Chapter Nine
What Staying Might Mean
Lina
The thing I hadn’t expected about living inside the mountain was how private it could feel.
Not lonely—private. Like the stone itself understood the difference between hiding and sheltering. Sound softened here. Light lingered. Even footsteps seemed to respect boundaries, as if everyone had learned the same unspoken rule: don’t take more space than you need.
I was sitting at the small table in Rygnar’s quarters, mapping supply routes from memory onto a scrap of slate, when I heard voices outside the door.
Not raised. Not urgent.
Just… domestic.
“—needs to be offset by two degrees,” someone said, a Mesaarkan voice, older and roughened by years.
“It’s fine,” another replied—Rygnar’s voice, unmistakable. “I adjusted it last cycle.”
The sound of his voice caught in my chest before I could stop it.
The door slid open, and Rygnar stepped inside with an older Mesaarkan woman behind him. Her crest was paler than his, worn smooth in places, and her posture carried the relaxed authority of someone who had lived long enough to stop bracing for disaster.
“Oh,” I said, scrambling up. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t interrupt,” the woman said briskly. Her gaze swept over me, sharp and assessing, then softened. “You must be the courier.”
“Former,” I said. “I think.”
She snorted. “No one who survives the roads ever really stops being one.”
She turned to Rygnar. “Your vent ratios are still off.”
“They were within tolerance,” he said mildly.
“They were barely within tolerance,” she corrected. “And now you have a human living in your quarters.”
Heat rushed to my face.
Rygnar didn’t flinch. “Yes,” he said simply.
Not for now. Not temporarily.
Just yes.
The woman hummed, unimpressed. “You adjusted the sleeping partition?”
“Yes.”
“And the heat cycle?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think it required approval.”
Her eyes flicked to me again, then back to him. Something unreadable passed between them. Finally, she nodded.
