"I—" My voice climbs. "I didn't know your name."
"Rhen."
"Rhen." My fingers are picking at dried mud on Nugget's feathers because they need something to do and I can't stop them. "You look—better. Than the ditch. Which I realize is not saying much, because the ditch was—the ditch was a low point for both of us, honestly."
"I'd hope so."
"The scar healed—mostly okay, I can see from here the lower edge is a little uneven, but the tissue took, and considering I was twelve and—"
"Melori."
"Sorry. I'm—sorry."
He turns. Looks at the crowd behind him. At the hostile faces and the wary ones and the scared woman in the doorway. When he speaks again, his voice carries.
"Your stitches were terrible."
I choke out a laugh. "They were not. They held."
"Barely."
"You're alive."
"By accident."
"You're being dramatic."
"You were twelve."
"I was a thorough twelve-year-old."
The woman with the baby loosened her grip.
Just a little. Not much. But the whispers around me have shifted—still wary, not as sharp. Someone actually nodded at me. One person. It's something.
The hostile ones are easier to spot.
A big man near the back. Dark hair, permanent scowl, built like he could snap me in half and not think about it afterward. He's staring at me with a hatred that didn't start today. I just gave it a place to go. Another woman, arms crossed, jaw tight, fresh scratch across her cheek. A cluster of younger ones whispering to each other, eyes flicking between me and—
Keer.
He's stopped walking. We've reached the central area—a cleared space with benches, fire pits, structures arranged around it in a rough circle. The biggest fire pit has a cooking setup I don't recognize, some kind of spit mechanism. Clever. The rotation joint—is that a socket hinge? I should look at that later. Figure out the counterweight system, because if the spit's balanced wrong the meat cooks unevenly and you end up with one side charred and the other—three wolf pups are wrestling near the far edge, tumbling over each other, too young to care about the human invasion. One of them yips and the others pile on.
Keer's standing in the middle of it all.
And I haven't really looked at him. Not since we got here. Too tired, too flustered, too focused on not dying and keeping Kestria from dying and carrying Nugget and my bag is heavy and my wrist hurts from the basket and I should check Kestria's bandage when we stop because she's been holding her side for the last ten minutes and won't admit it—
I look at him.
He's massive. I knew he was massive. But seeing himsurrounded by his own people is different—he's bigger than most of them, easily. Shoulders wider. Neck thicker. Black hair loose, gray threading through it at the temples—I forgot about that, how did I forget about that—
The scars are worse in daylight. Across his arms, disappearing under the too-small tunic—everywhere. The missing eye. The torn ear.
The tunic is too small. I noticed that before, definitely noticed that before, I noticed it for hours during the walk while the seam under his arm threatened to quit. But now I'm noticing it again—straining across those shoulders, riding up his thighs—
Don't look at his thighs.
I look at his thighs.
