But I don’t say it. Because she wouldn’t hear it right now.
A branch snaps overhead and something winged bolts through the mist. She ducks low instinctively. I follow suit, dropping into a crouch. My hand goes to the handle of my bone knife. She’s already got her gun out, but there’s nothing. Just an owl, oversized and ugly, flapping off into the gloom.
“False alarm,” I murmur.
She straightens slowly, gun still raised. “You say that like it’s supposed to make me feel better.”
“Fair.”
We press on. The path narrows into a game trail, barely wide enough for one. River moves like water, seamless and quick. I trail behind, slower but deliberate. The trees here grow crooked, like they’re listening. Watching.
“Why’d you bring me back?” she asks suddenly. “That night. You could’ve just left me.”
I don’t answer right away. The truth sticks in my throat like pine sap.
Finally, I say, “Didn’t want to see the forest chew you up.”
“That all?”
I grunt. “Maybe I just like your stories.”
She goes quiet again, but there’s something softer in the line of her shoulders. A looseness that wasn’t there before. Her pace slows, just a little, like she’s letting me catch up.
She doesn’t look at me when she speaks again. “Don’t mistake gratitude for trust.”
“I ain’t that dumb.”
“But you are that stubborn.”
That, I can’t argue with. I smile, and this time she doesn’t roll her eyes.
5
RIVER
I’m not supposed to be noticing the way he moves.
But I do.
Every damn time he steps over a root or pushes aside a branch, I catch myself watching. He’s too big to be quiet, but he is. Somehow. A troll that walks like he doesn’t want to disturb the world around him—hell, even the birds come back when he passes.
It’s unsettling. The quiet. The soft shuffle of leaves underfoot. The long stretches of nothing but breath and mist and the wet whisper of mossy trees bowing overhead like they’re trying to listen in. I focus on the trail ahead, mind ticking like a metronome. One step. Then another. Don’t look back. Don’t feel.
Don’t want.
“You’re makin’ that face again,” he says behind me, voice low and rumbly like distant thunder.
I don’t turn. “What face?”
“The one like you swallowed a porcupine and it’s clawin’ its way back out.”
I snort, despite myself. “I’m walking through an ancient, possibly haunted, mist-drenched forest with a troll who wants to play tour guide. Forgive me for not smiling.”
“You’d look prettier if you did.”
I stop cold. “You want to keep your tusks, don’t you?”
His chuckle is warm and lazy, like he knows I’m bluffing. “There she is.”
