“She was brave,” he added, almost as if the words tumbled out before he could stop himself. “Not the sword kind. She never touched a blade. But when I was ten, she stood in front of a man once, armed and angry, with nothing in her hands but a wooden spoon. And she told him to leave.” He paused. “She did it for me.” His eyes lingered over the fire once more.
My lungs refused to expand, suspended in a moment of utter stillness.
“She died protecting me.” His voice cracked. “And I stood there. Too young. Too slow.”
I didn’t move or dare to take a breath.
His voice, quiet and blunt, hitme with the force of a punch, and my chestconstricted.
He wasn’t the type to talk to fill the silence. Every word cost him as if he were carving it out of stone.
As he stared into the fire, jaw clenched tight, posture rigid, the truth of his revelation hit me.
He screamed not loss, but a crushing weight of self-blame.
Erin sat as if he were still ten years old. As if he had never left that moment, like part of him still believed he should’ve done something, anything.
And I hated that. A suffocating weight pressed down on me, every muscle tense, knowing I was utterly incapable of changing the past for him.
The boy he was should have known no such burden, yet the shadow of the shield clung to him. Even as a man, its spectral weight bent his shoulders
I wanted to reach for his hand and tell him he wasn’t alone.
But I whispered the only truth I could find. “You didn’t forget her,” I said. “That matters.”
His gaze locked onto mine, and for a moment the world contracted to nothing but the sudden intensity in his eyes. “You remind me of her,” he said.
I blinked. “Because of bread?”
He huffed, a ghost of a laugh. “Because you care. Because you didn’t flinch when she needed help.”
The sound of his voice, low and rough with memory, threaded straight through me. Something in my chest swelled until it was too big for my ribs to hold, an ache so fierce it stole the air from my lungs. It was tender, but sharp, like something blooming in a place it shouldn’t be able to grow. Like fire sprouting roots.
“She asked me to keep something alive. To still plant something, even after...” His fingers twitched, curling tight as if he was holding onto her ghost. “You do that. You plant things. Even in people like me.”
The words hollowed me out and filled me in the same breath. I wanted—gods, I wanted—to reach for him, to press my hand against his and tell him he wasn’t as ruined as he believed. The urge was terrifying in its strength, dangerous in the way it threatened everything I had been taught to want.
Instead, I sat frozen, my throat tight, the ache inside me burning bright and unbearable.
He went quiet again, and I let him. The silence between us was companionable. And when he finally glanced at me again, I knew he was remembering more than he said.
Whatever storm still lived in him, I hoped briefly that I could be a quiet place where it passed.
Chapter Thirteen
Wynessa
The path was gone.
Seraph Arch had washed out overnight, reduced to a churning mire of broken stone and white water. The roar of the river below was louder now, more aggressive—as if the land itself was angry. Mist rose from the shattered gorge in damp curls, and the morning sun did little to cut through it. Alaric looked uncertain as he stared at the collapsed ridge, his jaw tight with the silence that meant calculation was underway.
“We could cross it,” Alaric said finally, gesturing to where jagged stone and crumbling ledges still jutted out across the chasm. “If we’re careful, we might climb down to the waterline and ford across.”
Gideon barked a short laugh. “And drown halfway through? That current could snap a horse in half. You saw what it did to the bridge.”
“We’re losing time,” Alaric shot back, eyes narrowing. “We’ll have to go around the entire ridge to reach the high trail. That’s a full day, maybe more. And we already lost a full day. I’m sorry, Jasi, but it’s true.”
“I’d rather lose a day than a life,” Erindor said evenly, his voice cutting through the rising tension like steel. “If we go down there, we won’t all make it.”
