Caspian rubbed his neck. “You’ll freeze.”
“I’ve spent more than one winter night in the woods,” she remarked. “At least there’s a fire.”
“You’re sure?” he asked even as she began settling into a soft patch of pine needles.
She just looked at him with a raised brow that dared him to ask again. Caspian settled into his own bed with an uncomfortable guilt gnawing at him. He should have insisted. Her clothes were so much thinner than his. The snow was going to leak right through that cloak. But at the same time, he didn’t want to give her the impression that he saw her as weak. Caspian turned toward the fire.
She was wrapped in her green cloak, hood drawn and facing away from him. It was impossible to tell if she was sleeping or not.
“I didn’t ask for your name,” he said quietly.
She shifted, clearly still awake, but did not answer at once. The silence stretched out between them, and he found himself holding his breath, anticipation coiling within him.
“It’s Erin,” she offered at last.
Caspian rolled onto his back, looking up at the scattered stars through the reaching pine limbs. “You can call me Caspian.”
“Good night, Caspian.” Her voice carried to him so softly that for sometime as he lay awake he wondered if he had heard it at all. But he must have, because those three words swam through his mind again and again even long after he had fallen asleep.
Keira
Keira woke to rustling about the camp, the undeniable sounds of footsteps crunching over the frozen ground. As she rose into consciousness, the notion had come to her that yesterday’s events had been nothing more than a dream. It would hardly be the first time her mind had conjured a reunion, only for her to wake up alone. One also couldn’t discount the timing. It would only have been natural for her unconscious to conjure a solution to her loneliness.
It was the shock of cold air in her lungs and the bed of sharp needles beneath her that settled her into reality. Caspian was moving about the camp, thinking that she was some forester named Erin… and the liquid feeling of the Occulos charm was gone. Of course, she knew it would be. She couldn’t very well maintain her focus on it in her sleep. Still, the realization set her addled brain into motion. Keira whispered the incantation quickly. The coolness drifted across her skin with a wash of relief.
She stretched the stiffness from her bones and rolled onto her back. Caspian was behind her, covering the fire pit with dirt. His pack was already gathered. It seemed he had been awake for some time. Thankfully, her hood had totally obscured her face. Even so, Keira was all too aware of the precarious line she was now treading.
She had to tell him the truth. The longer this ruse went on, the worse it would be. She had panicked when he found her in the trees the night before. Fate’s teeth, she wished that she had just had the courage to face him then. Just before they had gone to sleep, when he had asked for her name, Keira considered it, telling him the truth. She’d been a coward then too.
“Good, you’re awake,” he said, dusting the earth from his hands. “I’ve got some rations. We can eat as we go.”
Keira rose, noting the soreness in her spine, a token from the night spent on the ground. “Thank you for letting me sleep.”
He nodded and began to dig through his bag.
Something was bothering him. She could see it in his silence, in the set of his jaw.
Had he seen her face while she was sleeping? Keira cleared the foolish thought away. He wouldn’t have stayed silent about that. It was something else. Again the distance between them ached in her chest. Once, he would have told her anything. Now she didn’t even have the right to ask.
Caspian handed her a dense baked loaf filled with berries and nuts. Keira took a bite. It was moist with butter. Delicious.
“So the monster has been moving south, retreating into the forest between attacks,” Caspian explained.
Keira swallowed, forcing a large lump of bread down her throat. “Has anyone seen it?”
He shook his head as he scanned the treeline. “It seems to hunt at night.”
“Right.” Keira’s mind worked quickly. She was a passable tracker, she supposed. Though she could read the forest well enough, Keira was no hunter. It would be her magic that would find this monster. She just needed a single trace of it to scry its location. Then she could lead Caspian there, pointing out signs of it as she found them. Simple enough. But first, “It will bedifficult for me to track it if I don’t have some idea what it looks like.” Keira chose her words carefully.
Caspian’s brow set as he thought. Then he dug through his bag, producing a pouch which he offered to her. Keira opened it and plucked a thick black quill from within. She looked at him quizzically.
“They were brought to me by a farmer. They were found on the remains of one of his cows.”
She searched her mind for a beast with quills like these that would feast on such large things as livestock, but nothing came to her. Her studies have been focused on spellcraft, not bestiary. Though she knew, maddeningly enough, that the answer would be in Ignatius’s collection.
Even so, she could scry its location, whatever it was. Now all she needed was to perform the spell, without Caspian noticing… This was getting ridiculous. She should just say something.
“So, which way?” he asked, followed by a heavy breath.
