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 east. Dawn was still distant, but the dark was thinning, losing its confidence.

It was then she noticed the scars.

Not the obvious ones—those were easy, almost expected. The pale slash across his jaw. The ridged line disappearing beneath his collar. Those spoke of battles fought openly, steel meeting steel. Men survived those kinds of wounds and learned to wear them like proof.

But it was the others that caught her breath.

The burn along his forearm, uneven and deliberate, not from fire but from something held too long against the skin. The puncture marks at his shoulder, spaced wrong for any blade she knew. The faint lattice of healed cuts crossing his ribs when he shifted, layered, patient—marks left by someone who had time, and took it.

These were not the scars of a man who fled.

They were the scars of a man who endured.

And then returned.

Anise’s gaze followed the way his attention never strayed from the forest. Not fear. Calculation. He wasn’t listening for pursuit—he was listening for patterns. For movement that didn’t belong. For a mistake.

The realization crept through her slowly, unwelcome and undeniable.

He wasn’t running from the hunters.

He was tracking something else.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of her cloak. “They’re not the worst thing out there, are they?” she asked softly.

Thygon’s eyes shifted to her, sharp and measuring. For a heartbeat, she thought he might deny it. Lie, even gently.

Instead, he looked back to the trees.

“No,” he said. “They’re a symptom.”

A chill slid down her spine. “Of what?”

“Of fear,” he replied. “And greed. Same as always.”

That wasn’t an answer, not really—but it was enough to confirm what she already felt settling in her bones. Whatever had carved those scars into him, whatever had taught him to move with such controlled violence, was still unfinished business.

And he was not done with it.

“You could have gone another way,” she said. “Left me somewhere safer.”

“There is no safer,” he said. “Only quieter.”

Anise studied him anew, not as a rescuer or a threat, but as a man pulled forward by something heavier than survival. Purpose had its own gravity. She recognized it because she carried it too, hidden beneath her ribs in the shape of a signet that refused to let her disappear.

“So,” she murmured, “we’re both being followed.”

His mouth curved—not a smile, but something close to grim recognition. “Yes.”

“Difference is,” she said, meeting his gaze, “you’re hoping they catch up.”

Thygon looked at her for a long moment. Then he inclined his head, just slightly.

“Not catch up,” he corrected. “Make a mistake.”

The forest shifted again, a branch snapping somewhere too far away to see, but close enough to feel.

Anise exhaled slowly.

For the first time since the chase began, she understood something clearly: she had not stumbled into the path of a hunted man.

She had fallen in beside a hunter who had already chosen his ground.

And whatever he was waiting for, it was closer than dawn.