The forest thickened as they descended, the pines closing ranks until the sky became nothing more than a jagged ribbon of gray above them. Anise stumbled once, exhaustion finally clawing its way up her spine, and would have fallen if his hand hadn’t shot out to steady her again.

“Easy,” he murmured.

The word did something strange to her—unwound a knot she hadn’t known was tightening. She hated that. Hated how close she was to tears, how much she wanted to lean into the strength he offered without question.

“I can keep going,” she whispered, even as her legs shook.

“I know,” he replied. There was no doubt in his voice. No pity either. Just certainty.

They moved on, slower now, weaving through narrow passes of stone and root where the wind howled louder but the snow lay thinner. Her breath began to come easier. The signet against her chest pulsed once—warm again—and she flinched, glancing down.

You’re imagining it, she told herself. Fear does that.

Still, she tucked it deeper beneath her cloak.

At last, he stopped beneath a rocky overhang half-swallowed by ivy and frost. From a distance it looked like nothing—just another scar in the mountain—but as he brushed aside a curtain of frozen vines, a hollow opened behind it, dark and waiting.

“A moment,” he said.

She hesitated. Every lesson her mother had drilled into her screamed don’t follow strangers into shadows. But the hunters’ voices echoed in her memory, and the blood on the snow that would have followed if she’d been alone.

She stepped inside.

The stone sheltered them from the wind, and the sudden quiet rang in her ears. Her knees buckled the instant she stopped moving. She dropped to the ground with a sharp gasp, hands braced against the cold rock.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, shame flooding her. “I—I didn’t mean to slow you—”

“You didn’t.” He knelt in front of her, close enough now that she could see the faint scars along his jaw, pale against dark skin. Old wounds. Earned ones. “Your body’s done more than it should have tonight.”

She hugged herself, trying to still the tremor running through her bones. “They’ll keep coming. They always do.”

His expression hardened—not with anger, but something colder. Purpose, sharpened to an edge. “Not tonight.”

The certainty in his words struck her harder than the cold ever had.

She looked up at him then, really meeting his gaze. “Why help me?”

The question slipped out before she could stop it.

For a heartbeat, he didn’t answer. His eyes searched her face, then dropped—just briefly—to the place beneath her cloak where the signet lay hidden. Anise sucked in a breath.

“You know about this?” she asked, panic flaring.

“I know what it represents,” he said carefully. “And I know what men are willing to do to claim it.”

Her hand closed instinctively over her chest. “My mother died for it.”

Something shifted in his expression—respect, solemn and heavy. He inclined his head. “Then she was braver than most.”

Silence stretched between them, thick with things unsaid.

Finally, he spoke again. “My name is Thygon.”

The name settled into her, resonating in a place deeper than sound.

“I’m Anise,” she replied.

For the first time since she’d met him, he smiled—not wide, not soft, but real. “Then listen to me, Anise. When you leave this place, the world will be hunting you. Blood, crowns, old wars pretending to be dead.”

Her stomach tightened.

“But you won’t face it alone.”

Outside, the wind howled like a warning. Inside the hollow, Anise drew her knees to her chest and held on to the promise in his words, knowing—deep down—that this was the moment her life fractured into before and after.

And there would be no going back.