“It’s a better way to look at things. Improves your chances for survival.”
“Fear can addle even the sharpest of minds,” she said.
Zarrek gave a single, firm nod—as if committing her words to memory, even if he didn’t share her calm. “Still,” he said, voice low, “Resh will hear of this.”
Auryn’s gaze dropped to the mud-stained hem of her cloak. She said nothing, but in the back of her mind, the echo of her own voice lingered—something foreign, something vast—like a distant chord that refused to fade.
Firelight made a loose ring at the heart of camp, faces half-lit and thoughtful, bowls balanced on knees, spoons idling. Somewhere beyond, Blades ran slow forms in the muck, boots thudding in a rhythm too patient to be war.
Resh sat with his back to a tent pole, armor black as wet stone. The heat from the coals had painted a ruddy sheen along his gauntlets. He’d placed Auryn between himself and the fire, close enough to its warmth that the color crept back into her cheeks. Zarrek sprawled opposite, one knee up, one hand always near the knife he pretended not to favor when he was off duty.
Auryn had eaten as he asked—slowly, steadily—and she’d fetched laughter like a shy ember when Talia wandered past to tease them all. Now she watched the flames as if listening to them speak. The braid Thessia had woven lay over her shoulder like a mark of quiet victory, oil-sheen catching firelight each time she breathed.
She turned her head at last, the movement small. “Today,” she said, tone mild as if she were asking after the weather, “the Riftwardens called me a word I didn’t know.” She spoke it then—soft, careful, the old tongue sitting oddly in her mouth. “What does it mean?”
Thewordhung in the firelit circle like a coal flung from the pit—heavy, searing, impossible to ignore.
Zarrek went still, his every line taut as a drawn bowstring. His hand clawed into the dirt, grounding himself before instinct carried him to violence. “One of them said that to you?” The question was a threat, sharp-edged.
Resh’s gaze cut sideways, cold as steel. “One of them?”
Zarrek lifted his head, scar catching firelight. “A Warden. At the eastern Anchor. He laid hands on her, probably left a nasty bruise on her arm.”
The world seemed to stop.
The flames bent. The coals hissed. The iron pot on the grate rattled, though no one touched it. A shudder of power moved through the circle as if the night itself had inhaled.
Resh did not rise. Not yet. He sat with his back to the pole, helm at his feet, hands loose in his lap—yet the air around himwarped. Every soldier present tasted iron in the back of their throats, the sense that something ancient had unsheathed itself inside him. The fire leaned toward him as though compelled.
Talia’s spoon slipped into the mud. No one moved to pick it up.
Resh placed his cup aside. Slowly. Carefully. A man containing earthquakes. “Which one?”
“Dark-haired. Green-eyed,” Zarrek said. “And he wasn’t alone.”
The pole behind Resh cracked—splintered straight through as though gripped by invisible hands. No one mistook it for an accident. Sparks hissed from the fire.
Auryn flinched at the sound.
Resh’s eyes left the flames and found her. He was a storm looking for somewhere to break. He had expected tears, rage, despair. Instead he found her watching him with that clear, steady light that was not defiance but something harder: truth.
“It’s not a word you’ll ever hear again,” he said, voice low, unshaken, more terrifying than a shout. “It is meant to erase. To strip. To pretend what threatens them does not exist. They will not speak it again.”
Zarrek snarled agreement. “It means they’d sooner see you as ash under their boots than woman before them.” His voice cracked like he wanted blood.
Auryn studied the coals collapsing, the embers glowing stubbornly at their core. She lifted her head, silver eyes catching the fire. “I am myself. A single word cannot take that from me.”
Silence. Deep. Listening.
Zarrek leaned back, hands up, a bitter grin dragging his scar. “Void take me. Of course that’s what you’d say.”
Something shifted in Resh’s chest—like the ancient thing inside him sheathed its sword, waiting. Her steadiness held him where fury could not. He rose in one clean motion, and every soldier present straightened with him, as if the storm might break any direction.
“Enough,” he said. The word rolled through the camp like command, like judgment, like a promise.
The silence around the fire did not hold. It cracked like ice under weight.
Resh’s gauntleted hands flexed once. The storm had not stopped raging inside him, only found a direction to walk. “Zarrek,” he said without turning his head. “Bring them here.”
