Resh stilled, dazed.
The crackling of the fire, the murmured talk of soldiers, the whisper of wind across canvas—all of it receded beneath the sudden, sharp awareness gripping him. Her movements were unhurried, unconscious. The flick of her tongue, the way her lips parted as she cleaned the grease from her knuckles—it was nothing. It waseverything.
He looked away, but too late. The image had carved itself into his thoughts like a rune into stone.
Does she truly not know what her actions invoke? In me? In others? And her words, too. Wild. Untamed. Like that starlit hair.
Resh clenched his fists. Kept his gaze rooted on the meat cooking over the fire. His breath came slow and deliberate as he worked to control the direction of his thoughts.
This is not want. This is vigilance.
And yet an ache threaded through his hands, coiled around his spine. She shifted beside him, still nibbling at the meat, and the scent of her—wild mana and rain-drenched earth—rose again to meet him. He dared not look. Feared what he might become if he did.
Blissfully unaware, Auryn’s gaze drifted toward the horses tethered just beyond the light of the fire. “They are afraid,” she observed.
Resh blinked, caught off guard. Still struggling to recover. “Most beasts don’t like the dark, especially when the Cycles are changing.”
She mulled this over for a moment. “Why do horses have four legs?”
“That’s just the way they come,” he replied, bemused.
“But not Astenos,” she murmured, licking a smear of grease from her thumb. “He has six.”
Resh turned to face her more fully. “Auryn, Astenos is a Kelavari war-steed. Bred and bound through ancient bloodcraft. Don’t go near him carelessly. He only responds to me. He’s dangerous.”
She shrugged, utterly unconcerned. “He likes it when I sing to him, just like the others. They don’t like the silence.” She tilted her head, listening to something no one else could hear. “They fear the shadows.”
Her voice held no embellishment. Just quiet knowing, the way someone might comment on the temperature of the wind or the salt in a stew.
Further around the fire, Zarrek and a few of the men spoke in low tones, their conversation drifting between tactical logistics and the looming storm. The scent of rain had lingered for hours.
“If it hits before we reinforce the wheels, we’ll lose half the carts,” one muttered.
“We should tarp the smaller wagons and reinforce the bracers with cord,” Zarrek said. “If the rains hit early—”
“They won’t,” Auryn interrupted. “First, frost will come. Then rain. The winds sweep north.”
All conversation stalled.
Zarrek narrowed his eyes. “You know this how, then?”
She looked up at him, silver eyes reflecting the firelight like polished moonstone. “Can you not hear how the wind whispers as it moves? It yearns for mountains.”
A beat of silence. Then Zarrek let out a huff, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“Forgot who I was talking to.”
She stood. Resh’s attention snapped to her. Her movements weren’t sudden, but there was a deliberate stillness to her that always made him tense. Not danger—but something older. Moreawarethan a woman her size had any right to be. She crossed the fire circle and stopped a few paces from Zarrek. The old warrior watched her approach with arms folded, jaw tight.
Then she just…stared.
A minute passed. Maybe more.
Finally, he scowled. “Go play with the mud, girl. Your presence is a distraction.”
She didn’t blink. “You have magic in your veins,” she said. “The pain is there. Long years of it. And thirteen, too. Not twelve.”
Resh caught the flicker in Zarrek’s face. The shift from mild annoyance to something between alarm and disbelief.
