The other men looked between them, confused.
“What’s she talking about?”
“Thirteen what?”
But Zarrek raised a hand, firm and final. “Back to your posts. Now.”
The authority in his voice left no room for questioning. The men scattered, muttering, their footsteps fading into the night. Zarrek turned to follow them.
Auryn touched his arm. “Her pain was not your fault,” she said. “The Rivers remember.”
The breath punched out of him. He turned back to her, and in the flickering firelight, Resh saw something he never had before. Zarrek—who never flinched, never faltered—had gone pale. Utterly, unmistakably pale. Whatever this woman had stirred in him, it wasn’t just memory. It was grief. And she’d peeled it open without effort.
Auryn didn’t wait for him to reply. She turned and walked back to the fire, lowering herself beside Resh as though nothing unusual had happened. She took another skewer and bit off a piece of charred meat. As though she hadn’t just broken his strongest warrior with a single sentence and walked away untouched in the fallout.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the skewer and she picked at the end like someone who hadn’t yet decided if she liked the taste. The wind picked up—cold and whispering—and the fire bent sideways, sending sparks dancing into the night. Resh glanced at her bare feet, tucked up under her knees. Pale. Dusty. Yet, somehow, whole despite the rugged terrain.
“Auryn,” he said, “you should wear shoes.”
She didn’t look up.
“There are nettles and vines out here that could hurt your feet,” he continued. “And thorns. And bugs.”
Still chewing. Still ignoring him.
He sighed and ran a hand down his face. “You’re not indestructible.”
“I don’t like the way shoes feel,” she murmured. “They keep me from listening.”
He blinked. “Listening?”
She swallowed and turned to him, eyes unreadable. “The earth hums. Beneath everything. Stones, roots, the space between things. If I wear shoes, I miss it.”
Resh didn’t know what to say to that. After a beat, she leaned forward and plucked a crust of bread from his plate without asking. Tore it in half, handed him the smaller piece.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, watching her.
She looked at him like he was the one being odd. “Of course. I used a lot of magic today.”
That was true. He’d seen it—hadfeltit in his bones when the air had bent to her will near the edge of the ridge. It seemed she couldn’t breathe without exhaling magic.
“You should have said something sooner,” he muttered. “We would’ve stopped to let you rest.”
She shrugged. “You worry more than you should.”
“Someone has to.”
That earned him the ghost of a smile. Small. But it lingered.
Across the fire, Zarrek stood motionless in the shadows, staring after her even as his men disappeared beyond the rise. His face was unreadable now, carved from stone, but the tension in his shoulders lingered. Whatever Auryn had touched in him—it had been real. Deep. And raw. Resh filed that away for later. He had questions. But not tonight.
Another gust of wind stirred the coals. Auryn scooted closer and rested her elbow on his knee, claiming his personal space without a second thought. “Do you think the stars are always watching?” she asked.
Resh tilted his head, caught off guard again. “I…don’t know. Why?”
She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes reflected the sky. “Because sometimes it feels like they remember things I’ve forgotten.”
The cryptic words made something ache in his chest in a way he couldn’t name. “Auryn,” he said again, quieter this time, “I’m serious about the shoes.”
