The creek’s chill barely registered. His body was a tool, calibrated for endurance, and cold was just another variable in the equation. But the other thing—the pull at his focus, the persistent, unwanted awareness of the woman stepping carefully behind him—that was a variable he had not accounted for. It was a weakness. A point …
The silence left behind was not silence at all. It was a held breath. The forest had taken something in, and now refused to give it back. Anise found she could hear everything—the scrape of Thygon’s boot in the dirt, the frantic drum of her own heart, the minute cracks in the night as the …
The silence that followed Thygon’s words was worse than any sound that had preceded it. It was not empty. It was crowded—with tension, with decision, with the unspoken thing already understood between them. The shape in the trees did not turn. It didn’t need to. Anise could feel its attention split like a river around …
The sound came again—deliberate this time. Not the careless crack of night-creatures or the settling of cold wood, but a pause, a pressure, as though the forest itself were holding its breath and then letting it go wrong. Thygon rose. He did it without haste, the way men do when they have already rehearsed the …
The fire shrank to embers, and with it the night seemed to draw closer, pressing in on the hollow until even her breath felt loud. Anise opened her eyes. Thygon hadn't moved. He sat as he had before, one knee bent, forearms resting loosely, his silhouette carved cleanly against the dim gray creeping in from …
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 …
The snow burned her lungs, each gasp a hot sting against the cold. Her legs ached, her arms trembled, but she didn't dare slow. Behind her, the growl of the dogs grew closer, and the pounding of boots—hunters, relentless and precise—made her chest hammer in panic. She clutched the signet tighter, her fingers digging into …
Sleep never came, but stillness did. Anise let her eyes close halfway, enough to dull the ache behind them, enough to pretend her body wasn't unraveling thread by thread. The stone at her back was cold, seeping through her clothes, but she welcomed it. Pain anchored her. It reminded her she was still moving forward, …
Anise followed him into the trees, her senses stretched thin as wire. The forest changed the moment she stepped where he stepped—snow no longer cracking beneath her boots, branches no longer clawing at her cloak. He moved as if the world parted for him, and somehow, impossibly, she began to move the same way. Each …
The hollow would not hold. Thygon knew it the moment the wind shifted and crept through the trees with that low, testing whisper. Shelters like this were lies the forest told the desperate—good enough for a night, maybe two, but never meant to last. Snow would find its way in. Hunters would, too. Everything left …