They stopped as the light began to fail.
Ralvar had found a hollow beneath an outcropping of rock, smaller than the watchtower, but dry and sheltered from thewind that had picked up as afternoon turned to evening. He set her down carefully, propping her injured ankle on his folded cloak before disappearing into the trees.
Alone in the growing dark, she expected fear. Expected the terror that had gripped her that first night, hiding in a hole with the storm howling overhead. It didn't come.
Instead, she found herself listening for his footsteps, waiting for his return the way a child waits for a parent to come back from checking for monsters under the bed.
He wasn't the monster, she realized. He never had been. The monsters were the ones who'd sold her. The ones who'd lied about where she was going. The ones who'd looked at her body and seen burden instead of person.
Ralvar saw something else entirely.
He returned with his hands full of strange plants. Green stalks and leaves she didn't recognize.
"For your ankle," he said, kneeling beside her. "The swelling has worsened with travel. This will help."
He crushed the leaves between his palms, releasing a sharp, medicinal smell that made her eyes water. He packed the pulp around her ankle with careful fingers, then bound it in place with strips torn from the hem of her ruined dress.
"You know healing," she said.
"Every warrior does. In the field, you cannot always wait for a bone-setter." His hands lingered on her leg, warm through the makeshift bandage. "The Mountain Clan has healers who could do better. When we reachNorthwatch—"
He stopped.
Every line of his body had gone rigid. His head turned, tilting slightly, and she saw his nostrils flare.
"Ralvar?"
"Be still." The words were barely audible. "Do not move."
He rose in one fluid motion and crossed to the edge of their shelter, pressing himself against the rock. Delia's heart hammered in her chest, but she did as he said, stayed frozen, barely breathing.
Voices.
Distant, but growing closer. Human voices, rough with frustration and fatigue.
"—can't have gone far."
"We've been at this for days. The magistrate’s going to have our heads if we don't—"
"Then we don't go back without her. Simple as that."
Delia's blood turned to ice.
They were maybe a hundred yards away, from the sound of it. Maybe less. In the fading light, with the terrain working against them, they probably couldn't see the hollow, but if they came much closer—
Ralvar's hand found the hilt of his sword. The blade was already half-drawn before Delia made a desperate sound in her throat.
He stopped.
Turned to look at her over his shoulder. In the dim light, his eyes seemed to glow, burning like embers in the shadows.
She shook her head, very slightly.Please. Don't.
His jaw clenched. She could see the war playing out across his features, the predator in him straining against the leash, every instinct screaming at him to eliminate the threat.
But he let the blade slide back into its sheath.
Instead, he crossed back to her in three silent strides, lifted her as easily as before, and moved.
