The man moves then—but not toward me.
He stands, crosses to the small basin near the wall, and pours water into a tin cup. The sound is soft. Careful. Like he’s trying not to startle the air itself.
I watch the cup in his hand.
Water. Finally.
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
He comes back slow, stopping well out of reach. He doesn’t offer it to my face, and doesn’t push it into my hands. Instead, he sets it on the floor between us close enough that I can take it.
“Whenever you want it,” he says quietly.
Another woman steps in behind the older one. Small. Eyes that hold the same shattered places I carry but glued together with something stronger than fear. She walks like she’s warning me she’s coming—boot scrape, heel drag, soft sigh. The opposite of the men who used to appear out of nowhere.
She kneels, too, her warmth brushing my skin. My chest tightens and pulls, like two broken pieces trying to remember how to find each other. It’s not fear, and that’s what makes it worse.
The older woman steps forward first. She touches her own chest. “Mama Rue.” Then she gestures gently to the beautiful dark-haired woman beside her. “Mercy.”
Her hand sweeps toward the man.
I grunt and hiss.
“And this one’s Rafe. He’s the fool who brings home strays without warning.”
Rafe’s nostrils flare, but his eyes stay on me. Like he’s afraid if he looks away, I’ll disappear.
The older woman speaks to him instead of me. “You found her out there?”
Rafe nods without taking his eyes off me. “Alone. Hurt. Running.”
Running. Always running.
The younger woman—Mercy—tilts her head, studying me with a quiet kind of understanding. Not pity, or judgement. A look that says she knows how it feels to be carried when you don’t trust the arms.
A small sound slips from me, rough and questioning. My body reacts before my mind does, fingers digging into the blanket.
Mercy whispers, “It’s alright. You don’t have to come closer.”
They’re speaking to me, but no one reaches. No one drags me upright. No one barks orders or punishes hesitation.
I don’t know what to do with that.
The older woman turns her gaze to me. “We help those the mountain delivers. It’s the code we live by.”
Delivered. Like I’m a message. A charge. A burden they accept.
I stare at her hands—they rest open on her knees, palms bare, showing me she has nothing to hide. Nothing to use. Nothing to take.
The room tilts. The heat of the fire creeps against my skin, unfamiliar and terrifying.
Rafe steps back, giving me space, and says quietly, “Only if you want help.”
Want.
Another thing I was never allowed to have.
I watch them all watching me, and for the first time since I escaped, the fear loosens by a thread. Only a thread. But it’s the first thing that hasn’t broken.
