“I have the gold. I don’t spend much, hunting on the road.”
One quick nod of acceptance. “Then we'd better keep moving.”
She walks ahead of me, my cloak still wrapped around her despite the growing warmth of the day. The knot at her waist has loosened, and the hem is picking up mud, but she's moving too fast to fix it. Her mind is already in Vorneth.
I follow her. Carrying her pack, carrying my wounds, carrying eight years of guilt that sits differently than it did this morning.
She heard the worst of it. The village, the bodies, the not-knowing. And then she told me about the child who died and the village that blamed her. And she kissed me and I understood something I hadn't before. She isn't unafraid of me. She's unafraid of everything. Including herself.
The road stretches ahead. Vorneth by evening. Mother Sanque. Answers, maybe. Or at least the right questions.
MAREN
The portal spits us out into a courtyard filled with snow.
Not the gentle kind. The vicious kind, the sort that comes sideways and finds every gap in your clothing and makes you question every choice that led you to this moment. I stumble on the landing, my balance thrown by the sudden cold, and Kovren's hand is there instantly. His fingers wrap around my upper arm, steadying me, and then he's pulling me against his side, tucking me into the shelter of his body.
He doesn't let go after I'm stable.
The wind screams past us, but I barely feel it. His bulk blocks most of the weather, and the heat of him seeps through the layers between us.
Vorneth rises around us, all gray stone and steep roofs and chimneys pouring smoke into the white sky. A mountain city, built into the side of something massive and cold, its streets winding upward in switchbacks that make my legs ache just looking at them.
“This way.”
Kovren guides me toward an archway. He’s positioned himself to block the worst of the wind. His cloak is around my shoulders again. I don't remember him putting it there, but thefabric trails on the ground behind me, too long by half, the hem collecting snow.
“Mother Sanque lives near the top. The walk is difficult.”
“I've walked difficult before.”
“Not like this.” But there's something in his voice that sounds almost like pride.
The streets of Vorneth are narrow and steep, carved into the mountainside with the kind of precision that speaks of centuries of work. The stairs are sized for normal humans, which means Kovren has to duck under archways and turn sideways at some corners. People pass us, bundled in furs and wool, their faces turned away from the wind. They notice him. I see the way their steps quicken, the way they press themselves against walls to give him space.
But they don't run screaming. They don't make signs against evil. They just accommodate him, the way you accommodate a large piece of furniture in a small room.
“They know you here.”
“I've passed through before. Mother Sanque has a reputation for taking difficult cases. The people of Vorneth have learned not to ask questions about her visitors.”
I reach up and take his hand, lacing my fingers through his, and his whole body changes.
The tension drops out of his shoulders. His breathing evens. His fingers close around mine, careful, controlled, and I feel the tremor in them still for a moment before settling.
The climb is harder than I expected. The altitude pulls at my lungs, and my legs are burning from five days of walking and the bruises from last night's fight. I'm slower than I want to be and he notices before I do.
At one particularly steep section, where the stairs narrow and the frost makes the stone slick, he simply picks me up.
I don't even have time to protest. His free hand closes around my waist, my feet leave the ground, and then I'm tucked against his side, both packs on one shoulder and me on the other. Climbing a frozen mountain carrying everything and everyone, and his breathing doesn't change.
“I can walk.”
“You were about to fall.”
“I was not.”
“Your left foot slipped. I caught you.”
