“Unless you’d rather sleep out in the open,” Aran shot back, grinning. “With all the bugs, and snakes, or bears.”
“The ones on the mountain back home weren’t so bad,” I offered. “Maybe these aren’t either. I used to stay in them on hikes when it started pouring.”
“A sleepover,” Aran said, smirking at Will. “Fun.”
Clearly trying to get a rise out of him.
I couldn’t bear seeing them like that.
And the bastard was right.
Soon we stumbled across a hunter’s cabin, or huts, more like. They didn’t have doors, but they were equipped with four cots, a table and benches, dusty cabinets. A few moth-eaten blankets hung on nails. Outside, a burnt-out fire pit. Those kinds of huts were scattered all through the woods, along lakes and mountains and winding trails. Built for fishermen or hunters to take shelter for a night. The elements in Vestance were brutal, and without the huts, a lot of people would’ve frozen to death in the winters. Most travelers didn’t use them anymore. Not if they could afford not to. Not when inns had blankets and hot stew and doors that locked.
I wanted to stay as far away from inns as possible though. Far away from towns, and markets. I didn’t trust myself in crowded places after what happened. Not with thethinginside me. I needed somewhere quiet. Remote. A place where no one could see me fall apart. Where I could figure out what I was, if I was anything that could be figured out at all. The healing, sometimes, felt like a gift. But the fire? Maybe Aran was right, maybe I was cursed.
If the gods had given it to me, maybe they were laughing at the irony. At the cruelty. If I’d had it earlier, things could’ve been different. I could’ve saved my family. I could’ve burned the vultures.
But I didn’t.
And all I had left was an ache for vengeance.
Vengeance and shame.
But standing there, looking at the little cabin—this tiny, quiet camp nestled deep in the forest—it made me feel like maybe the people who came before us really had cared for each other. There was an unspoken rule: never take more than you needed. Always leave the place in good condition for the next person. And even if you did take something, you paid your respects by bringing something back.
“Thank the gods,” Aran said suddenly, and rushed toward a stone basin carved into the rock, water flowing from a pipe straight out of the hillside. Clean, clear spring water. There was something like it back home in the mountain near Novil, although that one had been carved prettier. The water always tasted better than anything else, maybe just because you were so thirsty when you finally found one.
Aran dunked his head under the pipe and let the stream pour directly into his mouth, then straightened up to fill his bottle. There were fountains like this all throughout the trails in Vestance. No one owned them. No one tried to. They were gifts from the earth, meant to be shared. Maybe that’s why I loved my country so much. It was built by people who believed in taking care of each other. Who believed the land would take care of us too, if we respected it.
I still believed in that. Aran didn’t.
He wanted to take everything.
“Every man for himself,” he said, eyeing the supplies in the hut.
But I stopped him. Because I didn’t want to live in a world where we couldn’t trust our neighbors. Where most people weren’t good. The Eredians were already trying to break everything we’d spent centuries building.
I wasn’t going to help them.
Aran hadn’t really listened to me before. But… he did. Maybe he was afraid I’d burn him again. Or maybe he just finally respected me. Whatever the reason, it was strange. So much had changed, and yet, some things hadn’t.
For a little while, it felt like it used to. Just the three of us. Me, Will, and Aran. Moving through the world together. We’d had a special bond after Licia vanished. It was like we were survivors of the same wound. And we’d needed each other, even if Aran acted like he didn’t.
Losing a friend that young, never knowing what happened to them…
That kind of thing doesn’t go away. It scars you.
And with Aran back, there were moments—small, slippery ones—where it felt like nothing had changed, and I’d catch myself forgetting.
But then I’d remember.
I wasn’t the same Kera anymore.
And he wasn’t the same Aran.
His face had changed too. The boyish softness was gone. There was a beard growing along his jaw. His hair always falling into his eyes.
And he drank.
