He looked up then, and their eyes met.
"Don't," he said quietly. "Touch me now and I won't be able to stop."
She froze. The words sent a tremor through her—not fear, but recognition. She remembered the way his shadows had felt when he'd cloaked them both: hot, alive, hungry.
And she wanted that again.
"Maybe I don't want you to," she said.
Something broke in his restraint.
He rose, the movement fluid and deliberate. Water trailed down his chest, catching in the grooves of muscle. The shadows writhed, restless, then peeled away entirely, retreating into the tree line.
"Eliza." Her name was a warning, a plea, and a promise all at once.
She stepped toward him, closing the distance. His hand found her waist, rough and warm, pulling her against him. Her breath caught as the heat of his body seared through her damp clothes.
The first kiss was sharp, heat meeting hunger, both of them breaking at once. Then it softened, deepened, turned into something that felt like falling. The air thickened, the forest itself holding its breath.
The shadows circled distantly, silent witnesses. The mist wrapped around them, cool against their flushed skin.
When they sank to the moss by the water's edge, the world narrowed to the sound of rain dripping from the leaves and the pulse beneath his throat.
He whispered something in his language—low, raw, untranslatable—and she felt it like a vow against her skin.
Afterward, they lay tangled in the hush, her head against his chest, his breath slow and unsteady. The shadows had returned, quieter now, curling protectively around them both.
Eliza stared up at the canopy, the faint gleam of dawn seeping through the branches.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she wasn't cold.
Yet beneath that warmth, one thought lingered: whatever darkness had claimed him in those dungeons was now reaching for her too.
Chapter
Forty-Nine
Sound died first in this forest.
Out on the plain, wind and rain spoke freely. Here, under the thick canopy, the world fell silent. Water dripped slowly from leaf to leaf. The earth smelled of wet bark, rotting plants, and something older, cold as a sealed tomb. Even the shadows felt solid rather than empty.
They crossed beneath a knotted arch of thorn-barked trees. The air turned cooler and denser. Their breath formed pale strands that quickly vanished. Shazi raised two fingers, and the orcs fanned without a sound, slotting into the clearing's edges. Their movements had a rhythm Eliza was only beginning to learn: head-tilt for danger, an open palm to hold, a short exhale to move. Words, when they came at all, came close to the skin.
"This way," Rakhal said, voice quiet, and the hush seemed to lean toward him.
The hollow he chose was ringed with harsh-barked trees: trunks twisted into a natural palisade. Their thorns were long and matte, the color of old iron. Moss climbed to the knees of the roots and pooled there. The ground gave underfoot like a held breath.
He brushed his palm over one trunk. Darkness bled from his skin into the bark and vanished. The wood absorbed it completely. The air shifted—no light show, no crack; still, Eliza felt something settle, like a boot pressed into damp earth that, when lifted, left an imprint deep and certain.
"What did you do?" she asked, voice lower without meaning to make it so.
"Asked them to keep watch," he said. "They don't say no to me here."
The thought should have chilled her. It steadied her instead.
Shazi began to murmur orders, barely above the whisper of the leaves. A fire pit appeared, ringed with stones; someone struck flint until the smallest, most careful flame woke in its cradle. Bedrolls unfurled. Snares went out. Two sentries took the high roots with bows in hand, and in the doing, made less noise than a fox.
Eliza stooped for kindling, fingers numb with the cold they had outrun. Her first handful was wrong—too green, too slick. A shadow fell over her, warm as breath.
