“I’m sorry,” she said.
He couldn’t breathe for a heartbeat.
“For what?” His voice came out harsh. “You didn’t—”
“For the shape you never got to know,” she said. Her eyes were back on his face now, steady, ridiculous, too bright. “For the fire. For the smoke. For the way it still clings to you.”
Her fingers twitched against her knee, as if she wanted to reach out and touch him and thought better of it.
“I am not her,” she repeated. “But I can help you remember that it was not your fault.”
He should have laughed in her face, barked orders, told her to get up, to report to Resh, to stay away from healers’ tents and Rift Wardens and anything that smelled like trouble.
Instead, he said nothing.
The camp roared back into his ears by degrees. Someone shouted about a missing mount. A pot crashed. A horn blew the long, low note for evening changeover. The wind tugged at the edge of his cloak.
“Get off the ground,” he said finally. It was all he could manage. “You’ll catch cold.”
“It’s warm,” she said, glancing at the crate behind her.
“Get up anyway.”
He didn’t offer a hand. He wasn’t ready for that. But he didn’t walk away until she planted her bare feet solidly under her and pushed herself upright, one palm braced against the crate for balance.
She wavered for half a heartbeat then found her center.
Zarrek turned before she could say anything else that slipped past his armor. His teeth still itched. His head pounded. His chest felt too tight.
Disorder, he told himself as he walked away. She was trouble. Dangerous. Unfit. A risk to the Kelvasari, to Krystopolis, to everything he’d spent a lifetime holding together.
He did not admit, even in the quiet of his own skull, that he’d just threatened three menders and their lives for her sake.
Or that when he closed his eyes that night, the firelight behind them no longer burned quite as steadily as it had before.
7
The Wave Held Still
The journey to Stonewake tested their limits. Rain pelted the Resh’Agar’s company as they waded through mud and knee-high grass in the Emerald Moores, the fog so thick they could hardly see two hands past their noses. Twice, wagon wheels had sunk deep into the muck, forcing them to unload supplies and abandon one cart entirely.
Resh’s uncanny sense of direction kept them steady, but tension hummed through every step. The downpour dulled their hearing. The mist swallowed distance. Time vanished. Day and dusk blended. The Emerald Moores lay quiet under the thinning sun—but dusk changed everything.
The Cycle of Dark was descending.
Sometimes, the men heard their own voices echoed back—twisted mimicries that sounded almost human.
“They come!”
“Bring the Anchor!”
A wail. A howl. A scream—human enough to fool prey.
“They’re just varkhounds,” Zarrek snapped when a group of men froze. “Keep moving, unless you want to be their next meal.”
Eventually, runoff from the Spines narrowed their trail. Foaming water cut across the road like a fresh wound. The current was a titan, carrying entire trees—felled in the recent thunderstorm—in its embrace. The horsesbalked at the crossing. Hooves slipped. Eyes rolled. Most of the men balked too, even with Zarrek yelling at them.
When they reached the cataract of the Serevyn River, they halted again. A massive waterfall thundered above them, so tall that white mist swallowed its crest. Icy sheets clung to the cliffs overhead, menacing and poised.
