And something gives way inside me. Not the wounds. Something that has been locked shut for a long time.
She speaks of the oath the way a merchant speaks of a bad deal, and I find myself almost smiling at her practicality.
She stands. Holds out her hand. “Then I'll take my chances.”
I stare at her hand.
When did anyone last reach toward me instead of away? I cannot remember. The years blur together, a gray stretchof isolation and hunting and running from the thing I might become.
Her hand is small. Scarred. Steady. I could close my fist around it entirely and her fingers would not reach past my knuckles.
I take it.
She doesn't say anything. Just shoulders her pack, winces at something I cannot see, and starts walking. I hear her heartbeat now, faintly, layered beneath my own. The bond has done that, threaded her pulse into my awareness so that I carry the rhythm of her even when she is not touching me.
I follow.
Behind us, in the darkening trees, something screams. Not animal. Not human. The sound I have been hunting for eight years, and the sound that has been hunting me.
He's found me again.
And now there is someone between us. Someone small and unafraid who bled into my wounds and does not understand what that means.
I can smell her ahead of me on the road, herbs and sweat and the iron of my blood still on her hands, and every instinct in my body is rearranging itself around her presence, cataloging exit routes and angles of attack and the distance between her and the tree-line.
I walk faster. Put myself between her and the sound without thinking about it, my body already doing what the oath demands and what something older than the oath wants.
Protect her. Keep her alive. Don't let her become another name on the list.
She glances back at the trees, at the sound, at the darkness gathering behind us. Then she looks up at me.
“Friend of yours?”
“No.” The word comes out harsh. “Keep walking.”
She doesn't argue. Doesn't ask questions. Just picks up her pace and keeps moving.
MAREN
“Idon't want an oath-bound giant following me across the wilderness.”
He doesn't blink. “What you want is irrelevant. The oath is made.”
We'd made it to an abandoned barn sometime after midnight, him leaning on me so heavily I thought my bones might simply compact under the pressure. He refused to stop until we had walls around us. Kept looking back at the trees, at the darkness, at something I couldn't see but he clearly could.
The something that screamed. The something he's been hunting.
Now it’s morning and he's standing, which shouldn't be possible. The wounds I stitched last night are still angry and red, infection still threatening at the edges despite everything I threw at it. But he's upright. One hand braced against the barn's weathered support beam, knuckles bone-white with the effort, swaying but refusing to fall.
“So what's the range on this thing?” I'm packing my supplies harder than necessary, shoving things into my bag with more force than the threadbare fabric deserves. “If I walk east and youwalk west, does the oath just stretch? Does it snap? Do we both drop dead?”
“It doesn't work that way.” His voice is steady, but I can hear the strain underneath. “The binding is not a leash. It's a debt. Distance won't dissolve it.”
“Right. It dissolves when you save my life or one of us dies. You mentioned.” I stuff my last roll of bandage into the bag and yank the drawstring. “What I'm asking is whether I have to be standing next to you for it to work. Can you protect me from, say, three towns over? Very protected. Very far away.”
“The oath would pull me to you. If you were in danger, I would know. I would come.”
“From three towns over.”
