Page 52 of Property of Prophet

The clearing is empty.

Bear exhales against my leg, long and deliberate. He shakes his head, ears flapping, and sits in the decisive way he has when he’s made an assessment and considers it closed.

I set the rifle against the wall and look at Prophet.

He’s still facing the window. In profile, his face shows nothing I can quickly read. The lines around his eyes, the silver at his temples, the particular quality of stillness he carries when something has landed and he is deciding what to do with it, so I give him a moment.

“Is it true?” I ask.

“Yes.” No hesitation. Not a beat of space for it.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

He turns from the window to meet my eyes.

“You saved someone, a woman?”

“I broke the rules.” His voice is level, the voice of a man stating the facts without softening them.

“You saved someone. Did she mean something to you?”

He looks at me. Something in his face moves—the expression of a man hearing a thing and not yet knowing where to put it.

“Not in the way you’re thinking. It was the right thing to do. My friend, my brother, Vex, would not have survived losing her, and the MC would have been worse off without him.”

“You saved someone, Prophet. Stop saying you broke the rules like that’s the most important thing you did.”

“Lily—”

“No. He stood out there telling you everything you lost. Your wings, your grace, Heaven, your immortality. It was a very comprehensive list.” I point toward the empty clearing. “Funny how he barely mentioned the woman who got to keep breathing because of you.”

Prophet says nothing.

“You saved her.”

“Yeah,” he says eventually.

“Say it properly.”

His eyes meet mine. “I saved her.”

“There you go.”

Bear stands from the floor and moves to Prophet’s leg. The solid, committed weight of a dog who made his assessment months ago and intends to keep it. Prophet puts a hand in his fur without looking down. That gesture has been his for a long time now.

We stand there for a moment. The stove at our backs, and the empty clearing out the window. Everything Calix said still is settling into the room the way cold settles, finding the corners.

Then I cross to the stove, open the door, and add two rounds from the stack beside it. The wood catches, then heat resumes its slow work of reclaiming space.

“They’ll come back,” I say.

“Yes.” Prophet turns from the window. “Tonight, most likely. Or tomorrow. Calix can’t keep them here indefinitely. He’s deteriorating faster than he’s admitted to them. The timeline is short.”

“How short?”

“Days. Maybe less.”