His voice isn’t in the wind. It isn’t memory. It’sinside me.A tremor curls through my chest, and my hands drop to my lap, shaking. I don’t knowhow long I sit like that, drowning in the echo of his words—both spoken and unsaid. Until—
“You’ll freeze if you sit here much longer.”
I gasp and turn. Kailorien crouches beside me, unfastening his cloak. He doesn’t ask. Just drapes it over my shoulders and reaches for my hands.
He brings them to his mouth.
Breathes hot air over my skin.
His warmth clings to my fingers, soft and damp. I watch him, mesmerized, as though seeing his face for the first time. The lines. The scars. The tenderness in his eyes.
“Your hands are ice,” he murmurs, frowning.
I nod mutely.
“You’re shaking. Come. Let’s go to the fire.”
I shake my head. “I’m all right.”
He tilts his head. “You’ve been shivering lately, even when you aren’t straining yourself.”
A pause.
“I have?”
He helps me stand, his hands firm and sure. “Since the river. And you didn’t eat tonight, either. I’ve set aside food for you in the tent. And a bath.”
I look past him, out toward the silver drift of the Serevyn. “I’m not like your men, Kailorien. I can’t fall ill. Or hurt my feet on nettles. I heal.”
He raises a brow.
“You don’t have to protect me,” I whisper. “Even today. I didn’t help with the boar. It doesn’t feel right. Eating it.”
He stares at me a moment longer, and then his voice lowers—steady, reassuring. “Auryn,” he says, “you don’t need to prove yourself to anyone. You don’t have to earn your place.”
He steps closer.
“As far as I’m concerned, you already have.”
9
The Water’s Edge
Auryn returned to the tent with Kailorien’s hand cupping her elbow. The night was thick with the hush of river mist, and the scent of charred meat clung to her skin. Her limbs were weak with exhaustion, yet beneath pulsed something else.
Hunger. Want. That terrifying, sacred ache that had begun at the feast fire and hadn’t let go.
Kailorien guided her behind the tent’s thin partition with a gentleness that made her chest ache.
“Go on,” he murmured. “Warm water’s ready. Take your time.”
He gave her a bowl of hot broth, a bundle of folded cloth, and his quiet presence as she bathed. Her fingers slipped more than once—the soap too slick, the steam clouding her thoughts. Still, she managed.
She emerged and dressed with heavy thoughts.
Tonight, I want to come to him as I am. As myself. What purpose is there in denying what my body wants? What my heart, too, longs for?
Yet she hesitated. Before the mirror, she wrung her hands, unsteady as a leaf in the wind. Being near him set her nerves alight. Worse, the tether that had always hummed between them—silent, invisible—pulled now with sharp insistence, leaving her no choice but to face her desire head-on.
