It is nothing.
It is everything.
I let out the breath I have been holding since the ditch.
Outside, the night holds.
Inside, for the first time in a very long time, so do I.
Chapter Three
Cave of Storms
Lina
The storm stayed most of the night as if it had nowhere else to be.
Water threaded the stone around us, the sound fine as needles. Every time the wind leaned into the mountain, grit hissed through the narrow seam, and the little heat canister flickered as if it, too, had a pulse. My own heartbeat had stopped behaving like mine hours ago. It slowed now, then stuttered when I remembered the ditch, Ben’s fall, and the riders’ grins.
Even though we had stopped running, I was still shaking. They probably would have killed me if Rygnar hadn’t stepped in. I wasn’t the kind to let them take me without a fight, but that didn’t mean I would have won.
Across the small glow of the canister, Rygnar watched the dark like it might try to change shape on him.
He had taken off the helm. The shadows still hid his eyes, but I could see the planes of his jaw and the long line of his throat where the armor ended. The scales faded as my gaze dropped, not vanishing all at once but thinning, breaking apart into bare skin. It was darker than mine, matte instead of gleaming, marked by old scars that caught the light in silver threads. No scales there—just skin crosshatched with fine, silvery lines, as if life had written in a language, I didn’t know how to read.
He sat with a stillness that wasn’t stiffness. A soldier’s economy. The kind you learn by being punished for every extra motion.
“Try to sleep,” he said, his voice pitched low so it wouldn’t bounce hard off the stone.
“I will,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I could. It wasn’t only because he wasn’t human. I probably wouldn’t have trusted any man in this situation.
He didn’t argue, which made it easier.
I shifted my ankle, and the wrap pulled tight in the right way. He had set it with practical hands—quick, sure, and gentle, as if gentleness was the most efficient thing. The polymer seal on his shoulder caught the lantern light when he breathed. The line of blood that had seeped through earlier was gone.
I told myself I was only checking his dressing when my gaze went back to it.
Once.
Twice.
“You’ll be hungry in the morning,” he said, as if reading my mind and choosing the part that didn’t hurt. “Food tastes better when you’ve outrun a storm.”
“You’ve outrun a lot of them, I guess.”
“Enough.” A pause. “The mountain makes good shelter. If you listen to it.”
I swallowed a smile I didn’t expect. “And what does it say now?”
He actually considered the question.
“That we can be small and safe for a few hours,” he said. “If we let ourselves.”
Small and safe.
I tucked my hands under my arms and let the words sit between us, warming the cold places.
Silence settled. Not empty—just patient. The kind that gives your mind room to bring out whatever it has been hiding from you. I took inventory like a courier: ten fingers, ten toes, one ankle that would forgive me eventually, a pistol I didn’t haveanymore, a knife back in my boot, and a voice I wasn’t sure what to do with yet.
