"You should sleep" He whispered.
She was watching the flames and watched the orange glow of the coals with the ash around it. "We never once made a little camp fire to sit around in the meadow."
His gaze went to her then. The firelight danced across her face while she was lost in her thoughts. "We can reserve that for the waking world only if you want."
She looked from the fire to him then. A small emotion crossed her face he didn't recognize with her. But, he knew it wasn't a happy one.
"Did I say something poorly again?" He said concerned.
She held his gaze for a moment and then looked back to the fire.
"Do you think they will even let me out of the city to travel like this again? When..." She closed her eyes and then forced the rest out. "When I became the Phoenix's vessel, everyone treated me so differently. I was use to the expectations of being a princess. I wasn't use to the expectations of being a symbol." She spat out the last with a bitter expression.
"The Phoenix's vessel! What an honor." She mocked. "Any hope of leaving Tearia after that day was ripped away. Something simple as traveling like this would have been thought outlandish. Something that absolutely could not and would not happen." A small brittle laugh came then. "I doubt the priests and councils would of approved of me having any chance of courting someone. Not for the fear of losing me to another nation."
Kylar listened and reached over placing his hand over hers. She clung to his hand and he took the motion as permission as he moved closer so their sides were against each other. "You can vent. Let it all out. Tell me everything." He gave a small smile. "At least, my father did keep his promise and had sons. I'm here."
She gave him a small wobbly smile and leaned into him as the sound of the rest of them were quiet. None of them actually sleeping as they listened to the conversation.
Kylar rested his cheek against her head and listened when she began to talk again.
"I know they will see me as an alliance to gain. A princess to keep. I'm fine with that. Those things I have been thinking about since Rush mentioned about coming to see Niveus, to reinstating ourselves and taking back Tearia. I've been thinking about it more since I knew you were...Prince Dato."
He gave her hand a small squeeze to let her know she could keep going.
"I'm afraid, what I am expecting will be wrong. There is much I don't know the full extent of. What if they force a marriage I don't want? Damon is nice and I can see how he will make someone happy. Or Ryder, also kind, but they both." She sat up just enough so she could see his eyes. " They are not you."
Kylar gently cupped her cheek as he thought. The council he was sure if they felt one son was better than the others for securing something, they would push. But also, if the priests start deciding what would that influence. "If they do, claim your Tearian tradition then. Have a season, have your trials, have the spectacle, the duels and the population backing your every choice." Her eyes widened with his words. He gave a small brave smile. "I'll prove to them all I'm worthy enough to be yours."
"You don't have to prove it to me. You know that right?" She said soft but urgent. The feelings were overwhelming of what he said. How he listened to her vent and thought, really thought. He always had, and he always would she realized. She watched how his face changed with her words of him not having to prove himself to her. He had. Again. and again. Night after night, storm and spirals and everything they had learned together under the branches of a willow.
"I know" he managed to get out.
They were quiet again for a while before she began again. Her fingers reaching for his hand and grabbing only a couple of his fingers.
"The day I was chosen, I was really happy. I was important." There was a smile there for a second but faded away. "Then, the expectations, the rules, the lessons. My Ash guard, Rook and Krez, learning how to protect me from anyone, even over zealous worshippers of the Phoenix. There is even a ceremony I would have to do with Rush every 40 or so years...but I never really learned what that was and Rush refuses to tell me. Says the dragon says we aren't ready." A catch in her breathing came then.
Kylar didn’t say anything yet. He kept his fingers where they were, letting her hold only what she could bear to hold, and watched the fire breathe. The flames rose and fell like a living thing, like a chest under a blanket. He’d stood beside enough pyres, enough hearths, enough watch-fires on muddy roads to know what fire meant to soldiers.
This one meant home for a handful of heartbeats. And she was looking at it like it might be taken from her.
“Kairi,” he said softly, and even saying her name felt like choosing a side. “Look at me.”
She didn’t at first. Her gaze stayed on the coals, on the sparks that lifted and vanished. The bitterness in her expression didn’t suit her. It sat wrong on her face, like an ill-fitted crown. So he tried again, quieter, so it couldn’t be overheard unless someone was trying very hard.
“Wildflower.”
That did it.
Her eyes shifted to him, slow and reluctant, as if she was afraid of what she might see on his face if she really looked. Firelight painted gold along her lashes, made her eyes look darker, deeper, more ocean than sky. He saw it then, the emotion he hadn’t recognized before.
Not fear exactly.
Resignation.
The kind that came from being praised until you were hollow, until you couldn’t tell the difference between honor and a cage.
Kylar’s throat tightened. He’d seen that look on men who were thanked for dying before they’d even done it. He’d seen it on soldiers whose names were already carved into songs.
He hated it on her.
“I’m failing her, Kylar,” she whispered again, as if the words were safer the second time. “I’m sure the phoenix is looking down on me and thinking… what is wrong with this vessel.”
Kylar inhaled slowly, forcing his mind out of the old habits. Out of tactics and exits and angles. This wasn’t a battlefield problem.
This was a soul problem. He turned his hand palm-up beneath hers, not tugging, not demanding. Offering.
“If the phoenix chose you,” he said, “then the phoenix already answered that question.”
Her brows knit, faintly. “That doesn’t…”
“It does,” he insisted, gentle but immovable. “A god-beast doesn’t pick a vessel for perfect manners and flawless lessons and polished ceremonies.” His mouth twisted. “If that were the requirement, the world would have no vessels at all. Just priests arguing with empty air.”
A small sound left her that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t broken halfway through.
He kept going, because he could feel her slipping back toward that bitter cliff edge.
“You were happy,” Kylar said, nodding once. “You said it. You were important. And then everyone treated you like… like the title was the only part of you that mattered.”
Kairi’s fingers tightened around his. “Because it was.”
“No,” he said immediately. The word came out sharper than he meant, and he softened it at once. “No. It was because it was the part they could use. The part they could build rules around. The part they could point at and say, Look, we are safe now, we are chosen, we are blessed.”
Her mouth tightened. She looked away again, back to the fire, because it was easier to stare at flame than at someone seeing you too clearly.
“I don’t want to be used,” she whispered.
“I know.” He shifted, just enough to make space without pulling away, and she leaned into him more fully. Her temple found his shoulder. Her breath warmed the leather there. It was such a small thing, that trust, and it made him feel reckless.
Behind them, bedrolls rustled. There were some noises, but they were all still very awake and Kylar knew it now. He ignored it and returned his focus to her. This was his watch, and also, apparently, his heart.
“Tell me,” he said, “what do you think they’ll do in Carlbrin?”
Kairi’s voice came out muffled against his shoulder. “Put me on a dais. Teach me to smile the right way. Tell me what I can’t do. Who I can’t speak to. Where I can’t go. And then…” Her fingers curled again, as if the rest was hard to say. “And then they’ll decide the safest thing is to keep me. And decide the best way to keep me is marriage.”
Kylar stared into the fire until it blurred, because something in him wanted to become violence on her behalf.
“Then," She nestled closer and he could feel her lips moving against his neck. "I call for my season...and turn the tables on them all and" She smiled and he could feel it. "Rush gets to beat up plenty of men for stress relief and I'll get to watch you beat my brother."
He chuckled. "You have a lot of faith in my abilities."
"hmm, you did get the best of him." she reminded him.
“If, ” he added, “if the council wants to play games with your life, then fine. We’ll play smarter games back.”
She swallowed. “Kylar…”
He turned his head slightly so his voice could be for her alone.
“In Carlbrin, you won’t be alone in a room full of titles,” he said. “You’ll have Rush. You’ll have Ryder. You’ll have your Ash Guard, once you decide what you want that to mean. You’ll have Shade, glaring at anyone who breathes too close. You’ll have Darius looking like he’s one bad day away from picking up an entire councilman and walking him to the door.”
A soft, reluctant huff of amusement.
“And,” Kylar finished, quieter, “you’ll have me.”
Her eyes shone in the firelight. “That’s the part that thrills and scares me.”
Kylar frowned. “Why?”
“Because if they force it,” she whispered, “they’ll use you too.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear with the most careful touch, as if she might shatter.
“I am already used,” he said simply. “By my kingdom. By my duty. By my bloodline.” His gaze held hers. “Let me be used for something that matters.”
Kairi’s breath hitched. She looked down at their hands, at how she was holding only a couple of his fingers like she was afraid to take more.
Then, slowly, she slid her hand fully into his.
Not clinging.
Claiming.
Kylar went very still, because that single choice felt bigger than any ring.
She tried to speak, failed, and then whispered, “I don’t want you to be hurt because of me.”
“I’ll be hurt for far dumber reasons than you,” he said, and his attempt at humor finally earned a real laugh from her. It was small, but it was hers.
He let the sound settle, then asked the thing he’d been circling.
“This ceremony,” Kylar said. “The one Rush refuses to tell you about.”
Her smile faded. “Yes.”
“Do you think he won’t tell you because it’s dangerous,” he asked, “or because it’s… sacred?”
Kairi’s gaze flicked to the dark beyond the firelight, where the road waited like a patient predator. “Both.”
Kylar exhaled through his nose. He could picture Rush saying the dragon says we aren’t ready in that maddening way Rush had of sounding like he was quoting a law no one else had read.
“Do you want to know?” Kylar asked.
Kairi’s throat worked. “Yes.”
“And are you afraid that knowing makes it real?”
Her jaw trembled. “Yes.”
Kylar nodded, slow. “All right.”
He shifted his hand, thumb brushing lightly over her knuckles.
“Here’s what we do,” he said, voice quiet with intent. “When we get to Carlbrin, we go to the temples. Not as… spectacle. Not as court theater.” His eyes flicked toward where the others slept, then back to her. “We go as two people who were denied information they were owed.”
Kairi blinked. “Will they even let me—”
“They will,” he said, cutting in gently. “Because Ryder will make them. And if Ryder doesn’t, I will ask my father.”
Her brows rose. “You’d… ask Niveus.”
Kylar’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
The idea clearly startled her, like she’d forgotten he had that kind of leverage. Like she’d forgotten he wasn’t only the boy in the meadow.
“And,” Kylar added, “if Rush says you aren’t ready, then we ask what ready means. We ask what he’s afraid of. We ask what the dragon is guarding.”
Kairi’s fingers squeezed his. “He’ll be angry.”
Kylar’s eyes sharpened. “He can be angry. He’s been angry at me for six years.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
That earned a short laugh again, and then her face crumpled at the edges like laughter and tears were trying to share the same space.
“What if the phoenix really is disappointed in me?” she whispered.
Kylar leaned closer, forehead nearly brushing hers, not quite touching. He didn’t want to crowd her. He wanted her to choose him.
“I don’t think gods choose vessels to be pleased,” he said. “I think they choose vessels to survive.”
Her eyes shimmered.
“And you,” Kylar murmured, “have survived.”
Kairi’s breath shuddered. She bowed her head, and a tear slipped free. It caught the light as it fell, a tiny bright thing that shouldn’t have existed on a road like this.
Kylar tightened his grip on her hand, just enough to anchor, not enough to trap.
“I need you to hear something,” he said.
She nodded, wiping at her cheek with the back of her other hand, annoyed at herself for crying.
“If they see you as the vessel again,” Kylar said, “then we will remind them you are still a woman. A person. A girl who kept a town alive. A healer who doesn’t ask permission to care. A storm who learned how to stand in her own wind.”
Kairi’s lips parted, and he watched the words land. Watched her shoulders loosen by a fraction. For a while, they sat with the fire and the night and the soft sounds of the camp sleeping around them.
Then Kairi leaned back into his shoulder again and spoke so quietly it was almost only breath.
“I used to think being chosen would fix everything,” she admitted. “Like… like the phoenix would make me whole.”
Kylar’s gaze stayed on the flames. “And instead it made you visible.”
“Yes.”
He nodded once, understanding. Visibility was a blade as often as it was a blessing.
She hesitated, then said, “In Tearia… they would have kept me. They would have told me it was love. And maybe it was, in their way. But it was also fear.”
Kylar’s chest tightened. “They won’t keep you here.”
Kairi’s fingers tightened around his again. “How do you know?”
Kylar glanced down at her hand in his, then up at the stars.
“Because you already escaped once,” he said. “And because I’m not letting anyone put you back in a gilded cage.”
A small, shaky laugh. “You sound very sure of yourself.”
“I’m not,” he admitted. “I’m just sure of you.”
She stared at him, and something in her expression eased, like she’d been holding her breath for years and didn’t realize it until now.
Then she whispered, almost shy in the middle of all this fear, “Can we… make a fire in the meadow sometime?”
Kylar’s heart clenched so hard it hurt.
“We will,” he promised. “Waking world. Dream world. Both, if you want.”
Kairi nodded, leaning into him again.
Kylar shifted his posture, settled his cloak around them a fraction more, and stared into the dark beyond the fire as if he could already see Carlbrin waiting.
They continued to talk about small things they would like to do once they have some freetime after his Name day when Kairi’s words faded into softer, slower syllables until they stopped being words at all.
Kylar felt it first in the weight of her head. The way it settled more fully into the hollow of his shoulder, the way her breathing evened out, no longer sharp with fear or frustration. Her hand, still threaded through his, loosened, but didn’t let go. Like she trusted the world to keep turning for a while without her watching it.
The fire had burned down to coals, orange heartbeats under a crust of ash. Sparks rose now and then, lazy and brief, drifting up to the dark like little prayers that forgot their own language halfway to the stars.
Kylar didn’t move for several minutes. He stayed exactly as he was, because she was finally asleep and he’d learned the hard way that peace was a skittish creature. You didn’t reach for it too quickly. You let it come to you. You held it gently.
But the camp had watches. And even if the night felt calm, Kylar knew better than to trust calm.
He glanced toward where Kurt’s bedroll lay, toward the faint line of Zen’s silhouette, toward Darius’s steady shape. All of them sleeping in the kind of exhausted stillness that only came after blood and fear and too much riding on too little daylight.
Kylar’s turn was almost done. He exhaled slowly through his nose, then shifted one careful inch at a time, testing Kairi’s weight like she was a sleeping fawn and he was trying not to spook her. He slid his arm beneath her knees, the other behind her shoulders, and lifted. The ache reminded him he wasn't fully healed yet and gritted his teeth.
She made the smallest sound, a soft breath caught and released. Her head rolled against his chest and then tucked again, instinctively seeking warmth.
Kylar froze for half a heartbeat, waiting to see if she’d wake.
She didn’t.
He carried her toward the bedrolls with slow, deliberate steps, and with each one he was unpleasantly aware of how real she felt in his arms. Not the dream’s half-light version of her. Not the soft-edged meadow memory. Her weight was the same, her warmth was the same, the faint scent of smoke in her hair was the same.
It hit him in a strange, quiet way.
All those years of the meadow had taught him her shape like a prayer. The waking world had taught him that prayer had bones.
He lowered her onto a bedroll near the remaining warmth, easing her down like she might bruise if he wasn’t careful enough. Her cloak slipped, and he adjusted it, tugging it higher over her shoulders. The night air had teeth, and she’d spent herself too hard today.
He tucked the edge in around her, not in a mothering way, but in a soldier’s way. Efficient. Protective. Almost ritual.
Kairi shifted once, her brow faintly furrowing, then relaxed again. Her lips parted on a soft exhale. The firelight traced the curve of her cheek and the line of her lashes.
Kylar stared at her for a second too long, then forced himself to move.
Duty.
Always duty, like a hand on the back of his neck.
He turned and went to Kurt, crouching at the edge of his bedroll. He didn’t shake him the way Shade had shaken him earlier at the inn. He didn’t like that memory. He didn’t like the way it had pulled him out of the meadow like a hook in the ribs.
Kylar reached and tapped Kurt’s shoulder twice, firm but measured.
“Kurt,” he murmured. “Your watch.”
Kurt stirred, face tightening as if he’d been in a dream that didn’t want to let go. He blinked, then blinked again, eyes struggling to focus in the dim.
Kylar waited, letting him find himself.
Kurt pushed up on his elbows, then sat, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah,” he rasped quietly. “Yeah, I’m up.”
Kylar nodded once, then stood and stepped away so Kurt could rise without having to move around him. Kurt rolled his shoulders like he was trying to shake sleep out of his joints, then grabbed his cloak and moved toward the fire, where the coals still gave off a low, stubborn heat.
Kylar watched him settle in, posture turning from groggy to alert by degrees. The boy was young, but he wasn’t careless. Not after today.
Kylar took one last loop around the camp.
He checked the horses first. Onyx stood like a living wall at the edge of their small circle, head low, ears shifting toward every faint sound. He wasn't asleep yet. Kylar ran a hand down Onyx’s neck, feeling the thick muscle and the tension there.
“Good,” he whispered. Not praise exactly. Gratitude.
Onyx huffed, breath steaming faintly, and nudged Kylar’s shoulder once, not gentle. A reminder of size. A reminder of devotion.
Kylar checked the tree line, the slope of the ground, the faint marks where they’d dragged branches to cover their fire’s glow. He listened. He smelled the air. He let his instincts scan the dark the way they’d been trained to.
Nothing. Only night. Only wind. Only the distant, far-off call of something wild that wanted nothing to do with them.
He returned to the fire and met Kurt’s gaze. Kurt nodded, small and serious. The kind of nod that said: I’m awake. I’m here. I understand what I’m holding.
Kylar nodded back. Then, finally, he allowed himself to lay down. He chose a spot not far from Kairi’s bedroll, angled so he could see her if he opened his eyes. He kept his boots on. He kept his knife within reach. He’d earned a thousand lectures from Tessa about how even sleep had a posture.
He lowered himself onto the blankets, exhaled, and let the tension in his shoulders loosen by a fraction.
His mind tried, immediately, to go back to the meadow. A few minutes passed. He was drifting, that half-falling feeling where the world starts to soften at the edges.
Then Kurt spoke.
It was quiet. Not the way someone speaks to be heard, but the way someone speaks because they’ve been holding something too long and the only person awake is the fire.
“My mom worships the Phoenix,” Kurt said softly.
Kylar opened his eyes again and turned his head slightly. Kurt was staring into the coals, face lit from below, making him look older than he was.
“And… I know a little about it,” Kurt continued. He swallowed, throat bobbing. “I know the Phoenix hasn’t been seen since the Princess's Name Day.”
Kylar didn’t interrupt. He didn’t move. He let Kurt find the shape of what he was trying to say.
“We should… we should see if what she was talking about is a reason,” Kurt said. “Why the god-beast hasn’t been seen. No blessings. Nothing. Just… quiet.”
Kylar’s chest tightened. He’d thought about the phoenix as a symbol, the way most Naberians did. A crest on a tapestry. A story on a priest’s tongue. A foreign god-beast tied to a kingdom that had burned.
Kairi had talked about it like it was alive. Like it was hungry and tired and needing things she didn’t fully understand.
Kylar watched Kurt for a long moment, then nodded once.
“Thank you,” Kylar said quietly. And he meant it. Not as a polite acknowledgement, but as a genuine acceptance of the help. Of the offering.
Kurt’s shoulders eased a fraction, as if he’d been braced for dismissal.
“We may have a lot of research to do when we get back,” Kylar added.
Kurt nodded, gaze still on the coals. “Yeah.”
Kylar stared up at the stars through the dark branches overhead, letting the night settle around the words.
Research. Temples. Priests with their polished voices and their careful rules.
And Kairi, who had been forced into the shape of holy duty before she’d even been allowed to finish learning what her own life meant.
Kylar’s jaw clenched. He didn’t know what the phoenix wanted. He didn’t know what the dragon was guarding. He didn’t know why the world had gone silent around the temples.
But he knew one thing with brutal clarity.
If the answers existed in Carlbrin, he would dig them up with his bare hands if he had to.
Because she’d looked at him tonight like she was afraid of becoming nothing but a vessel again. And he had spent six years learning her name in a meadow. He was not about to let the waking world steal her from herself. His gaze shifted, just enough to find her bedroll. She was still asleep, curled on her side, cloak pulled up, hair spilling over the blanket like dark water.
Kylar exhaled slowly. Then he let his eyes close again. Not fully. Not deep. Just enough to rest.
A figure lay belly-down on a shelf of stone a bowshot above their little pocket of warmth, wrapped in a cloak the color of old soot. The gorge wind worried at the edge of it, tasting for loose fabric, but he didn’t move. He’d learned long ago that stillness was its own kind of armor.
Below, the camp looked almost innocent. A ring of bedrolls. A low fire, more ember than flame. Horses standing like dark statues at the perimeter, one of them too massive to be a normal animal. Onyx. Even half-asleep, the war beast held himself like he could bite the moon out of the sky if it came too close.
One guard was awake.
The boy by the coals sat with his shoulders too stiff for true ease, hands near his belt, eyes making slow sweeps through the dark. Not a veteran’s watch. Not careless either. A nervous, dutiful vigilance. The kind that didn’t know yet what silence could hide.
The stalker’s fingers slipped into his inner pocket and found the thin tablet tucked there, edges worn smooth by use. When he pulled it free, the faintest sheen caught on its surface, like damp slate under lamplight.
He tilted it so the glow wouldn’t carry. The order was simple. Ugly in its simplicity.
Catch the girl.
He looked up again, down again, letting his gaze settle on the bedroll nearest the remaining warmth.
The girl slept curled on her side beneath a cloak, hair spilled like ink across the blanket. Even from this distance he could sense something wrong with the world around her, the way the air held itself as if waiting for an argument to start. Magic did that. Strong magic made the night feel… attentive.
He licked his teeth, thoughtful.
He could do it.
A run down the slope. A hand under her arms, a hand over her mouth. One heartbeat of resistance, maybe. Then teleport.
He pictured it: the sudden wrench of the world folding. The sick-sweet taste of copper behind his tongue. The way his vision would spot at the edges as the blessing tore a hole through space and demanded payment.
And then he pictured the moment after, because the moment after was what killed men.
If she woke mid-shift, if she flailed, if she screamed into his palm and the sound turned into lightning, if her magic surged on instinct… he’d be carrying a storm that wanted his throat.
And he didn’t have the dragon’s favor like he used to.
He could still feel it sometimes, the presence behind his ribs, that hot, ancient awareness like a furnace with a door half-shut. Not gone. Not forgiving either.
Disappointed.
That was the word that clung to him like smoke.
He lowered the tablet and touched his throat instead, two fingers brushing the collar hidden beneath his high scarf. The metal was cold even against warm skin, a ring of quiet pressure that didn’t quite let him forget it was there. Runes lay along the inside like teeth.
He’d put it on willingly.
He told himself that lie in different ways depending on the day.
He pressed his thumb to the front seam where the clasp sat, and for a moment he imagined the girl’s hands there instead. Her fingers tracing the runes like they were letters.
Could she break it?
He almost laughed, the sound staying trapped in his chest.
Doubtful.
And yet.
He’d watched her do impossible things on that bridge. He’d seen the flash of lightning that wasn’t just lightning, the way it chose targets and punished them like it had a mind. He’d seen ice bloom from her palm with the calm certainty of someone who didn’t understand fear until it was already too late.
He’d also seen her heal.
Not the neat, careful healing of trained hands over an hour. Something faster. Something that felt like the world deciding a wound didn’t deserve to exist.
If she could do that to flesh… what could she do to metal and rune?
His handler had called her a prize.
Lore wants her breathing.
He stared down at the camp again, letting his thoughts prowl the arrangement the way a predator’s eyes measured distances.
The dragon-prince wasn’t here.
Good.
The bridge had done its job better than any blade. Splitting forces. Forcing choices. Delays. It had peeled the convoy apart like skin from fruit.
He remembered the moment the stone had gone, that sudden roar and dust, the scream of a horse as it vanished into the void. He’d watched from above as panic scattered and then disciplined itself again. A handful of guards had clung to the far side, helpless. The Tearian prince had appeared in a flicker of blue light with a curse on his mouth and murder in his hands. He’d teleported men across, secured the wagons, and then vanished again to shepherd the other half.
Efficient.
Terrifying.
A dragon vessel did not waste time.
But vessels bled. Vessels tired. And this had cost him something. You could tell by the stiffness in his shoulders when he reappeared, the way he rubbed at his temple like his own skull had begun to itch from the inside.
Now those separated forces were crawling toward the same town by different roads, like ants trying to find each other again after a boot came down.
Days, not hours.
That was what the stalker had wanted. He pulled the tablet back out and scratched on it with the stylus tucked into its spine.
Stalking. Waiting.
He paused, staring at the words.
The handler would not be awake. The handler was never awake when the night mattered. They slept and let lesser men do the breathing and the bleeding.
He added, in smaller script beneath it:
Bridge successful. Dragon delayed. Convoy split. Girl vulnerable but volatile.
He hesitated, then wrote one last line.
Blessing weak. Do not rush me.
His jaw tightened. He didn’t like admitting weakness even to a dead slab of slate. But a lie here could get him killed later, and dying for someone else’s impatience was a foolish kind of loyalty.
He slid the tablet away again and lay flat to the stone, letting his cloak settle and swallow his outline.
Below, the guard on watch shifted, stoked the coals once, and glanced toward the sleeping girl like he was counting bodies by instinct.
The stalker watched the watcher.
He watched the horses.
He watched the big one lift its head and breathe the air as if it could taste him. Onyx’s ears flicked, once, toward the slope.
The stalker went utterly still.
Seconds passed. Long ones.
Onyx huffed and lowered his head again, apparently deciding the darkness was full of normal darkness and not a man with orders.
The stalker exhaled through his nose, slow and silent.
If they rode hard tomorrow, he might not keep up. Not at a sprint. Not if they chose the main road and pushed the horses until foam gathered at the bit and tongues lolled. His teleport could help, but only in short bursts, and every burst would feel like throwing a bucket of his own blood into the sky.
He did the math anyway, because fear loved numbers.
They were two days from town if they took the winding route and didn’t push. One and a half if they pushed and risked lame horses. Less if they were desperate.
They were desperate.
He’d seen it in the way they bedded down in a tight cluster like wolves around their wounded. He’d seen it in the way the guard with blonde hair kept his body angled toward the girl even in sleep, like his bones refused to face away from her.
The stalker’s eyes narrowed.
So. Not tonight. Not while she was surrounded. Not while her guard was awake, and the war beast was too alert, and the air still tasted of lightning.
He would let her rest. He would let her regain strength. And then he would take her anyway. Because that was what orders were.
And because somewhere under the collar and the disappointment and the dimming blessing, he still wanted to prove he could do what the dragon’s true knights used to do: strike clean, vanish fast, and leave only fear behind.
He shifted his weight a fraction, silent as falling ash, and began to retreat up the stone, inch by patient inch, until the camp’s glow no longer touched his eyes.
When he finally rose to a crouch behind the ridge, the night swallowed him so completely it was hard to believe a man had ever been there at all.
He touched the collar once more, like a superstition.
Then he turned his face toward the direction of the road, and waited for dawn to give him new angles.