Eira’s footsteps are quiet behind me. She moves well for someone her size.
“You should be sleeping,” she says.
“I don't sleep the night before.”
“Before what?”
“Before anything.” I keep my eyes on the terrain. “Old habit.”
She stands beside me. The wind pushes her braid across her shoulder. She stands the way Thyran stands, balanced and rooted and taking up exactly as much space as she needs.
“Tell me about him,” I say. “Vortek.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then her voice changes. Warmer. Softer than I've heard it.
“Loud. Everything about him was loud. His laugh, his voice, the way he walked into a room and took up all the air in it. He and Thyran together were something. Vortek talking, Thyran listening, the two of them orbiting each other the way family does when they've been alone together long enough to forget the rest of the world exists.”
She looks at me.
“After he died, Thyran stopped. Just stopped. I couldn't reach him. Nobody could.” Her jaw tightens. “I lost Vortek. And then I watched his brother disappear into that hall too.”
The wind pushes between us. Cold and sharp.
“Whatever you are,” Eira says, “you brought him back. He talks. He came to the hold. He asked for help. He said more words to strangers in Haldrek’s hall than I'd have believed he had left.”
I owe her something for that. For telling me who Vortek was instead of just how he died.
“The soldiers aren't coming for a deserter,” I say. “Not really.”
She looks at me. Waiting.
“I was a demolitions specialist. I brought down a dam. Civilians died because my commanders lied about evacuations and I didn't check.” I keep my voice level. “I placed the charge and I lit the fuse.”
The wind fills the silence between us.
“The army wants me back because I can name the officers who gave the order. That’s what they're afraid of. Not a woman who ran. A woman who knows.”
Eira doesn't answer. Her face gives nothing away. She’s processing it — what I did, what it means, what it costs to stand next to me knowing.
“Good,” she says finally. “Now I know what we're fighting for.”
Not forgiveness. Not absolution. Just clarity.
She looks at me, and her expression is harder than I've seen it. Not hostile. Direct.
“Don't die tomorrow.”
“I'm not planning on it.”
“Good.” She turns back toward the hall. Stops. “The Jötunn you put on the eastern slope. Move them ten paces south. The footing is better and they'll have a clearer line to the clearing.”
I look at her.
“I've been reading terrain my whole life too,” she says before she walks away.
I move the Jötunn ten paces south. She’s right. The footing is better.
Morning.
