybe she stopped. Maybe something held her back.”
Benni looked at her, not sharply, but with the slow, aching weight of someone who knows better. “If Ara meant to be here, she would be here.”
A stillness settled between them, heavy with the press of too many words. Benni let the note fall closed in his hand. His grip had tightened without him noticing. “Whatever slowed her down”, he said, “wasn’t by her choice.”
The weight of it settled—quiet, steady, inescapable. Astrid folded her arms to steady herself against the rising tide of implication. The wind lifted strands of her hair from beneath the edges of her hood, and for once, she didn’t push them back. Daen said nothing. His gaze had drifted to the ridgeline behind them, as if a familiar shape might emerge if he only watched long enough.
Benni rubbed a hand over his mouth, as though the motion might wipe away the implications before they could root too deeply. But they were already seeded. He could feel them tightening their grip in the quiet shift of his posture, the clench of his jaw.
“She told no one else?” he asked.
