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“If you try anything⁠—”

“I won’t.” She almost promised, but thought better. The gods would hold her to it if she did.

His fever pulsed between them, a hot sliver of sun. But he untied her. “No weapons.”

She could have taken them right then. Snatched her knife and driven it to the hilt before he’d even finished looping the rope. Tripped him to the ground and taken his sword, too. If she was going to kill him, now was the time.

Listen, the gods implored. Trust in their path. Because yesterday she had almost died. This morning, she had been tied three ways. And now already, only a half day later, she was running freely through the trees, a blade no larger than a thumb clutched in her fist.

“The eating knife,” she had suggested. “It is too small to scare you.”

“You don’t think I could kill you with an eating knife?”

“You think I need a weapon if I want you dead?”

Eavus had twitched his lip in that way she was already realizing meant he was amused.

“And what if we are attacked?” she had pressed. “Better than nothing while you draw your fancy sword.”

He hadn’t relented, not then, but as he’d gotten woozier, he’d finally handed the eating knife over.

“Just in case,” he’d mumbled, and those were the last words he’d said to her that she could understand.

They were deep in the woods by then, and he had to lean on her for balance. Revni listened for a river—people made their homes near rivers—but which people, and how deep into the forest would they need to go? A soft drizzle had started, and the damp had seeped into her, slowly, without her noticing. It felt like the mist off the ocean, only falling down instead of kicking up, and only added to her feeling that everything was upside down.

Eavus’ weight made the yoke of her shoulders ache. Sweat stung her eyes and hovered above her upper lip. He radiated heat. Sometimes he tried to walk by himself, and then he smacked into low branches and tried to fight them, swinging loose fists. By afternoon, he couldn’t keep his eyes open, and he kept pulling away. He muttered. Revni adjusted his bulk and put a hand to his forehead. It was burning, and despite being actually moist with rain, had a new dryness to it that sent a sucking fear into her gut. Now he was helpless, and in her power, and for reasons she didn’t fully understand, she did not want him to die.

Not yet, at least. He held no value to her if he was dead.

She wasn’t a healer, and even if she was, she didn’t know the plants here, or the gods to pray to. Isfolj gods would listen from afar, she was sure of that—but Isfolj prayers on Faenish soil with no other intervention? Revni wasn’t that religious.

The rain stopped. Perhaps her plan was stupid. Perhaps those eyes in the bushes had been a dream, or another kind of enemy. “Sitting duck” kept repeating itself in her brain, like the chorus of a song. Sitting duck, sitting duck, sitting duck. A breeze sent a rolling wave of tapping off leaves that drowned out anything else. A prayer might be useful, but which god might hear? The forest god was nothing but pine and smallness. Would he even come to Faen? The goddess of protection, better:

Elin, protect me.

But that wasn’t right. Tuyra’s lover fought side by side with her in war. She was her shield, not her savior.

Elin, be my shield.

She felt foolish. Maybe Revni needed to pray to the god of mischief. That’s what this was—mischief, at her expense.

“Sa, Erki.” Revni forced a laugh. “A good joke.” Erki didn’t answer.

She found a creek, followed it to another, dread beginning to follow like the plink of rain on leaves. Leave him thrummed, but if she did, she’d truly have nothing. And that she was resting all her hopes on this beast of a person being worth something to someone only made the panic rise worse. A smudge of mud marred his cheek. She’d been catching it out of the corner of her eye all day, and it was starting to grow maddening. She didn’t like how it made him look human.

She lowered him more carefully than he deserved, propping him against a trunk, but he lolled to the side. She turned to drink from the stream, willing her pulse to slow. She listened for other sounds—footfalls, even the soft tingle of pine needles floating to the forest floor.

Nothing but Eavus’ labored breathing. His skin looked slack. That knot of fear wedged firmly in her throat.

What would anyone want with a corpse?

He gave a soft groan when she moved his body, but didn’t fight her. He smelled vaguely of pork stew. Dangerous. The dirt on his face had dried to a dull umber. A few flakes flickered onto her sleeve when she unbuckled his belt. They left a smear when she brushed them off, and she didn’t like how it mirrored the mark on his cheek.

The belt was heavier than it looked—double-leather, loops and buckles holding his firekit, his waterskin, the well-used rope, an empty coin purse. Her antler-handled knife had been strung through a spare loop, and her thumb found its home on the hilt so naturally—the curves nuzzling her palm, the familiar warmth—that a calm settled in her heart. It was better if she wore the belt—items had been knocking against her while they walked—but re-housing the sword returned that nervous flutter. She’d never worn a sword before. It swept her leg like a pendulum, a promise of future violence. If someone saw her with it, would they assume she robbed him?

Hadn’t she just?

The day had never warmed or lightened, only the same gray shift of time. She got him back up, but his weight seemed heavier, his skin a dull pearl cracked from a dead oyster. The mud on his face reminded her of blood-mud, the way you’d streak a child as a joke. He had been her captor, had punched her, dragged her, strangled her. His friends had murdered her parents and all her people, and if he had his way, she’d end up in Aleterian hands instead of Isfolj. But the blue tint to his lips reminded her too much of other bodies, and it was one thing when it was the heat of battle, shadows in the dark, self-defense or the rage of other screamers at your sides…