The barn smelled like hay, warm earth, and animals. Like real animals, not monsters. It hit Miri the moment she stepped inside, the ordinary scent grounded her, made her shoulders drop without her realizing they’d been tight.

  The farmer walked ahead of her, boots crunching softly in the straw.

  “Now,” he said over his shoulder, conversational, “they’ll stay with their mother for about two years. Long enough to learn what’s theirs and what isn’t. After that, they’re trained up proper.”

  “Trained?” Miri echoed.

  “Guard work, mostly. They don’t herd. Too smart for it,” he said fondly. “But they keep thieves and monsters and grub moles away from the fields. Nasty little things, those. Most won’t tunnel within a mile when you’ve got one of these bad boys on your property.”

  Miri smiled, already charmed, and followed him deeper into the barn.

  “They’re sold after that,” he continued. “Only to folk who know what they’re doing. Adventurers sometimes. Merchants with caravans. Places that need protection but don’t want to build walls.”

  He stopped. “And here we are.”

  Miri stepped up beside him and froze.

  The low stone pen she and Tamsin had built over a week ago was right where she remembered it. Same rough mortar. Same uneven top stones. But instead of sheep or cattle or anything remotely normal, the pen was full of stripes.

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  The farmer chuckled. “Aye. Tigers.”

  They were enormous, including the cubs. Thick-pawed, round-bellied, all soft fur and tiny ears. Gold and black and white, tangled together in a heap that shifted and wriggled as they noticed her. A massive striped shape lay just beyond them, one amber eye opening lazily as the mother lifted her head to look at the intruder.

  Miri didn’t move.

  “She knows you,” the farmer said calmly. “Smells the work in the stones. You’re fine.”

  Slowly, Miri crouched.

  One cub toddled toward her immediately, tripping over its own feet and headbutting her knee with all the force of a thrown pillow. Another followed. Then another. In seconds she was swarmed, tiny paws scrambling up her legs, soft noses pressing into her hands, little growls and chirps vibrating against her skin.

  Miri laughed—a soft, broken sound she hadn’t meant to make—and sank fully to the straw.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered, as a cub climbed her chest and licked her chin with a sandpaper tongue. “You’re huge.”

  “They grow fast with magic,” the farmer said. “Strong backs. Good instincts. Loyal, if treated right. The best trained guard you can get on this continent.”

  Miri found herself buried under fur and warmth, the cubs clambering over her like she was part of the environment now. She scratched ears, rubbed bellies, let herself be mauled gently.

  Something inside her loosened.

  “This,” she said quietly, “is the best thing that’s happened to me in weeks.”

  The farmer smiled, watching her with an unreadable expression.

  * * *

  The sun was low when he reached the wooded area outside the farm.

  He stayed crouched, breath shallow, letting the tall brush hide him as he watched the barn. His hands shook—not from fear, he told himself, but from the aftershocks. From everything that had gone wrong before.

  He hadn’t meant for the butcher to be like that.

  That had been… messy. Loud. People noticed. He’d laid low after that, convinced himself the voice was gone. That it had been a fever dream, a break, something temporary.

  He’d almost believed it until the voice returned. Pressing behind his thoughts, guiding his steps until he found himself here.

  There, it had whispered.

  He swallowed.

  He didn’t know the woman. Had no reason to hate her. She wasn’t laughing at him, disrespecting him, wasn’t mocking him. She was… playing with tiger cubs? Just sitting on the ground like she didn’t have a care in the world that could be more important delivering chin scratches evenly amongst all the tiger cubs.

  That made something twist in his chest.

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  She was unarmed. Her sword lay on the ground, just out of reach, buried under straw and cubs. Her attention was everywhere except where it needed to be.

  This wasn’t like before. This would be quick. Impersonal. No eye contact. No words.

  His hand closed around the crossbow.

  It was small. Cheap. Meant for hunting rabbits or birds, not people. He’d gotten it years ago when he thought his boss might ask him to go hunting some day. He’d chosen it today because it was quiet and light, something he could fire once and run with. No struggle. No mess he had to look at.

  He eased the bow up, breath shallow, careful not to draw the mother tiger’s eye. The cubs were piled against her legs, squirming and squeaking, half-hidden by straw and the woman’s body.

  She bent. He adjusted his aim. Lower. Again. Toward the movement. Now.

  The bolt left the crossbow with a soft, ugly thrum.

  Miri felt it as much as she heard it, her whole body jerking.

  Not as a sound she recognized—but as a shift. Threat Perception screaming too late.

  Out of the corner of her eye, the bolt streaking toward the pen.

  Toward the cubs.

  She didn’t think.

  Miri lunged forward, twisting her body between the bolt and the pile of cubs, arms wrapping instinctively around soft, squirming warmth—

  Pain exploded through her back.

  The impact knocked the air from her lungs. She fell against the cubs, sending them scattering to hide behind their mother. She slumped to the dirt clutching fur.

  For a heartbeat, there was only white noise.

  Then the barn erupted.

  The mother tiger’s roar was deafening, a sound so full of rage it rattled bone. The farmer shouted. The cubs cried.

  The killer was already running. He didn’t wait to see her die. He vaulted the fence and sprinted deeper into the trees, terror overriding everything else.

  This was not like before, not like his previous kills. And if he had anything to say about it, this would be his last kill. He was done. That voice could go fu—

  Behind him, something massive hit the fence with a crash.

  He ran faster.

  * * *

  Miri couldn’t get air. It felt like her lungs were full of knives. Every breath caught halfway in, stalled there, burning, refusing to finish the job. She lay on her side in the churned straw, fingers clawed into dirt, the world narrowing to pain and sound.

  The cub she’d shielded scrambled free, unharmed, its tiny body warm against her ribs for one blessed second before it was gone.

  The barn was eerily quiet.

  Her vision tunneled. The edges darkened, pulsing with each frantic heartbeat. She tried to roll onto her stomach and failed, a broken sound tearing out of her throat instead.

  Dying, she thought dimly. I’m dying.

  The System chimed.

  Not gently.

  [ USE A FUCKING POTION! ]

  She laughed—or tried to. It came out wet and wrong.

  “Right,” she rasped. “Yeah. Good call.”

  Her inventory flickered into existence like a dying light. Her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. They shook, slipped, missed. Panic surged hot and dizzying, threatening to drown her faster than the blood pooling beneath her.

  Focus.

  She found the potion by mental demand more than sight. Yanked the cork free with her teeth.

  The liquid burned going down. Bitter, alchemical, too bright for her battered senses. Warmth slammed into her chest, spread outward in a violent rush that made her gasp and cough.

  The bleeding slowed but the pain didn’t stop.

  She screamed this time—a raw, hoarse sound—as the potion knit torn tissue just enough to keep her alive around the foreign weight still lodged in her back. The bolt. She could feel it more clearly now, every shallow movement sending lightning through her spine.

  Footsteps pounded toward her.

  “Miri!” the farmer shouted, voice breaking. “Gods! Gods above—”

  She tried to answer and couldn’t. Her vision swam as he dropped to his knees beside her, hands hovering uselessly for a second before he forced himself to act.

  “Aliah’s my wife,” he said out of nowhere. “She’s coming.”

  “Potion,” she managed, barely audible. “I—did.”

  “I can see that,” he said, breathless. “Stay with me. Don’t you dare go out on me.”

  An older woman with greying hair and bright blue eyes appeared in her vision. Aliah maybe.

  The next few minutes blurred together. Pain came in waves. The sky dimmed. Straw pressed into her cheek. She counted breaths like Fluffkins had taught her, clinging to each one like a rung on a ladder over a very long fall.

  Then hands again. More voices.

  “Careful,” a woman said steadily and practiced. “Easy, Behr. Roll her just enough.”

  Agony flared white-hot as they moved her. Miri bit down hard, tasting blood, as the farmer’s— no, Behr’s wife knelt behind her and sucked in a sharp breath.

  “It’s deep,” she said. “But it missed the lung. I think.”

  “Can you get it out?” Behr asked.

  “Yes,” replied Aliah. “But she’ll feel it.”

  Miri made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.

  “Already do,” she whispered.

  They braced her. Hands firm on her shoulders. A warning she barely heard. Then the bolt came free.

  Miri screamed.

  It ripped out of her like fire, like being torn open all over again. Her vision went black around the edges, stars bursting and fading, her body arching before she could stop it.

  “Now,” Aliah said urgently.

  Another potion pressed to her lips. This one thicker, bitter. She swallowed on reflex, choking it down as warmth followed warmth, slower this time, deeper. The pain dulled from a scream to a roar to a distant, unbearable throb.

  The world tilted.

  “Rest and recovery charm,” the woman murmured, already reaching for a small marble. “She needs rest to begin healing naturally.”

  A cool sensation brushed Miri’s forehead, then spread like a heavy blanket.

  As consciousness slipped away, one last thought floated up, absurd and clear:

  I made a friend.

  Then darkness took her.