“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because I would rather be cut by you than become the thing he named me.
“Because you were afraid,” I say instead. “And I did not want you to have to guess.”
She nods slowly, like the answer is a shape she can hold.
The heat canister clicks softly. The mountain settles and creaks.
“Those men,” she says. “They weren’t traders. They knew about courier tags. They said I was worth more than salt.”
“Some humans sell other humans now,” I say.
I keep my voice flat so my disgust does not unravel into rage. Rage is loud. Loud gets things killed.
“Your signal can be tracked if you do not sleep in a copper mesh. They likely had a reader. It will not matter now. You killed the signal.”
“I didn’t know about the mesh.” Her mouth twists. “Some courier.”
“You are alive,” I say. “This is the measure that matters today.”
She looks at me for a long time.
The silence between us changes shape again—less like a shutdown system, more like a pause.
The storm arrives gradually—first a hiss under the earth, then a soft rattle of grit, then the old, complicated sound of water meeting stone.
The wind drives rain into the seam; the seam breathes it past us and out the crack, and the pocket grows warmer the way caves always do when the mountain is doing half the work for you.
She pulls the scarf tighter.
Her hands shake again—delayed tremors, adrenaline unwinding.
I rummage for the small flask of willow-bark concentrate and pass it across. “For pain,” I say. “Bitter.”
She drinks, makes a face, and hands it back with two fingers like she is returning contraband.
“You really do think of everything.”
“No,” I say, and let the old, hard smile die before it forms. “I think I have enough.”
Lightning ghosts somewhere beyond the stone. Thunder follows.
“You could have left me,” she says eventually. “Most would have. Safer.”
“Safer is sometimes only slower death,” I say. “And I do not leave people for animals to find.”
Her breath hitches.
We do not speak for a while. The storm does it for us.
In the tired, soft dark, I remove the helm and set it beside my knee. Light from the canister brushes the lower planes of my face. I do not show her more than that.
It is enough.
She watches—not greedy, not afraid. Cataloging.
