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"Scouting, years ago. Never told anyone."

"Why not?"

"Didn't have anyone to bring." That warmed my chest more than I expected it to.

The tunnel wound deeper, branching twice before Halver chose a path without hesitating, clearly one he'd walked before. Water dripped somewhere ahead, steady and unhurried, and the moss thickened the further we went until the whole passage glowed soft enough to walk by without needing anything else.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Surprise."

"I don't like surprises."

"You'll like this one."

He reached back without slowing and found my hand, folding his fingers around mine with the same unhurried certainty he did everything with. He looked down at me over his shoulder.

"Stay close, Sprite. Footing gets uneven ahead."

I didn't ask about the name. Something about the way he said it, easy and unbothered, like it had always belonged to me and he was only now getting around to using it, made asking feel like it would ruin something.

His hand encased mine, large and warm. I let it stay there, and let myself notice how much of the morning's anger had already burned away, replaced by something steadier.

We walked another fifteen minutes through passages that narrowed and opened in turn, the glow following us the whole way, until the tunnel widened into a cavern large enough to swallow the sound of our footsteps entirely.

A pool of water sat in the center of it, pale steam curling off the surface into air that had gone warm and thick the moment we stepped inside. The same moss lined the upper walls here, brighter than anywhere else we'd walked, casting the whole cavern in soft blue-green light that caught and shimmered against the water's surface.

Halver let go of my hand and started unbuttoning his shirt without a word.

I looked away, then looked back, then told myself firmly that looking was not the same as staring and looked again anyway. He stripped down to nothing but a plain pair of black boxers with the same unhurried motions he brought to everything else, broad shoulders catching the low light, and I became suddenly, thoroughly aware that I had never actually looked at Halver before. Not properly. Not like this.

I filed that observation away somewhere I intended to examine later, in private, when nobody could see my face doing whatever it was currently doing.

He waded into the pool without ceremony and sank down until the water reached his chest, exhaling once like something in him had been waiting all morning for exactly this.

I stayed on the ledge, hands stalled on the hem of my shirt.

"It's fine," Halver said, without turning around. "Come in."

"I'm aware it's fine."

"You've stopped moving."

"I'm deciding."

He glanced back at that, unbothered, water sheeting slow off one shoulder. "Nothing you've got is anything I haven't already seen. The Water Rift wasn't exactly private."

"You didn't see me. Not like that."

A low chuckle answered, the kind that meant he found the objection fair rather than false.

"No. I didn't."

He held my gaze a moment longer, then turned fully away, facing the far wall of the cavern instead.

"I'll look away, if that helps."

It did, more than I expected it to. I stripped down to my strap top and briefs, folded my clothes on a dry ledge with more care than the task required, and lowered myself into the water beside him. Heat closed around me immediately, loosening muscles I hadn't realized I'd been holding tight since I woke, and I settled onto a narrow stone ledge just beneath the surface, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.