Because the truth is gnawing at me already.
I’m glad to be back among my people.
Until I realize maybe they’re not mine anymore.
The farmhouse grows too loud. The men’s laughter scratches at my ears, false and jagged, every clink of flask against teeth reminding me I’m not really part of it anymore. I slip outside before someone notices, boots crunching over frozen mud.
The cold hits like a slap—clean, sharp, honest. I breathe deep and let it bite.
Out near the edge of the yard, beside a half-built barricade of splintered timber and bent nails, I find him. Kragna.
He’s perched on a beam like it’s a throne, hunched forward, a blade in his hands longer than my thigh. The metal catches the moonlight, throwing quicksilver flashes across his eyes as he drags a whetstone slow and steady along its edge. The sound is rhythmic, rasping, like breath drawn through teeth.
I walk over, boots crunching frost. He glances up once, then back to his work, saying nothing.
I sit beside him. Close enough to feel the heat rolling off his body, steady as a forge. My hands fold in my lap. For a while we just listen to the night—the crackle of the farmhouse fire behind us, the distant hiss of arrows being loosed into the dark, the whetstone rasping, rasping.
Finally, I speak. The words come out low, rougher than I meant.
“How many?”
He doesn’t stop sharpening. “How many what?”
“How many humans you’ve eaten.”
The stone rasps once more. Then stops.
He sets it down, slowly, and lifts the blade. Moonlight paints it silver, sharp enough to split shadows. His eyes meet mine, steady, unblinking.
“Thirty-six,” he says. His voice is calm. Not proud, not ashamed. Just fact. “Give or take.”
The number punches the air from my lungs. I stare at him, waiting for a smile, a joke, a twist. Something. But he just looks at me, face carved from stone, and I realize he’s not playing.
“None lately,” he adds after a beat, almost an afterthought.
My mouth opens, then shuts. My throat feels scraped raw. I don’t know what I expected. Less, maybe. Or more. Or a lie.
I want to move. To stand, to walk, to run. But I don’t. My legs stay rooted. My hands clench tight in my lap.
Because if I leave, if I bolt like a scared deer, then it means I can’t face it. Can’t face him. And I’ve faced worse.
So I stay.
The silence stretches between us, thick as tar. His blade gleams. My breath fogs. The cold creeps into my bones, but the heat rolling off him keeps me from shivering.
Finally, he looks away, drags the stone across the edge again. Rasp. Rasp. The sound fills the air, steady as his breathing.
I stare at his profile—the curl of golden horns catching starlight, the ember glow of his eyes when they flick back to the blade, the way his jaw tightens just slightly when he works.
The weight of his confession sits heavy on my chest. Thirty-six. Lives taken, bodies broken, flesh consumed. But he said it like a truth carved into the mountain. And somehow… that honesty means more than if he’d lied to soothe me.
I don’t know what to say. So I don’t. I just sit there, beside the monster with blood on his tongue, and let the night carry the silence for us.
The farmhouse is quieter now, but not by much. Men mutter in their sleep, twitching with nightmares. Someone coughs wetly in the corner. The fire in the hearth is nothing more than a bed of coals glowing angry red.
I move toward the door, desperate for air, when Rizzo’s hand snaps around my arm. His grip is steady despite the thinness in him, bones sharp under skin.
“Walk with me,” he says. No warmth. No softness. Command, plain and bare.
