He didn’t answer.
How could he ever admit thathe was the onewho was afraid?
Instead, he watched her breathe—slow, steady, alive.
For the first time in ten days, he allowed himself to do the same.
Dawn came thin and colorless, a wash of pewter light pressing through the seams of the Commander’s tent. The rain had eased to a mist; the tent ropes creaked, damp and weary. Beyond the walls came the small sounds of morning—the clank of mess tins, a cough, the low murmur of a Riftwarden testing the air with his rod, the sharp call-and-answer of a watch change.
Resh was armored, black aethersteel plates catching the dull light like wet stone. He had strapped the last buckle twice and still hovered—half-turned to the entrance, half-fixed on the narrow shape beneaththe blankets. He’d told himself he would take first perimeter, swing by the cookfires, bring back broth and bread before she even stirred.
But, true to form, Auryn opened her eyes and subverted his plans before he could set them in motion. She sat up and blinked at him from a nest of mussed silver hair. Not with the fever’s glassiness from the night before—clearer. The change hit him like a blade pulled free of a sheath; the relief nicked as it slid.
“Hunger,” she murmured, voice sleepy-soft but certain. “I remember that.”
“I’ll bring food.” He was moving before the words finished, the decision trimmed and sharpened. “You’ll stay—”
She slid off the bed.
It was not graceful. Her feet found the canvas floor, and the world tilted; she caught herself on the bedframe with a small hiss, breath held, lips pressing thin as a tremor ran through her calves.
He was there in a blink, his hands closing around her forearms—not hard, not quite gentle, precisely enough to bear her weight without shifting her balance.
“Auryn,” he said. Warning and plea both.
She lifted her chin. “I’m awake. And hungry. And if I stay still any longer, I’ll forget how to breathe.”
“You can forget how to breathe at breakfast as easily as here.” It was dry, but the edges of his voice gave him away.
One of her brows arched, amused despite her pallor. “You intend to feed me in bed?”
“If necessary.”
“I prefer to walk.”
Of course she did.
She prefers the river when it floods, too.He tamped the thought down, measuring her breath, the way her freckles still hid from the light, the quiver in the fingers curled to hold the bedframe. Too slow. Too cold. Too recently gone.
“I have conditions,” he decreed at last.
Her eyes glinted. “Conditions?”
“Warm clothing,” he said, reaching for the stack he’d set aside in the night; a soft linen shift, wool leggings, thick socks, the dark tunic with the inside seams he knew wouldn’t scratch her skin, a cloak lined in fur. He set the boots last, heavy as obligation. “Shoes. Cloak. And you take my arm. If you sway, we turn back. If you stumble, I carry you.”
“That sounds rather final.”
“It is.”
She looked down at the neat pile he’d prepared, something like laughter ghosting her mouth. “You chose these.”
“Yes.”
“You fastened your greaves twice,” she said, head tilting. “And then you laid out a pair of your socks like a battle plan.”
“With you, footwearis war.” He paused, awkward. “They’re spares. From my pack.”
She made a sound of amusement. “I didn’t expect you would give me used ones.”
