"This way," he said when the snarls were conquered, his voice rougher than before. He divided the hair at the nape and his fingers moved with the certainty of a man doing somethingthat mattered. "We bind it tight. Close to the skull. It will not catch."
"You braid your hair for war."
"For everything." A pause. "Each braid holds breath, promise, memory. My mother said so. Even when I didn't like her hands in my hair." She heard the half-smile, and her chest went hot, then soft.
He worked methodically, parting, crossing, drawing. The weight of her hair changed as it grew contained. The pull at her scalp was firm, not cruel. The cadence of his voice, low and almost absent-minded as he told her about pressure points along the neck, about how to avoid a knife from behind by giving an enemy less to grip, worked on her like a spell. She realized at some point that her breathing had matched his, long in, slow out, the two of them pulling the same length of air.
He finished with a practiced twist and tied it off. Instead of moving away, his fingers rested at the nape of her neck, light and sure. Her pulse leaped under his touch—startled animal under palm—and she could not keep the breath from catching. The small sound that left her mouth was, embarrassingly, surrender dressed as a sigh.
"Too tight?" he asked, and the softness in the question brushed her like a hand.
"No," she said, not trusting the rest of the words her mouth wanted.
When she shifted beside him, he clenched his jaw, shadows flickering briefly at his fingertips before he forced them still. His hand lingered at her neck a moment longer before he drew it back. She felt the absence more than she should have.
"Good," he said, a little roughly. "You'll keep your heat this way."
Night took the clearing by degrees, laying gray cloth over the ferns and easing blue-black into the knots of the trees. The firesank to a steady heart. Shazi posted the last watch and vanished into her tent with a muttered warning to kick any creeping roots that thought to tangle her ankles. The joke made three of the orcs snort in the quiet. It made Eliza feel as if she had been included in something subtle.
She took the far side of the pelt because it felt like a choice. The cold made a liar of pride almost at once. The fog chose her skin as a landing. She curled into herself and tried to be less surface, more core. Her jaw clicked with the chill.
"You'll freeze," Rakhal said from the doorway. He had shed his shirt and his skin caught what little light there was like oiled bronze. The runes the mages had carved flickered faintly beneath, less like wounds now than like old declarations translated into skin.
"I'm warm enough," she lied.
He crossed the distance in three soundless steps, lay on the pelt beside her and pulled a heavy pelt over both their bodies. He left space, careful and deliberate, but the narrow pelt left little room for politeness. Despite his attempt at distance, the curve of her back fitted against his chest as if designed for it.
For a long time they lay without movement. Then the tremor that passed through her betrayed the cold. He felt it, too. His arm came around her with slow certainty, gathering her against him until her spine rested along his body’s heat.
She meant to thank him. What escaped instead was a small, raw sound—half sigh, half surrender. His breath feathered against her neck.
“Eliza,” he murmured, as if testing whether saying her name would undo him.
“Don’t,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if she meant don’t stop or don’t speak.
His hand found her hip, fingers roughened by weapon oil and wind, spreading the warmth he carried like a promise. The scentof him filled her—smoke, iron, pine, a faint trace of the mint-leaf water. It was too much, too near.
She turned, meaning to reclaim some measure of space, and found his mouth instead. The contact was accidental only in the first heartbeat. After that, it was decision. His lips were hot and uncertain. She tasted salt and breath and something darker—patience breaking.
His hand came to the back of her neck, thumb tracing the edge of her jaw as if memorising it. She caught the fabric at his shoulder, grounding herself in the feel of him—solid, alive, dangerous. When his tongue brushed hers, her body betrayed her completely, arching closer, chasing warmth.
The world contracted to pulse and breath, to the rhythm of want. He broke the kiss first, forehead resting against hers. His voice was rough stone. “If I go further, I won’t stop.”
“Then don’t,” she breathed.
For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then he exhaled, long and shuddering, and pressed his mouth to the hollow of her throat. His teeth grazed the skin there, a warning or a vow. Her hands slid over the planes of his back, over the raised script of his scars, tracing the stories written into him until he shuddered.
He rolled her gently beneath him, the weight of him heavy but never cruel. Every movement was question and answer—the brush of his nose against her jaw, the slow drag of his fingers down her ribs, the quiet shock of heat where skin met skin. The pelt trapped the scent of their breath, the small sounds that escaped between them.
When he entered her, a rough sound left his throat—something that might have been her name. The first slow slide of him drew a breath she couldn’t hold, a stretch that hurt and healed in the same instant. The motion stayed reverent, as if he feared the forest might wake and see. The pain was fleeting; the heat wasn’t.
It wasn’t gentle for long. Need burned the distance out of them. His hand caught hers, fingers entwined, anchoring rather than binding. Each breath was a vow they hadn’t learned the language for.
When it broke, it broke quietly—no cry, no shuddering collapse, just the long exhale of something that had waited too long to be touched.
They stayed like that until the air cooled around them and reason began to creep back in. His forehead rested against her shoulder, his voice barely a thread. “You’ll keep your heat this way,” he said again, but the words had changed meaning.
She smiled into the dark, one hand still against his chest. “Then stay.”
