You in the Ruins

sage 6

Sage lay curled in the crate, the furs thick and surprisingly soft beneath her, smelling faintly of pine smoke and horsehide. The wooden sides pressed close like a cradle—or a coffin, depending on how her mind turned. She tried to stay still, to breathe slow and even so Ronan would think she’d fallen asleep and leave her alone with her thoughts. But her body wouldn’t listen. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the bear’s foaming jaws, the crunch of bone, the spray of blood across Titan’s flank. She saw the boy she’d once kissed under the apple tree—his face slack in death, eyes staring at nothing. She saw Ronan standing naked in the tub, water streaming down the hard lines of him, saying things that made no sense.

She turned onto her side. The crate creaked.

She turned onto her back. The furs shifted, too warm now.

She rolled again, knees drawn up, and the movement sent a small ripple of sound through the quiet tent.

Ronan hadn’t moved from his spot by the fire. She could feel him there—awake, watchful, the low crackle of embers the only other noise.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Ronan?”

Her voice came out smaller than she wanted, barely above a whisper.

A pause. Then his low rumble: “Thought you were asleep.”

“I can’t.” She swallowed. “I keep… seeing things. Over and over.”

He didn’t answer right away. She heard the soft scrape of him shifting, maybe leaning back against a crate or post.

“Ask,” he said at last. “Whatever’s chewing at you.”

Sage stared up at the canvas ceiling, shadows dancing from the dying fire. Her fingers twisted in the edge of a fur.

“What’s going to happen to me when we get to the city? Really. Not the pretty version you told me earlier. The truth.”

Another long silence. When he spoke, his voice was quieter, almost careful.

“You’ll be taken to the women’s quarters first. Cleaned. Examined. They’ll decide if you’re breeder stock or… something else. If you’re marked for breeding—and you will be, with how you look—they’ll collar you. Light one, maybe leather and brass, not iron. You’ll have a room, not a cell. Food. Guards, but not chains on your ankles every minute. The high men will come look. My father will look. Ivar. Others. They’ll bid, or fight, or bargain. Whoever wins claims you for their bed until you quicken. After that… it depends. Some keep their women close. Some pass them around. Some kill them if they don’t produce fast enough.”

Sage’s throat closed. She pressed her palm to her mouth to keep the sob inside.

“But if I claim you first,” Ronan went on, “before we reach the gates—if I make it known you’re mine—most won’t challenge it. Not openly. My father might still want a taste, might try to override, but he values loyalty more than fresh cunt. If I stand firm, you stay with me. My tent. My protection. No sharing. No public use. You’d help with the horses, the gardens I want to start. Teach what you know about crops and foaling. I’d teach you how to fight, how to read the men around you, how not to get killed.”

She let her hand fall away. “And if I say no? If I never want you?”

“Then you’re back in the lottery. And I can’t stop what happens after that.”

The words hung heavy. Sage closed her eyes, tears leaking sideways into the furs.

“Do you… have a woman already?” The question slipped out before she could catch it. “Someone waiting in the city? Or… family? Besides your father?”

A soft huff—almost a laugh, but tired. “No woman. Never kept one longer than a night or two. Didn’t see the point. They either wanted something—favor, protection, a child to bargain with—or they hated me on sight. Easier alone.”

He shifted again; she heard the creak of leather as he stretched his legs out.

“Family… not much. Father’s still breathing, gods curse him. Mother’s long gone—sickness took her when I was eight. Two half-brothers from other women; one died in a raid when he was sixteen, the other’s off somewhere leading his own crew now. We don’t talk. Don’t need to. Blood doesn’t mean much when everyone’s trying to take your place.”

Sage listened to the low timbre of his voice, steady like distant thunder. She pictured him as a boy—smaller, thinner, watching people die around him, learning early that softness got you killed.

“What was it like?” she asked softly. “Growing up there. In the city.”

He exhaled through his nose. “Cold. Hungry most winters. Summers stank of s**t and smoke. Fights every day—over food, over women, over nothing. My father taught me to hit first and harder. Taught me to watch eyes, not hands. Taught me that trust is a blade turned inward. I learned the rest on my own. How to sleep with one eye open. How to tell when a man’s lying by the way his mouth twitches. How to kill clean so they don’t scream too long and draw more trouble.”

He paused. “There were good things too. Rare. A woman who used to sneak me bread when my father wasn’t looking. An old horse master who let me sleep in the stable when the barracks got too rough. A night the sky was so clear you could see the old lights in the stars—someone said they were cities floating up there once. I believed it for years.”

Sage felt her eyelids grow heavy. The furs were warm, the crate solid around her like armor. His voice wrapped around her, low and even, painting pictures she could almost see.

She pictured him small and fierce, surviving. Not so different from her, in a way—both of them shaped by what they’d lost.

Her breathing slowed.

“Ronan?” she murmured, barely audible now.

“Yeah?”

“I still hate you.”

A quiet beat. “I know.”

“But… thank you. For telling me.”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

The fire popped once, softly.

Sage’s hand relaxed in the fur. Her body grew heavy, limbs loosening one by one. The terror that had kept her tossing ebbed, replaced by something quieter—not safety, not yet, but the absence of immediate harm. His presence across the tent felt like a wall between her and the dark outside.

Her last thought before sleep took her was simple, almost peaceful:

He hadn’t lied to her tonight.

And somehow, that mattered.