Dawn came without rest.
I hadn't slept. I'd pretended. Curled against the cavern wall with my eyes shut, breath measured. Sleep required a calm that remained beyond my reach. The group shifted around me through the long hours. Quiet murmurs. Zephyr's labored breathing. The distant drip of water that marked time in the absolute dark.
When gray light finally filtered through cracks in the stone ceiling, illuminating the chamber in shades of ash, Daemon rose first.
"We move in ten minutes." His voice carried the flat authority of someone who'd spent years leading men who didn't want to be led. "Kane, inventory what we have. Kael, check the perimeter. Zephyr, keep watch."
Kane crouched beside our meager supplies. We had a single waterskin, half-empty. One day's worth of dried meat if we stretched it. Less if we didn't. His jaw tightened as he parceled out portions with mechanical precision.
I watched him work. Watched him distribute shares with careful fairness, keeping nothing extra for himself despite theshadows beneath his eyes. Despite the tremor in his hands that he hid by keeping them busy.
"Eat." He pressed flatbread and jerky into my palm.
I stared at the offering. My stomach twisted.
"I'm not hungry."
"Wasn't a question." He folded my fingers around the food. "You need strength."
For what? The thought scraped through my skull, bitter and raw. Vaelthorne burned. Lyralei died. The only home I'd ever known, the only people who'd ever wanted me, were gone. Erased. And for what? Because I existed? Because my blood carried magic that kings feared and monsters craved?
I shoved the food into my mouth without tasting it. Kane watched until I swallowed, then moved to the others.
Movement resumed ten minutes later, just as he promised.
We filed through the tunnels in silence. Single file, feeling our way along damp stone walls. The passage narrowed, then widened, then split into branching paths that all looked identical in the dim light. Daemon chose directions with the confidence of someone who'd navigated worse, but I saw the tension in his shoulders. We were lost. He just refused to admit it.
I followed anyway. One foot in front of the other. Mechanical. Empty.
Daemon kept glancing back at me.
I pretended not to notice. Kept my eyes on the ground, on the uneven stone that threatened to trip me with every step. My new boots, gifted by the Fae and lovingly crafted, were caked in mud and dust. Everything Vaelthorne had given me felt like mockery now. Pretty clothes. Soft bedding. Hope.
All of it ash.
"You're favoring your left side." Daemon fell back to walk beside me. "Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Seris, "
"I said no." I didn't look at him. Couldn't. If I looked at him, I'd see that damned concern in his eyes, that stubborn refusal to give up on me, and I couldn't afford that right now. Couldn't afford to feel anything.
He let it drop. For three hours, he let it drop.
We stopped to rest when Zephyr nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Kane crouched beside him, checking his previous wounds with gentle efficiency.
"Healing's holding," Kane murmured. "Barely."
"Lucky us." Zephyr managed a weak grin. "Saved by Fae magic right before the Fae got slaughtered. Poetic, that."
I flinched.
Daemon's head snapped toward Zephyr. "Enough."
"What? It's true, isn't it? We were there. We saw, "
"I said enough." The temperature seemed to drop five degrees. Shadows flickered at the edges of Daemon's form, responding to emotion he couldn't quite leash.
