“Bad dreams.”
I don’t answer. The dream clings to my skin like smoke, impossible to wash away. Power hums beneath my skin, pulled toward him, and I have to clamp down on it with everything I have.
“Prophetic?”
“No.” Rough. Damaged. “Different.”
He accepts this without pushing. Turns his attention back to the storm, giving me space to compose myself.
I don’t want space.
The realization arrives with the force of a physical blow. I don’t want distance. I don’t want the careful separation that defines hunter-and-quarry.
No. I don’t let myself finish the thought. I pull my knees tighter against my body and focus on breathing, on the cold, on the sounds of the storm.
The hours blur. Each time I surface, he’s exactly where I left him—an anchor in the darkness, the one still thing in a night that won’t stop moving. At some point during the night, his weight shifts, angling more fully toward the interior. Toward me.
The child’s shoe catches my attention again in the dim light. Small. Cracked leather. Someone who had no magic, no bloodline worth hunting.
Dead anyway because proximity to targets causes collateral damage.
The thought sends ice through my veins. I’m a target. Anyone near me becomes collateral.
Including him.
The wind shifts around what I estimate to be the third hour past midnight. The shrieking drops to a moan, and in the relative quiet, I hear them. Footsteps. Claws scraping stone somewhere beyond the walls.
Kaster’s posture changes—a minute tightening that wouldn’t be visible if I wasn’t watching for it. The temperature in the shelter rises slightly. His fire, stoking.
“How many?” I whisper.
“Six. Maybe eight.” He cocks his head, listening to frequencies I can’t detect. “They’re circling. Not approaching yet.”
“Testing the perimeter.”
“Waiting for the storm to clear enough for coordinated assault.”
They can’t attack effectively while the wind still throws ash into every line of sight. But once visibility improves, they’ll come. They always come.
“We could run. Use the last of the storm as cover.”
“They’ll track us. They always track us.” He turns his head, and for the first time since I woke, his full attention lands on me. The weight of it is crushing. Absolute. “You’re running on empty. If we hit an ambush, you die. I’m not risking that.”
The words land differently than they did in the ravine. Then, they sounded like calculation. Now, they sound like a declaration wrapped in an excuse.
I hold his gaze for three heartbeats. Four. Five.
Then I look away.
The hunters testthe door at false dawn.
One heavy impact against the damaged frame, followed by the scrape of claws seeking purchase on stone. The door holds—barely—and the sound retreats into the gray half-light of morning.
I’m already beside Kaster.
I don’t remember moving. Don’t remember making the conscious choice to close the distance between my sleeping platform and his position near the door. But here I am, so close that the heat bleeding off his skin reaches mine, my body having made a decision my mind refused to make.
He doesn’t comment. Doesn’t tell me to retreat or put distance between us.
