“It seems to.” I pull her closer. Not roughly—there’s no combat urgency driving the motion. Deliberate. Intentional. “I find I have things to say that never fit between fights.”
The stream provides fresh water.
I drink from cupped hands, tasting nothing except cold clarity. No contamination. No magical residue. Clean water from a natural spring, filtered through ordinary stone.
Soreia kneels beside me at the stream’s edge. Her fingers trail through the current, creating ripples that catch sunlight.She watches the water with an expression I can’t immediately categorize.
“I’ve forgotten what this tastes like.” She lifts a handful to her lips. Swallows. “Water that isn’t tainted. That doesn’t carry the aftertaste of divine interference.”
“Everything tasted wrong in god-touched lands.”
“Everything tastes right here.” She drinks again. “It’s disorienting.”
I understand. The absence of wrongness creates its own kind of strangeness. After years of existing in corrupted space, normal reality feels almost foreign.
“We’ll adjust.”
“Will we?” She glances at me. “You’ve been surviving hunts for centuries. I’ve been dying slowly since my power awakened. Neither of us has much experience with peace.”
“Then we’ll learn.”
“Is that a threat or a promise?”
“Both.” I rise from the stream’s edge. Extend my hand toward her. “I’m good at learning new forms of violence. I can apply the same dedication to learning new forms of stillness.”
She takes my hand. Lets me pull her to her feet. Her body ends up close to mine—not accidental. Neither of us is accident-prone.
“New forms of stillness.” Her voice drops to match the valley’s quiet. “What does that look like for a predator?”
“I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”
“Fair enough.”
We stand at the stream’s edge. Her hand in mine. Her body almost touching mine. The water runs past our feet toward destinations unknown. Birds call. Wind moves. The sun continues its arc across an untroubled sky.
I don’t want to move.
The realization hits hard. Not tactical evaluation. Not calculated positioning. I don’t want to be anywhere except here, with her hand in mine and her body close enough to touch.
Want.
The word tastes unfamiliar. I’ve experienced need—the survival drive that kept me hunting when everything tried to kill me. Experienced necessity—the mating that saved her life and bound us in permanence. Experienced obsession—the fixation that turned her into the center of my focus.
Butwantis different.Wantimplies choice. Implies preference unforced by circumstance. Implies that I could be elsewhere and choosing not to be.
I’m choosing her.
The thought settles into my bones with the weight of absolute truth.
THIRTY-FIVE
KASTER
We find shelter as the afternoon lengthens.
Not because we need protection—the valley holds no threats—but because my instincts won’t accept sleeping in the open. Too many years of combat readiness. Too many ambushes survived by choosing defensible positions.
The shelter is a natural formation: an overhang of rock creating a space large enough for two, protected from wind and rain, with clear sightlines across the valley floor. I approve of the tactical advantages even as I recognize they’re unnecessary.
