The clearing offered little warmth, but the horses drank gratefully from a stream that cut through the moss-covered rocks. Verity dismounted, her legs nearly buckling when they took her weight. Every muscle from hip to ankle screamed in protest.
Targesh watched her stagger but did not offer help. She was grateful for that. She needed to find her footing, literally and otherwise.
They ate dried meat and hard cheese from the saddlebags, standing because sitting would mean getting up again. The food was dense and salty, designed for sustenance rather than pleasure. Verity chewed mechanically and watched the horses crop at the sparse grass.
"How much farther to the shelter?"
"Four hours. Perhaps five, depending on the terrain."
Four hours. She could survive four hours.
The trail climbed again after the clearing, winding through a stretch of forest where the trees grew stunted and sparse. The wind found gaps in her layers she had not known existed. Her fingers went numb inside her gloves. Her nose ran constantly, and she stopped wiping it because removing her hand from the cloak's warmth was not worth the temporary relief.
Targesh rode ahead, apparently unbothered by the temperature. His breath steamed, but he showed no sign of discomfort. She supposed a lifetime in these mountains had burned the cold out of him, or taught him to carry it so deep it no longer registered.
The fourth hour brought snow.
Not a storm. Just a steady fall of fat white flakes that accumulated on her shoulders and the horse's mane and the brim of the hood she had pulled low over her face. The world went soft and muffled. The only sounds were hoofbeats and breathing and the whisper of snow settling on stone.
"There." Targesh pointed.
She squinted through the white. Ahead, where the trail curved around a massive boulder, she could just make out a dark shape against the mountainside. A structure. Walls. A roof.
"Stonehaven," he said.
Targesh led the horses to a lean-to shelter attached to the main building, where a trough and hay rack waited.
The shelter was crude but solid—four walls of stacked stone, a roof of heavy timber, a door that Targesh had to duck to enter. Inside, the darkness was absolute until he struck flint to tinder and coaxed a small fire to life in the central pit.
The light revealed a single room. Packed earth floor. Stone walls blackened by decades of smoke. A raised platform along one wall, covered in furs that looked older than Verity. A stack of firewood in the corner. Nothing else.
Verity stood in the doorway, snow melting on her shoulders, her legs trembling with exhaustion. The fire's warmth reached her in waves, beckoning her forward. She took three steps and stopped, unsure where to put herself.
"Sit." He gestured toward the fur-covered platform. "Remove your boots."
She sat. Her fingers fumbled with the laces, clumsy and uncooperative. After the third failed attempt, Targesh knelt in front of her and took over, his hands steady and sure as he worked the frozen leather loose.
"Your feet are like ice."
"All of me is like ice."
He pulled her boots off, then her socks, and took her feet between his palms. The heat of him was shocking. She gasped and tried to pull away, but he held firm.
"Let me."
He rubbed circulation back into her toes, his thumbs pressing into her arches, his fingers working the stiffness from her ankles. The sensation was painful at first, then merely uncomfortable, then something approaching warmth. She watched his bent head, the firelight catching the curve of his tusks, the concentration in his expression.
"How much farther?" she asked.
"We will reach the pass by afternoon tomorrow. The descent takes another two hours." He stoked the fire, sending sparks spiraling toward the smoke-blackened ceiling. "We can spend the night at the pass or return to this shelter. Your choice."
"What would you recommend?"
"The pass is colder. Exposed. But if you want time there, staying the night may be wise."
She thought about it. Standing on the ground where her brother died. Speaking to the wind that carried his name. Sleeping beside his bones.
"I want to stay," she said. "At least one night."
