It had happened two nights ago—brief, tentative. We’d both gone still afterward, as if listening for the mountain’s judgment. None had come.
So, we kept going, careful not to retreat, careful not to rush.
Touch became ordinary.
A hand at my elbow when the corridor sloped too steeply. His fingers brushed mine when he passed a cup across the workbench. My palm at the small of his back when I moved behind him in the gardens, steadying instead of claiming.
The patrol came back late on the twelfth night since our kiss.
I knew before the door opened.
Something in the air shifted—subtle but wrong, like pressure before a storm. I was on my feet automatically, heart already moving faster than reason.
The door sealed behind him with a harder click than usual.
He was uninjured. That registered first. No blood, no limp, no tension in his shoulders that meant something had broken.
But his hands shook when he set his pack down.
“Rygnar?” I said, keeping my voice even.
He exhaled slowly, as if realizing he’d been holding his breath. “A near miss,” he said. “Scouts in the pass. Not Mesaarkan. Human.”
Raiders.
“They didn’t see you?”
“They saw tracks that weren’t there,” he replied. “And turned back.”
I crossed the room before I decided to. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” He met my eyes. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
The certainty in his voice steadied me—but the image lingered anyway. Rygnar was alone in the dark, danger close enough to taste.
I reached for him without thinking. My hand landed on his forearm. It was warm and solid.
He froze.
Not pulling away and not leaning in. Just… aware.
“I need to know you’re real,” I said quietly.
He slowly turned his arm so my palm rested against the bare, scarred skin of his wrist. His pulse beat there—steady, unmistakable.
“I am,” he said.
“I don’t like how easily I imagined losing you,” I admitted.
Something in his expression shifted—surprise, then something like resolve.
“I don’t like that you had to imagine it at all,” he said.
Silence settled, charged but not fragile.
I didn’t step back.
Neither did he.
