They didn’t talk about the fire.
Not about the bodies they left behind. Not about the blood still drying beneath Orla’s nails.
Instead, they walked. For miles. Through the cold, through the wind, through the weight of things they hadn’t said.
Jakob hadn’t spoken in hours. He held Orla’s hand too tightly for a child, but she let him. Maybe she needed him to need her. Maybe that’s how she stayed sane.
Stanley walked a few steps behind them, his steps uneven, his shirt stained with blood from a gash on his side that he’d refused to let Sasha stitch.
Orla didn’t speak to him. Not after what he’d done to Roth. Not after the way he’d looked at her in the aftermath — like she was his, no matter what it cost.
They reached an abandoned hunting lodge buried in the woods, half-collapsed and for
