River leads us through a crooked lane hemmed in by crumbling brick and rusted gates. Her steps are silent, precise, like she’s counting each stone beneath her boots. I watch the tension in her shoulders—not fear, not exactly. Focus. The kind born of knowing too much about how cities bleed.
I keep close, but not too close. The air between us still hums with everything we didn’t say last night. Everything we did. My lips remember hers too well. So does the rest of me.
She stops at an old temple garden—if you can call it that. The stone arch is half-collapsed, choked with ivy and soot. Inside, statues of forgotten gods crouch beneath thorny vines. A fountain gurgles softly, its water green with time.
She steps through the arch first. I follow.
We’re not alone.
A woman stands in the moonlight like she owns it. Helmet tucked under one arm, sword gleaming at her hip. Tall. Straight-backed. Hair pulled into a braid so tight it could cut. Not a speck of rust on her armor.
She doesn’t move as we enter—just watches. And waits.
River halts a few feet away.
“Skeela,” she says.
“River.”
Their voices meet like two blades tested for sharpness.
I size her up while they measure each other. She’s not what I expected. I thought someone dirty. Rough. Someone who crawled out of the gutter with blood on her teeth and a dagger in her boot.
But this woman—Skeela—she’s sharp in a different way. Refined. Composed. The kind of predator that doesn’t need to growl to show her fangs.
Her eyes flick to me. Linger. Hard.
“Your kind don’t usually walk free in Kyrdonis,” she mutters.
I grin. Wide. Sharp.
“I don’t walk,” I say. “I hunt.”
That earns me a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile.
She looks back to River. “This him, then?”
River nods. “The one I told you about.”
“Taller than I pictured.”
“Louder, too.”
I chuckle. “You both flatter me.”
Skeela studies me again. This time slower. Like she’s checking for cracks. Weakness. I let her look. Let her see the scar on my jaw, the way my knuckles rest easy near the blade strapped to my thigh.
Let her wonder what I’d do if she drew steel.
She doesn’t. But her hand never strays far from her hilt.
“Why’d you bring him?” she asks.
“Because I don’t trust you,” River replies.
Skeela nods once. Like that was the right answer.
She steps closer to the fountain and rests her helmet on the rim. Moonlight hits the side of her face, catches a silver streak through her braid. She’s not young. But there’s not a flicker of softness in her—just discipline carved into flesh and bone.
