Benni rose, brushing the grit from his hands as he turned back toward the camp. The stars above him burned pale and distant, indifferent to the ache in his chest, but he walked with purpose all the same.
She was out there. And until she stood beside him again, he would not stop moving. Not for rest. Not for doubt. Not for anything less than her return.
Let the war wait a little longer. He had something far more important to win back.
Chapter Eighteen: Frejara
The cold came first. It threaded beneath my skin while I slept, settling deep in the hollows of bone and muscle, into the bruises along my ribs and shoulder. I didn’t remember falling, but my body did. The ache of it lived in the small of my back, in the weight of my limbs, in the slow protest of muscle holding me still. Stone pressed against me from below, uneven and damp, carrying the deep-set chill of places left behind and forgotten.
Light gathered slowly behind my eyes, diffused and grey, as though it had filtered through smoke or mist before reaching this place. I stayed where I was, half-curled on my side, and let the world unfold in increments: the sour tang of salt and moss thick in the air, the distant, rhythmic drip of water tapping against something I could not see, the dull sting where my wrists had been bound too tightly for too long. Each breath I drew felt like it had to negotiate its way into my lungs, slow and uneven, edged with the faint copper of dried blood.
When I opened my eyes, the ceiling loomed above – wooden beams darkened by age and salt, long since splintered, sagging beneath theweight of years and exposure. The light that filtered in had no colour to it, just a thin, indifferent sheen that lit the dust in the air without warming it. High above, a bird—the kind that didn’t bother to sing—picked its way along a crooked beam, one eye fixed downward, as if I was an inconvenient guest in its home. I wondered how long it had watched me lie there.
The room – if it could be called that – had no corners, only the wide sweep of a circle built from stone laid with such care that the joints had nearly vanished, each block resting against its neighbour with a kind of reverence, the way ancient places sometimes did when they had not yet forgotten their purpose. Some of the stones had bowed inward where time or neglect had taken hold, and streaks of moss, lichen, and long-forgotten cracks marked the walls. Even so, there was a weight to the space that suggested this had once mattered – that someone had built it not for shelter, but for significance.
Opposite me, where the light failed to reach and the shadows curled deepest, a platform rose gently from the floor, hewn from a single slab of discoloured stone, its edges softened by age, its surface dulled by touch or time or the slow abrasion of wind. At its back, barely visible in the dark, thin strands of red had been tied to some jut of stone – ribbons, long and frayed, their colour faded into the dusky hue of dried blood, stirring faintly in the shallow currents that slipped through the stone.
I tried to shift, but my body gave only the smallest answer – a throb at the base of my skull, sharp enough to blur the edges of sight again, and the dull ache of limbs that had not moved freely in too long. The coarse fibres strained at my wrists when I tried to lift them, and only then did I feel the pull of bindings—loose enough not to bite, but present all the same, a reminder that I was not here by chance. I let my head fall back against the wall behind me, breathing in slow, shallow draughts, letting the salt air settle in my mouth. Somewhere beyond the stonecame the distant cry of gulls.
Then the stillness shifted – a faint change in the air, as though the room itself had stirred. Then the light caught differently, sliding across the stone in a pale line that hadn’t been there before. A moment later came the sound of a step—a single, deliberate press of the boot against an old stone—the kind of step that marked intention rather than haste.
Another step followed. And another. Whoever it was moved slowly along the arc of the wall, tracing the outer edge of the space without crossing into it, as though to avoid disturbing whatever strange gravity lived at the centre. I kept my eyes open just enough to catch the shape of him – a figure cut in half by the mottled light, tall and lean, wrapped in a coat frayed and softened by long wear. His hair, straw-coloured and stubbornly curling at the ends, was pushed back as if by wind or habit, and he moved with a deliberate intent that felt learned rather than natural. No crest, no colours, no metal glint of a Queen’s blade. Just rough cloth, worn leather, and the look of someone who had been watching for longer than he cared to admit.
He stopped a few paces from me, far enough not to crowd, close enough that I could smell the sea still clinging to him – salt and wet wool, sharp and briny, as if he’d carried the tide in with him. For a moment, he only looked. I felt the weight of it, searching – not hostile exactly, but not gentle either.
I didn’t mean to speak, but the words rose anyway, rough and cracked and bitter on my tongue.
“Keep staring like that and I’ll start to think you’ve taken a liking to me.”
He didn’t answer straight away. Didn’t bristle or flinch or offer some tired remark in return – just knelt, slowly, as though the silence between us was something that needed tending. I noticed no metal glinted at his hip; if he was armed, he had the sense not to show it.
“You hit your head,” he said then, the words carrying that subtleroughness that comes from disuse, like speech wasn’t something he reached for often.
“I gathered,” I muttered, dragging a breath past the dry rasp of my throat. “What I haven’t gathered is where the fuck I am.”
A flask hung at his side, battered and dark with use, and he set it down with steady hands, followed by a folded strip of cloth that had seen water more recently than I had. Something in me tightened at the sight of them – not for what they were, but for what they meant: that I was still being kept alive.
“Tirn’vahl,” he said after a moment. “The coast. The edge of it, anyway.”
Tirn’vahl. Of course it would be. The last spit of land before the sea swallows the world, where stone and salt have outlasted empires and the wind leaves its mark on every face that stands against it.
“And you?” I asked, watching him carefully. “Some daring seadog or a pirate come to see what the tide dragged in?”
He didn’t look up straight away. Just poured a measure of water into the hollow of the tin lid and set it gently on the ground between us. “Mathias.”
The name settled without weight. No banners. No house. No reason I should know it. I filed it away all the same.
“You’ve made a habit of dragging unconscious women into crumbling ruins, or am I an exception?”
He looked at me then, properly – eyes flicking to mine and then away again, as though holding the gaze too long might unravel whatever resolve had carried him this far. “There was nowhere else.”
I tried to push myself upright, and the movement tore a fresh jolt of fire through my skull, bright and vicious. My hand went to the bandage before I could stop it, fingers brushing the edge of linen crusted with blood.
“Don’t,” he said, and though the word was soft, it carried the weightof command. “It’s clean. You’ll tear it open again if you’re careless.”
“I’ve had worse,” I muttered, but I let my hand drop all the same.
“You were unconscious for three days.” His words were slow now, serious. “I wasn’t sure you’d wake.”
