The fire grew. Heat began to push back against the cold that had settled into her bones. Targesh moved around the small space, spreading a ground cloth, unpacking supplies, creating order out of the chaos of their sudden shelter.
Verity stood by the fire and shook.
"Your cloak is wet." He was beside her suddenly, his hands at the clasp. "Remove it."
She could not make her fingers work. He undid the clasp himself, pulling the heavy, sodden weight from her shoulders. The layers beneath were damp but not soaked. He checked them with quick, impersonal touches, then nodded.
"Sit. Near the fire. Not too close."
She sat. Her teeth chattered. She could not make them stop.
He draped a dry blanket around her shoulders and pressed a waterskin into her hands. The water was cold but not frozen. She drank.
"How long?" she managed.
He looked toward the cave entrance, where the storm still raged. "Hours. Perhaps until morning."
She absorbed this. The cave was small but serviceable. The fire was catching properly now, throwing shadows against the stone walls. Outside, the wind screamed like something dying. She pulled the blanket tighter. The shaking was beginning to subside, warmth seeping back into her extremities in painful increments. Her fingers tingled. Her toes ached.
"There was no shelter marker on the trail," she said.
"There was. You did not see it."
She thought back. The last hour before the storm hit, the frantic push toward the pass. She had been watching the clouds, watching Targesh's back, watching the ground directly in front of her horse's hooves. She had not been reading the stones.
"Show me. When the storm passes. Show me what I missed."
He looked at her across the fire. "You are thinking about lessons while you are still shaking from cold."
"I am always thinking about something."
"Yes." His mouth quirked. "I have noticed."
She pulled the blanket tighter, watching the fire. The flames had steadied into something sustainable, casting orange light across the cave walls. Outside, the storm continued its assault on the mountain, but in here the sound had become almost rhythmic. Background noise. The kind of thing you could stop hearing if you let yourself.
Targesh moved to the cave entrance. His silhouette blocked the gray light for a moment, then he returned, settling against the wall across from her.
"The horses are holding," he said.
"Good." The horses had carried them through terrain that would have killed her on foot. They deserved better than freezing in a mountain storm.
The silence stretched between them, filled only by the crack of the fire and the distant howl of wind. Verity found herself studying the cave walls, the way the firelight caught veins of mineral in the stone, the patterns of ancient water damage near the ceiling.
She shifted on the ground cloth, pulling her knees up beneath the blanket. The wind shifted outside, the howl rising to a shriek and then falling again. The fire guttered, flames bending sideways, then steadied.
"You are still shaking."
She was. Small tremors that ran through her despite the fire, despite the blanket, despite the warmth slowly returning to her fingers and toes. The cold had settled somewhere deeper than her skin.
"I'm fine."
But he was already reaching for his pack. "I have another blanket—"
"I don't need another blanket."
Targesh's eyes met hers across the fire. "Come here, then," he said.
She rose from her place by the fire and crossed the small distance between them. He opened his arms, and she settled against his chest, her back to his front, his heat surrounding her like a second fire.
