14. Selis
Selis
I wake to silence.
Something’s wrong. I feel it before I see it—tight in my chest, crawling under my skin like frostbite.
The chain lies beside me in the dirt, limp and gleaming in the dying sunlight. The cuffs are open. The lock glints mockingly, tossed a few feet away.
She’s gone.
I sit up fast, breath catching sharp in my throat. My hand flies to my cloak—finds nothing. The key’s missing. No, not missing. Dropped beside the bedroll, as if to taunt me.
Clever little thief.
"Damn it."
I’m on my feet before I’m done swearing. My blade is in my hand, not even sheathed. My pack, forgotten. My blood’s already running hot.
Her prints are clear. Fresh. She didn’t even try to hide them.
She ran .
Actually ran.
Like a fool.
Like I wouldn’t come for her.
The sun’s up, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. Forest-born are rare in the daylight, but not impossible. And worse than them—other mercenaries... The kind that don’t care about rules or clean contracts. The kind that take their payment in blood first.
That thought twists in my gut. Not just nerves. Not just worry. Something deeper. A hollow pull low in my stomach—like the world has tipped and I’m the only one who feels it.
It’s same feeling I had when I smelled the smoke. Before I even reached the house. Before I saw the ruin of it. Before Lior died.
Fuck.
I move without thinking. Fast. My body cuts through the woods like it’s been waiting to do this, like something old and hungry just woke up in my spine. Because someone else might get to her before I do. And the idea— the image —of some bastard with dirty hands touching her glowing skin—
I see red.
Branches lash at my face, thorned vines tear at my cloak. I don’t feel it. Don’t care.
Fifteen minutes. That’s all the lead she had, judging by the depth of her prints and how erratic they are. She was scared. She ran fast. Not smart. Better for me though.
I hear it then.
The scuffle.
A man’s voice, low and smug. The kind of voice that’s never meant anything good.
Then—
A cry.
Her cry.
Terror-laced and sharp enough to slice through bone.
And I don’t think .
I run.
Because someone else touched what’s mine, and I’m going to paint the trees with their regret .
The clearing breaks open in front of me like a wound. Snow churned up. Trees scarred with the drag of boots.
And there—
He’s got her pinned in the snow, blade already drawn, his weight pressing her down like he owns her. Like she’s his prize.
His smile is the kind that’s never known remorse, never needed to.
Well.
I’ll teach him.
Naera’s beneath him—on her belly, wrists caught, face pressed into the ice. She’s trying to fight. I can see it in the tension of her limbs, the way her body strains to twist free. But she’s weak. Hungry. Still too bound by the leash of that sacred cult that never taught her how to survive.
She doesn’t scream again, but her eyes are wide and wet and full of terror, and that—
That does something to me . It shatters something. Something I didn’t know I had left to break.
Then he reaches for his belt. Fumbling, eager. And I know what he means to do.
Rage isn’t a big enough word for what moves through me. It’s not rage. It’s devastation sharpened into teeth .
I hit him like a storm.
Grab him by the collar, rip him off her like tearing rot from a wound. His surprise is brief—just a flash of confusion before my blade drives clean through his side , right beneath the ribs.
His breath leaves him in a wet, choking wheeze.
He stumbles.
Drops her.
Tries to turn.
I don’t let him. I rip the knife free and stab again .
Once for his hand on her.
Again—for the grin on his face.
Again—just because I can’t stand the sound of her panicked breath.
Again, because I can .
Again, and again, and again.
He crumples at my feet, spasming once, then going still. The snow around him stains red fast, soaking into the white like ink into parchment.
I stare down at him. My chest is heaving, and my fist still clenched so tight on the knife that my knuckles ache.
He’s dead.
But it's still not enough.
Not nearly enough.
My breath saws in and out of me, ragged and raw, louder than the silence swallowing the woods. My blade drips. My hands are soaked. My pulse won’t slow.
That’s when I really look at him.
Scar down the cheek. Crooked teeth. Light leathers, wrong boots for this terrain.
I know him. Guild-adjacent. One of the hanger-ons who thought brushing shoulders with killers made him one.
Lowlife. Cocky. Always talked too loud during contract debriefs, laughed like he thought he was already dangerous.
Weston? Wylie? Something with a W.
Doesn’t matter.
He isn’t worth remembering.
I spit on him. “Should’ve stayed in town, asshole.”
Naera’s crumpled against the snow behind him, trembling. Her arms hug her ribs too tightly. Her eyes—gods, her eyes are wide and shell-shocked, like she’s seeing right through me. Her lips part, like she wants to say something but forgot how .
I’m already moving. Kneeling beside her, blade forgotten, instinct louder than thought. “Are you—”
My voice snags in my throat. Comes out wrong . Too human. Too concerned .
I reach out and touch her shoulder, half-expecting her to flinch. To recoil. But she doesn’t. She leans into it.
“Did he hurt you?”
Then I see it—the bruise blooming high on her cheekbone. Ugly. Dark. Shaped like the back of a hand. My stomach twists.
I grip her chin, gentle but firm, turning her face toward me. I scan the rest of her: neck, wrists, arms. She’s scraped up. Shaking. Too pale. But she’s whole .
From what I can tell, anyway.
She still hasn’t said a word.
“Naera?” I ask. Low. Almost careful.
No response.
She doesn’t just look at me. She searches me, her pale blue eyes darting between mine. Like she thinks I might vanish if she blinks. Like I’m something she dreamed into being too many times to trust I’m real now.
Then—without warning—she throws herself into me.
I freeze.
She’s soft and shaking and real against me. Her hands fist in my cloak, her face buries in my shoulder. And me? I sit there. Motionless.
Because no one has done this. Not in years. Not since—
Lior.
And even he… he wasn’t this small. This warm. This fragile .
My arms move on instinct. Around her. Tentative at first. Then tighter.
I hold her .
Just hold.
Her breath hitches like it’s breaking her ribs from the inside. Like the weight of what almost happened is just now crashing through her. Still nothing from her lips.
Until—
“That’s the first time you said my name...”
The words are so soft I nearly miss them, yet there’s something sharp about them in the little space between us.
My chest goes still. I hadn’t realized. I hadn’t let myself realize.
“Is it?” I ask, my voice rough, quieter than it should be.
She nods, the movement barely there.
And for once, I don’t have a clever reply. No bite. No smirk.
Just her name, still burning on my tongue.
We just sit there. Her pressed close, me still clutching the knife in one hand like I’m waiting for more monsters to crawl out of the trees.
And somewhere between the frost curling through the air and the fire still roaring under my skin, I know… in that moment, I would’ve killed ten more men for her.
A hundred more.
And I wouldn’t have blinked.