“Are you a dryad?” she asked, her brown eyes wide and awed. “Mama says dryads are real. Mama says they come from the Rivers to teach us things.”
Auryn accepted the wilting flower with delicate fingers. She paused, turning the flower over once in her palm. Taking a breath, she raised it to her lips.
The air sighed and shifted.
A ripple. A shimmer.
Petals bloomed—not just from the flower, but from theair, spilling into the sky in a kaleidoscope of color. Connecting them was starlight, threads weaving together into a miracle.
Gasps broke around them. Silence fell.
Dancers stumbled to a halt. Notes quaked their last into ascending silence.
Resh hardly breathed.
“I am myself,” Auryn said to the child, as though the sudden quiet didn’t touch her. “I do not teach. Only remember.”
Zarrek’s aura flared like a roaring beast, as Resh’s stomach twisted. Auryn handed the daisy back to the child, and the little girl gasped in delight. Beat by beat, the party picked up its prior pace. But the lighthearted atmosphere had withered as the petals bloomed in the air. Whispers surrounded them.
Not stunned in the wake of a miracle, but divided.
Later, as the camp settled and the villagers packed their things, Resh escorted Auryn to his tent. Their path was no longer one unnoticed. Eyes watched from every tent and forge and fire pit.
Awed, fearing, judging.
Resh shouldered all of it with neutrality. His mask.
“Does life frighten those that dream?” Auryn asked when she’d settled on his bed and hugged his star map close to her chest. “The child wanted to know. So I showed life. Yet now, the air shakes.”
She reached for his hand, and he gave it without hesitation. Then stopped. For a heartbeat, the thought of what that touch could mean slid unbidden into his mind. But he buried it at once, dropping to one knee beside her bed.
“They’ve just never seen someone like you before. Auryn, what was that spell? With the flower?”
She made circles on his palm, thoughtful. The slow drag of her fingertip across his calloused skin unraveled him, each stroke a thread pulled loose. His body reacted before his mind could leash it. Heat curling low, the rune— Dregnr—at his hip igniting. He clenched his jaw until it ached.
“Your hands know magic,” she murmured, still tracing. “The warrior with yellow eyes and scars, too. But it is not the same. It is—” she searched for the word, “it is dominance.”
“And your magic isn’t?” His voice cracked, raw.
She shook her head, her eyelids heavy.
“If you’re tired, you can rest.” The circles continued, each one a brand. He forced his breathing steady, forcedeverythingsteady, even the burning at his hip.
Again, he spoke without thinking. “I’ll be here when you wake.”
When all was hushed and night had wrapped its inky shroud about those resting in the Moores, Resh stepped out of his tent bleary-eyed.
We need to leave. To travel. I need to fight, feel my blade in my hand again. It’s always steadied me in times of trial.
Footsteps cut through the quiet. Resh didn’t turn, recognizing their weight and cadence after decades of brotherhood.
“You find me at last,” Resh said. “Took you long enough to come to your Commander.”
A pause as Zarrek’s heat blazed against Resh’s back.
“You’re losing yourself,” the warrior said without preamble.
Resh still didn’t turn. “Not now, Zar.”
