When I finished, I hesitated, then asked the question that had been circling all day.
“Why did you stay?”
He looked at me. “Stay?”
“On Earth. After you deserted.”
For a moment, I thought I had crossed a line. Then his gaze dropped to his hands—scarred, steady, capable.
“I didn’t think I deserved a future elsewhere,” he said quietly.
The simplicity of it hurt.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“I know what I was trained to do,” he replied. “And what I refused to keep doing.”
I swallowed. “Then why stay at all?”
“Because leaving wouldn't erase what my people did here.” He lifted his eyes to mine. “And because hiding alone turns into another kind of death.”
The words settled between us.
“And you?” he asked after a beat. “Why do you keep moving?”
I could have given him a professional answer. Routes. Work. Obligation.
Instead, I said, “Because stopping used to mean dying.”
He nodded once, as if that told him everything he needed to know.
I lay down carefully, easing the ankle onto my pack, and pulled my coat around me. The stone still held warmth from the day. The canister hissed softly, a sound like something dreaming.
“You’ll wake me if—”
“Yes,” he said immediately. “If anything comes.”
“Hopefully you can get some sleep later, too.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
I nodded, barely able to keep my eyes open.
As sleep took me, I felt the quiet certainty of someone keeping watch—not because he had to, but because he chose to.
Chapter Four
The Hidden City
Rygnar
Dawn came quietly beneath silver clouds, the kind that tried to apologize for the night before. The storm had moved east, leaving a thin crust of frost on the stones and a smell of cedar and wet earth in the air.
Lina was still asleep when I checked the outer seam. Her breathing was steady now, no tremor in it. The line of her body beneath the coat looked less like someone braced for impact. The mountains had taken her fear and dulled it to something livable.
I stepped out into the narrow gap and let the morning air burn my lungs clean. Light crept across the slopes in slow, deliberate lines. Far below, the plains shone with patches of mist, as if the world was still deciding whether to wake.
When I returned, she was sitting up, hair half-loosened from its braid, the coat around her shoulders.
