3
The fire had burned low, its embers a dull heartbeat against the dark. Around them, the forest pressed close, heavy with the damp breath of early spring.
Sira crouched by the fire, poking a stubborn branch until it caught. Sparks fluttered upward, brief and vanishing.
“We were meant to be safe,” she said, almost whispering. “The Keeper was never meant to see any of this.”
Across the fire, Vaeril sat sharpening a short blade, the rasp of stone on metal slow and steady.
“It wasn’t meant to reach us,” he said.
“But it did.” Sira tossed the stick into the coals. “Ignivar raids. Aurelle gathering armies. And now... nothing. Only ash and silence.”
Vaeril’s hand stilled for a moment on the blade, then resumed its slow work.
“She acted to protect,” he said. “As she always would.”
“And we failed her,” Sira muttered, barely above a whisper.
Neither spoke for a long moment. The wind stirred the trees, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and old woodsmoke.
Finally, Sira sat back on her heels, rubbing at her arms as if the cold had found a way inside.
“The trail’s thinner every day,” she said. “Fading.”
Vaeril set the blade aside. His gaze lifted to the treetops, their branches black and tangled against the star-pale sky.
“We follow until it ends,” he said quietly. “No further.”
Sira didn’t argue. She only leaned closer to the dying fire, letting the heat brush her fingers.
In the distance, a night bird called once, then fell silent.
Above the fire’s slow breathing, the weight of unfinished promises hung heavy between them.
The room was dim, lit only by a low-burned brazier that threw long, lazy shadows across the stone walls. Thick velvet curtains muffled the windows. Even the air seemed stale, heavy with the weight of unspoken bargains.
A scrape of a chair. A murmur of cloaks settling. The quiet clink of a decanter being poured.
Voices stirred, low and smooth, like knives drawn carefully from hidden sheaths.
“Dragons striking the border...” one voice said, dry with amusement. “A tragedy, of course.”
A soft chuckle answered. “Tragic for fools. Fortunate for those with the sense to use it.”
Another leaned forward, his tone sharper, heavy with years of rotted authority. “The cub bleeds resources to the south. His court fractures daily. If the war drags on...” A pause, deliberate. “New hands might be needed at the tiller.”
“And the mutt?” A different voice—mocking, casual. “Still clinging to life, they say?”
A snort of contempt. “Let him rot. A weapon’s all he ever was—and broken ones are tossed aside.”
“The dragons were supposed to finish it,” one mused, tapping idle fingers against a goblet. “Instead they left him breathing—and rotting. No man survives a curse. They made a monster, and now it festers where we can’t touch it.”
Another voice answered, low and hard, scraping against the quiet. “Unnatural or not, the cursed thing is locked away. His suffering changes nothing.”
A pause, deliberate and razor-thin. Then the voice curled into a sneer. “The cub couldn’t even put down a dying dog. Now he sits and whimpers while it rots at his feet.”
Another chuckle, darker this time. “Even better. Let him keep it—a rotting relic too dangerous to bury, and too broken to save.”
Silence stretched for a moment, heavy and satisfied.
Then the first speaker again, lazy and dangerous. “We press the conflict. Let the dragons howl. Let the cub waste his strength. And when the walls begin to crack—”
He left the sentence unfinished. The fire guttered low, as if in response.
Someone rose, the scrape of a chair deliberate. Boots crossed the stone floor, slow, measured.
“Patience,” the last voice said, silk wrapped around steel. “The bloodletting has only just begun.”
The door opened—just a crack—spilling a sliver of cold, clean light into the gloom.
Then it shut again, leaving only shadows and the slow hiss of dying embers.
Time drifted slow beyond the fields, heavy as the river’s pull, slipping past without hurry or shape. Days folded into one another, stitched together by small things—the creak of the garden gate, the smoke curling from the hearth, the rasp of nails driven stubbornly into splintered wood.
They worked side by side without needing to speak much. Mornings spent pulling weeds from the stubborn earth, afternoons repairing the fence line that leaned no matter how carefully they braced it. Some days Castella would sing under her breath, a tune without words, and Justin would find himself moving slower just to hear it a little longer.
At first, the touches were nothing. A brush of shoulders while carrying a pail, hands knocking together when both reached for the same basket. Justin felt them as if they left marks under his skin, small burns he dared not name. He kept his distance when he could. He told himself it was habit, nothing more. It was easier not to want.
But Castella never seemed to notice the way he flinched. She only moved closer. In the evenings, when the sky fell to ashes and gold, they would sit by the fire, her foot nudging his under the rough wool blankets, her head tipping lightly against his arm as sleep pulled at her.
It was not a courtship. It was not anything he understood. It was simple, and easy, and it filled the hollow places in him so quietly he hardly noticed until he realized he was waiting for it each night—waiting for the soft weight of her against him, the steady sound of her breathing, the unspoken permission to be still.
Later, there were days he would reach for something—a plank, a rope, a tool—and find her hand already there. She would smile without looking up, and his hand would hover, unsure, before closing clumsily over hers. She never pulled away.
The first time they held hands, it was nothing and everything. A morning of broken eggs and stubborn goats, laughter slipping out too easily, a stumble over uneven stones. Castella caught his hand to steady him, fingers warm and sure, and Justin did not let go.
He never remembered who leaned first. Only that when he kissed her, it tasted like sunlight and breathless laughter, and that she kissed him back without hesitation.
There were no promises. No declarations. Only the soft, unbreakable truth of it—the kind that did not need to be spoken aloud.
And for the first time in a long, long while, Justin did not brace for it to end.
The tavern was low and wide, its beams blackened with years of smoke and cheap firewood. The air smelled of old ale and wet stone, the lamps burning low and greasy.
Vaeril and Sira sat tucked into a corner booth, mugs untouched, listening.
A loud voice rose from near the bar, sloppy with drink. “Told you, I found him first! Out by the south road, just past the old mill. Looked like death had already laid hands on him. Armor torn to pieces, blood everywhere.”
The table erupted in rough laughter.
“Aye,” someone jeered. “And you near pissed yourself and ran screaming for the watch.”
The man only grinned wider, undeterred. “Laugh all you want. I know what I saw. No tracks, no horse, nothing. Just... there. Like he dropped out of the gods’ own hand.”
Someone nearby barked a laugh. “More like outta the bottom of a bottle!”
More laughter followed, but unease threaded under it.
Sira leaned in slightly, her voice low. “Sounds like a jump.”
Vaeril nodded quietly, his gaze on the warped boards of the floor.
Near the hearth, another knot of drinkers was arguing, voices low and fast between swallows of ale.
“Heard some poor bastard lived through a dragon fight,” one said, slurring the words.
“South of the border,” another grunted. “Sick now. Burning up.”
“Bullshit,” a third snorted. “Dragonfire kills clean. Doesn’t leave you crawling.”
A man shrugged, the legs of his chair scraping loud against the floor. “That’s what they say. Locked up in the King’s hospice. Fevered. Half-mad.”
Across the room, someone spat sharply into the rushes, as if to drive the ill luck away. Another man traced a hasty warding sign over his chest, head down, muttering under his breath.
At their table, Sira caught Vaeril’s eye, a brief tilt of her head toward the door.
No words. None needed.
Vaeril rose first, brushing past the thick smoke as another round of drunken laughter rolled through the tavern. Sira followed a breath later, her hood drawn low, slipping between the crowd without a ripple.
Outside, the last light was fading. The city walls loomed ahead, and somewhere beyond them, the trail finally narrowed to a point.
Somewhere between the broken fence posts and the lazy bend of the river, the old fear began to creep back.
It was not loud. It was not sudden. It came the way a draft slipped through a cracked window, unnoticed until it was already chilling the room. Justin would drop a bundle of kindling and feel his stomach knot tight. He would mismeasure a plank for the shed roof and wait, heart thudding, for the inevitable sigh, the quiet disappointment, the withdrawing that always came before being cast aside.
Castella never gave him any cause to think it. She only laughed when he cursed under his breath, a light, unbothered sound, and handed him another plank. She only smiled when the soup burned, when the fire refused to catch, when the goats slipped the fence again and he came back scratched and muddy and swearing vengeance on their entire stubborn breed.
But old instincts were slow to die. Justin braced for the sharp words that never came. He steeled himself for the cold glances that never arrived. Some deep, battered part of him could not quite believe this fragile life would not crack if he leaned too hard against it.
One evening, he forgot to latch the chicken coop. A fox found its way in. Castella found him later, crouched in the dirt by the ruined pen, blood smeared across his sleeves from what little he could salvage, the bitter taste of failure already thick in his mouth. He could not meet her eyes. He could not summon any excuse good enough to erase the wreckage.
He waited for anger. He waited for that quiet, familiar turning away.
Yet, she knelt beside him without a word and helped gather what could be gathered, her hands steady, her touch certain. When it was done, she leaned lightly against his shoulder, her forehead brushing his, and said nothing at all.
The silence held, warm and unbroken.
Justin closed his eyes, the tightness in his chest loosening in slow, unfamiliar threads. He had failed. He had broken something that should have been his to protect. And still, she stayed.
No sharp words. No cold turning away.
Only the quiet weight of her hand brushing his, the warmth of her leaning into him as if nothing had changed at all.
He turned his face slightly into her hair without thinking, breathing in the scent of earth and woodsmoke and something softer he had no name for. His hand, scraped and clumsy, found hers and held it—not tightly, but with the desperate care of someone still half-afraid it might vanish.
It didn’t.
She only shifted closer, her thumb brushing over his knuckles once, slow and sure.
The world stayed steady around them.