A pause. When he speaks again, his voice is lower. Rougher. “I chose. The oath just made it louder.”
He doesn't say anything else. His breathing evens out again, sliding back toward sleep.
I pull his cloak around me. It's huge, big enough to wrap around me twice, warm from his body heat. I burrow into it and think about what he said.
He wanted to.
He keeps saying things like that. Keeps cracking open these small windows into whatever's under the monster and the warnings and the distance.
I press my face into the rough wool of his cloak and breathe in. Woodsmoke, something wild, the heat of him still trapped in the fibers. I catch myself doing it and stop.
I check him one more time. Breathing deep, even. Skin warm but not scorching. Fever broken, not just pausing. The wounds are holding. There's nothing left for me to do tonight that would help him, and a healer running on nothing is a liability, not a resource.
I close my eyes. Just for a while. He's stable. I'll know if that changes.
I jerk awake once, some hours later, hand already reaching. But he's exactly where I left him, breathing slow, face slack with deep sleep. I burrow down deeper into his cloak.
Still breathing. Still quiet.
I don't fight sleep again.
In the morning,he's awake before me, sitting exactly where I left him, watching me in the pale dawn light. The cloak is still wrapped around my shoulders.
“You didn't leave,” he says.
“Nowhere better to be.”
“You could have. While I slept. Could have put miles between us before I woke.”
“Could have.” I stretch, feel my spine crack in protest. “Didn't want to.”
He goes still. “Want?”
I realize what I said. Want, not need. Want, not logic. I could take it back, rephrase it, make it practical again.
I don't.
“The cloak helped,” I say instead. “Thank you.”
His expression shifts. That ghost-smile again, barely there, but warmer than before. “You needed it.”
“Mm. And you wanted to give it.”
He doesn't deny it. Just watches me with those amber eyes, and I watch him back, and something settles between us that wasn't there before. Not trust, exactly. Not yet. But the space where trust might grow.
I check his wounds before we leave. The infection has retreated — my alcohol and herbs didn't die in vain. His skin is still warmer than it should be, but the scorching heat from last night is gone. The fever isn't broken, exactly. More like beaten back. Smoldering instead of blazing.
It'll come back if I can't resupply. I need alcohol, willow bark, clean cloth. I need a village.
“There's a settlement ahead,” he says, watching me repack. “Gorvani. We can resupply there.”
“Lead the way.”
We step out into the morning. The mist is rising, the world soft and gray around the edges. He walks closer than yesterday. I don't mention it.
I pull his cloak tighter around my shoulders and follow him into the fog.
MAREN
