“Alright,” Nate said briskly, breaking the pause. “The rest of us will hold here and prepare. You two bring back the soldiers.”
The plan was set.
The forest swallowed the sound of our unit behind us.
Our boots plunged through mud and dead leaves, the kind that crumpled under each step. Lionel walked a few steps behind, careful but distant, like he wasn’t sure how close he was allowed to be anymore.
He broke the silence first. “You’re walking too fast for someone who nearly bled out last night.”
I frowned. “And you’re still too bossy for someone who doesn’t want to lead.”
That earned a quiet chuckle, and he slowly closed the distance. “Maybe. Some things don’t change.”
We fell into silence again. He’d always been comfortable with it, I never was. My thoughts scraped too loud against themselves.
“You fought well yesterday,” I managed to say.
He gave a small shrug. “Not well enough. You got hit.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
He didn’t answer right away. His shoulders shifted, tension in every line. “Maybe not. But I’m supposed to have your back. I always did.”
There it was; the echo ofbefore.
Before fire and fear. Before he looked at me like I was something dangerous.
“I remember,” I said softly.
He glanced over his shoulder. His gaze caught mine, steady,unreadable.
“You scared me,” he said. “When I saw you go down, I thought—” He stopped, jaw working, then looked away. “Doesn’t matter.”
I already knew how he felt. Despite everything that had happened, I would never want to watch him get hurt or die, but that felt too heavy to share aloud, so I went with something lighter. “I’m hard to kill.”
He huffed, barely smiling. “That’s what scares me.”
I missed the meaning of his words until we were several steps past it. By then, his face had already closed again, calm and composed as ever.
We reached a clearing after a while, the trip feeling longer than it had probably actually been. I sat on a half-buried stone to catch my breath. Lionel stood beside me, eyes scanning the tree line like he couldn’t stop being protective.
When he finally spoke, his tone was careful, too careful. “So your demon friend.”
I stiffened before I could help it. “Mywhat?”
“You… trust him.”
It wasn’t a question, but it still demanded an answer.
“I do,” I said, dragging the words out. “He’s… unpredictable, but he’s hard to get rid of.” My joke fell flat.
Lionel’s jaw flexed. “He’s dangerous.”
“So am I.”
That made him look at me—likereallylook at me.
His eyes softened just a little. “Not like him.”
