He stands too close, his coat brushing mine, his eyes unreadable in the dark. “You don’t forgive me yet,” he says.
“No,” I answer honestly. “But I’m not done with you either.”
He exhales slowly, and it feels like the trees lean in to listen. “That’s enough for me.”
When I kiss him, it’s not careful, not measured, not strategic. It’s hungry, stubborn, the kind of kiss that dares him to doubt me. His hands find my waist, steady and unyielding, but he doesn’t pull me closer than I choose. And when I break away, breathless, I see something raw in his eyes that tells me the truth louder than words ever could.
We don’t speak as we continue up the ridge, side by side, the snow crunching under our feet. The world feels fragile and infinite at once, the stars above sharp and clear, the lodge ahead glowing like a hearth finally woken.
For the first time since I buried Gran, since I took hold of this battered place with both hands, I let myself believe the snow will melt. That maybe I don’t have to weather the thaw alone.
CHAPTER 22
DRALGOR
Morning comes slower in the ridge than it ever does in the city. In Silverpine, the sun drags itself over the mountains like a beast that doesn’t want to wake, throwing light across the snow with a grudging sort of beauty. I rise with it now, not because I have contracts to sign or meetings to dominate, but because Clara is already awake, and I’ve learned she does not wait on anyone.
She has a rhythm: stoking the stove, carrying kindling in her arms, moving through the lodge with a stubborn determination that would shame a full crew of men. At first I stood aside, watching the way she shoulders her own weight like she was born for war, but then she shoved a broom at me one morning with a look that’s sharp enough to cut leather and said, “If you’re going to hover, you’re going to work.” I took the broom, and I haven’t put it down since.
Now the days move in a strange cadence. I stack wood, mend rails, tighten bolts that have long since grown loose, all while she runs the lodge with the steel backbone her grandmother clearly hammered into her. Sometimes we argue over the smallest details—how much wood the stove needs, whether the roof can hold another snowfall, whether my knots are as good as hers—but it’s not the kind of argument that ends with slammed doors. It ends with her muttering under her breath while I grin into my collar, knowing she’ll do the same to me tomorrow.
We fall into this uneasy rhythm, two forces circling one another without naming what holds us here.
It’s late afternoon when she catches me stripping off my coat after hauling wood in from the shed. My shirt clings with sweat, and the air inside is warmer than outside, so I pull it over my head. I don’t think twice about it, but her eyes stop on me, fixed on the marks across my chest and arms.
Clan tattoos, deep ink carved in the old way, spiral patterns that tell the story of my bloodline, the shape of the mountains we once claimed, the wolves we once ran with, the hearthfires we swore to guard. And then the scars, pale lines that cut through the ink, some shallow, some deep, some left by blade, some by exile itself.
She stands in the doorway, dish towel in her hand, still as stone. “You never said,” she murmurs, not accusation, not pity, something quieter.
“I don’t talk about them,” I say simply.
“But you carry them,” she answers, stepping closer, eyes fixed on the marks like she’s reading a map. “What do they mean?”
“They mean I belonged once,” I tell her, voice low. “And then I didn’t.”
Her hand hovers before she lets it fall against my shoulder, her fingers tracing one of the spiral lines where it breaks under a scar. Her touch is light, almost reverent, and it steals the air from my lungs in a way no battle ever could.
“This one?” she asks, brushing along a ragged line near my ribs.
“A fight I should’ve lost,” I say. “But didn’t.”
“And this?” she asks, fingertips pausing at a mark across my collarbone where the ink is almost gone.
“Exile,” I answer, my jaw tightening. “The night they carved me out of my own blood.”
Her hand stills, and I feel her breath more than hear it. “They carved it into you.”
“They wanted me to remember,” I say, bitter and steady. “So I wouldn’t forget what I’d lost.”
She looks up at me then, eyes wide, not with fear but with something I don’t deserve. “And do you?”
“Every day,” I tell her.
Her hand slips lower, tracing another scar, softer this time. The silence stretches, filled with the crackle of the stove, the muffled creak of the lodge as snow shifts on the roof. I stand still under her touch, letting her read the marks like a book no one else has ever been allowed to open.
She steps back, cheeks flushed. “I should finish supper.”
I let her go, but my chest feels like she’s set fire to it with nothing more than her hand.
