The snow around my fingers had melted in a small, perfect circle. I quickly pressed fresh snow over it, smoothing the surface until nothing was visible.
I stood and turned back toward camp.
Nicco was standing six feet behind me.
My heart didn't stop. I want to say it didn't, and that was almost true. It might also be a lie.
I went still, the same way I always did when something unexpected happened, not out of fear but to assess. He was leaning against the rock face, arms crossed. He wasn’t looking at my hands. He was looking at my face.
“You're going to freeze,” he said.
“I needed air.”
He walked closer, close enough that I felt the cold clinging to his cloak. “There's air in camp, we’re outside, or had you failed to notice?”
“There are also eight soldiers in camp.”
His expression shifted. Not softening — nothing about him was soft — but something adjusted, recalibrated. He looked at me the way he'd looked at the road out of Skallfen, like he was noticing something, filing it away for later, deciding what it meant.
“Next time you needair,” he said, “tell Baxley.”
“Baxley's on watch.”
“Then tell me.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
He didn't answer immediately. He pushed off the rock and walked toward camp.
“Because,” he said, without turning around, “whatever's in Skallfen isn't the only thing north of here. And I'd rather know where you are.”
He disappeared between the rocks.
I stood in the dark for a long moment, cold pressing in from all sides, and I tried to figure out what to do with that. Whether it was a threat or something else entirely. I couldn't tell. With him, I was beginning to suspect I could never trust him.
Only a fool would, and I was no fool.
I walked toward camp.
While some things were easier not to examine too closely, others had a way of demanding to be seen anyway, whether you were ready or not.
I knew right there that I didnotwant Nicco to see me.
I pulled my cloak tighter and followed him back into the light.
Chapter 14
I toldmyself it was practical.
Nicco knew things I didn't. Who'd sent them, what waited at Iskaeld, what the crown actually wanted from this journey. Information I had no access to unless I stayed close enough to catch it.
Staying near him made sense. It was tactical.
It had nothing to do with the way he'd looked at my face instead of my hands in the dark. I repeated that to myself four times before breakfast was done and almost believed it by the third.
“Why do you look nervous?”
I didn’t hide the fact that he startled me. I turned to look at Sergeant Gralen.
