The woman with the bread.
She stands where she stood when I first arrived in this city. Her hands still grip the loaf, still caught in the act of breaking it. I remember seeing her that first day—frozen mid-motion, a perfect symbol of what this city had become.
As I watch, the break completes. The bread tears in half. Crumbs fall to the cobblestones—the first thing to fall in this city since time stopped.
She blinks.
The movement is so small. So human. It hits me harder than anything from the stronghold.
She wasn’t a threat. Wasn’t a soldier or a ruler or anyone who mattered to the gods. She was buying bread for her family. And she spent months frozen because the gods decided her city needed punishment.
Now, she’s free.
She looks down at the bread in her hands. Confusion crosses her face—the disorientation of someone who doesn’t understand what happened. Who doesn’t know time passed while she stood motionless. Her gaze drifts to the fracturing ice, to the streets slowly coming alive around her.
Then she sees us.
I don’t know what we look like—blood-stained, exhausted, a witch and a dragon standing in the middle of a waking city. We’re clearly not locals. Clearly not normal. Probably terrifying.
But she doesn’t look afraid.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
She doesn’t understand what happened. Doesn’t know what we did or what we killed. But she senses we’re connected to her freedom.
Tyr’s grip on my shoulder tightens painfully.
“Time to go.” His voice is low. “Before the city fully wakes and people start asking questions we can’t answer.”
He’s right. We can’t explain any of this. Can’t tell a population that doesn’t know they were frozen, that won’t understand how much time passed, what happened to them or why.
But I watch the woman take her first real step in months. Watch the children laugh at their game. Watch the city come alive around us.
We did this. Not for heroism. Not for glory. We killed the executioner because it was hunting us. And that was enough.
“Zephyra.” His voice pulls me back. “Move.”
I let him guide me out.
We makecamp when the light starts to fade.
Not a real camp—no supplies, nothing but what we’re wearing. But Tyr finds a hollow sheltered by boulders on three sides. I gather scattered branches—wood that escaped the worst of the ice. We get a fire going.
Heat. Light. The crackle of burning flames. Simple things that feel impossible after weeks of cold. I hold my hands toward the fire, letting heat seep into my bones.
THIRTY-ONE
ZEPHYRA
Tyr sits across from me, watching the flames with an expression I can’t read. He’s been quiet since we left the city. Processing, maybe. Even dragons need time to think.
“Spit it out,” I say finally.
His mouth curves. “What?”
“Whatever you’re brooding about. You’ve been silent for hours.”
He’s quiet for another moment. Then: “She thanked you. The woman.”
