He shifted, as if reminded of something he had meant to do, and reached to the side of his kit. He set a small square of cloth near my knee. It was too neatly folded to be an accident.
“Clean,” he said. “For… storms.”
I took it. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “We speak of the dead in the morning,” he added, like a rule. Not hard. Not cold. Just a way to make it through the night. “If you wish.”
Something in me unknotted at that.
“I’d like that,” I said.
Time is slippery around grief. It could have been minutes or an hour later when I caught myself watching him again, cataloging details that had nothing to do with med kits or exits. The shape of his mouth at rest. The way the light picked out an almost invisible pattern along his cheek, not a scar or a scale but something older. The precise way he breathed—measured, quiet—and the way that calmness steadied me.
Admitting it took less effort than I expected.
I liked him.
Not just for saving me. Not just because he was the safest thing on a dangerous night.
I liked the way he made space around his movements for my fear to exist without making it bigger. I liked that he had covered the raider’s face with a cloth so the man wouldn’t choke on dust—the gravity of his voice and the way it left room for my answers—that he saidoursand flinched, then corrected it without shame.
It was the kind of liking that would land hard if I let it. I wasn’t ready to drop, but I stopped pretending the ground wasn’t there.
“Rygnar,” I said, because saying his name helped me hear myself. “When morning comes… where are we going?”
“A basin,” he said. “High and hidden. My people’s dwellings are cut into the south face. They grow food among wild grasses so eyes above do not notice.”
“Your people,” I repeated, testing the feel of it. “Will they want me there?”
He didn’t sugarcoat it. “Some will not. Most will worry. They will vote for caution.” A beat. “I will vote for you.”
It was a small sentence. It hit like shelter feels when you’re soaked through.
“Why?” I asked. “I’m a stranger with a beacon that almost brought trouble to your door.”
He considered me—not weighing or measuring for trade, but considering, like someone handling something that could break.
“Because you looked at my hands and saw work, not weapons,” he said. “Because you asked before touching. Because you gave me back my name when the others gave me theirs for me.”
I hadn’t realized I’d done that. The knowledge warmed places I’d let go cold after the war, when survival taught people to treat names like assignments instead of lives.
Headquarters would want a report. Routes. Times. Numbers.
Rygnar was offering shelter, not orders.
“Okay,” I said. “Then I'll be worth your vote.”
Lightning rolled somewhere far off, too muted to be dangerous now. The seam sighed. The canister’s little flame made a sound like a cat dreaming.
I lay down on my side, careful with the ankle, and made a pillow of my coat. The stone had given up the day’s heat; it seeped into me through the cloth.
I didn’t want to ask, but the question jumped out anyway.
“You’ll wake me if—”
“Yes,” he said, already on the far side of my fear. “If anything comes. I will wake you.”
“And you’ll sleep… later?” I didn’t know why I needed the answer.
