CHAPTER 12-"Nightfall. Alone."
763 Words
Nightfall was eight hours away. I counted. Three times. It was still eight.
The pack moved around me. Not around like they hated me. Around like I’d become a stone in a stream. I wasn’t the disgrace anymore. I wasn’t anything they had a name for. That empty space was louder than words.
The carved stone was in my palm. I hadn’t put it down since dawn. The lines were smooth under my thumb. Old work. Someone’s hands made this a long time ago, slow and careful. Two circles. One dark. One empty.
Bread sat outside the healer’s hall. I didn’t eat. My stomach knew something was coming at nightfall and shut itself.
Mira was still under the tree. Asleep. The little stone from the grass still in her hand. I checked her three times. Breathing. Here. Real.
In my head I kept a list. What I knew about him. What I didn’t. The second list was longer.
Eight hours. And the day wouldn’t move.
Caius’s tent smelled like ink.
The map was open. Nine red stones. The rogues who started it. And one black stone at the treeline. Where he stood at dawn.
He moved the stones with his fingers. Placed them. Lifted them. Like if he touched them enough they’d make sense.
The black one didn’t sit with the others. It sat outside. Watching.
He slid me a file. Three years old. Same mark on a border stone in the east. He’d been tracking it before I ever came up from under the ground.
I put my stone on the map. Right over the black mark. The circles lined up.
A name and a warning. Same stone.
I left it there and walked out.
She opened her eyes when the sun was high.
First she looked up. At the sky. Like she had to make sure it was real. Then at her hands. She opened her fist slow. The stone was still there.
She stood. Her legs shook. A hundred years underground doesn’t teach you how to stand. She held the tree until she could.
Then she walked. No path. Just forward. Bare feet in the grass. She found water near the hall and knelt. Put both hands in. Cold. She watched the ripples for a long time.
I didn’t go to her.
She was small. Not endless like the Shadow Queen was. Just a woman. My aunt. She had my mother’s nose.
She spent a century drawing flowers because they didn’t matter. Now she had sun. Water. Grass. All the things that didn’t matter.
She looked at me. Held up her wet hands. Water dripped.
I nodded.
He stayed all day.
He didn’t speak. He was at the tent flap. At the edge of the clearing. Two steps behind when I moved.
His shoulders were tight. Like something wound too far. Hour eleven was still in him.
He watched the trees. I watched him.
He set food down once. I didn’t eat it. He didn’t ask. He went back to the edge.
His hands weren’t shaking. That was worse. Stillness meant he’d made a decision and wasn’t telling me.
He knew what “alone” meant at nightfall. He didn’t fight me on it. He just stayed in the space I gave him.
That was harder.
He came to me near the tree. Late afternoon.
He didn’t sit. He stood close enough that I could smell pine and sweat.
His hands were still. They’d been shaking for eighteen years. Since the night Kael went in. Now they weren’t.
He said my name. Once.
I didn’t answer.
He looked at the stone. At Mira. At Darius.
I stepped in. Forehead to his shoulder. Three seconds. His shirt was rough. He didn’t hold me. He let me.
Then I stepped back.
He nodded.
That was it. Not a yes. Not a no. Just room to choose.
The sun went.
Grey. Then dark.
I walked to the trees alone. Left them at the grass. They didn’t come.
The stone was cold in my palm.
The air changed at the treeline. Pine. Metal. Something old I didn’t know but my body did.
He was there. Fifty feet in.
Dark coat. Scar on his jaw. Amber eyes.
He didn’t speak.
I stopped where the grass ended. Close enough to see. Not close enough to be reached.
I held up the stone.
He looked at it. Then at me.
The night was here now. Pack behind me. Dark in front.
One circle dark. One empty.
I stepped into the pine needles.
He didn’t step back.
Cut.
- Writer
