A dull pressure starts behind my sternum, the same low ache I’ve been carrying all morning. As I move further from the inn, it sharpens. By the time I reach the cliff road, it has become something closer to a hand closing slowly around my ribs.
I pull my coat tighter and focus on the road ahead, trying to ignore the sensation climbing steadily up my throat.
I don’t hear footsteps. He doesn’t make footsteps, exactly. What I hear is the specific, unmistakable sound of something very large landing with controlled precision on the path behind me.
“I knew you’d follow me,” I say, without turning around.
“Then you were not as clever as you believed,” Droza says, “because you left anyway.”
I turn to face him. He stands closer than I expected, wings spread slightly against the wind. His gold eyes remain flat and unimpressed.
“I’m not running,” I say. “I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”
“You left without telling anyone.”
“That’s generally how leaving works when you don’t want to be stopped.”
His jaw tightens. “There are hunters in this region.”
“I’m aware. That’s why I’m going.” I force my voice to stay calm. “Every day I stay here puts these people at risk. Vaedrin knows I came through Gullhaven. He’ll burn the whole harbor down to find me if he has to.”
“So your solution is to walk out alone onto an open road.”
“My solution is to stop making other people pay for my problem.”
When Droza speaks, his voice has dropped to something quieter and considerably more dangerous.
“You will not last a day.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you are human. Injured. And there are at least two dark elf scouts who passed through the northern road this morning.” He takes one step forward. “I know you were frightened enough walking out here that I felt it from inside the inn.”
My face burns somewhere between anger and embarrassment. I take a step back, and my heel finds the end of the path where it crumbles toward the cliff.
Droza moves before I finish the step. His entire body shifts, wings spreading slightly wider and weight dropping forward.
I look down at my feet, then back up at him. “I’m not going to fall.”
He says nothing, but he doesn’t relax either. I take another small step toward the edge, testing. His eyes track the movement immediately. His hands, crossed over his chest until now, drop to his sides.
“Step back from the edge.”
“I’m three feet away.”
“Step back.”
We stand there, wind between us, and the argument dissolves into silence.
Then he goes still in a different way entirely. His head turns slightly toward the northern road. His nostrils flare.
I hear it a second later. Voices, low and unhurried, come from the path above us. Dark elf scouts move like they own the ground they walk on, because they do.
There is only one place to hide. A shallow cut in the cliffside is barely wide enough to disappear into shadow as long as no one looks too closely.
Droza moves first, and I follow because there is no other option.
The space is too narrow for him. His wings fold tightly against his back as he turns outward toward the road, shielding me against the rock wall behind him.
