17. Naera
Naera
She hasn’t looked at me once all day.
Not since I said his name.
Lior.
I wasn’t trying to wound her. I was trying to understand her. To name the shadow curled around her spine like a second skin. But I said too much. Too soon. And now I’m walking three paces behind her like a dog that bit the wrong hand.
There’s no chain between us anymore. Just breath. Footsteps. Silence thick as frost. And fate—that quiet, terrible tether—pulling tighter with every step.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t pause. Just moves. Fast. Mechanical. Like if she stops walking, the whole forest will catch up to her.
I want to remember the woman who chained me. The one who mocks kindness and kills like she’s built for it. The one who threatened to sell me with a smile.
But that version of her doesn’t exist right now.
And I can’t stop watching her.
The trees blur past, silver-barked and heavy with silence. The cold wind claws at my cloak, but I barely feel it.
All I can focus on is the sway of her braid, the tension in her shoulders, the absence of her eyes on me.
“You don’t speak his name,” she’d said.
I want to say I’m sorry.
But sorry is too small. Sorry won’t unbreak her. Sorry won’t bring him back.
Besides, she doesn’t want sorry. She wants distance. She wants silence. She wants to bleed for something she can control.
The cuffs still hold my wrists together as I walk. The ache in my feet spreads up through my legs, dull and hollow. Everything feels heavier now. Not just the air—but the weight of her not speaking to me.
I saw her die in a dream. And now, I think I’m watching her grieve.
I shouldn’t have said it. But I don’t regret knowing.
I think if she ever said his name aloud, it would sound like a prayer. Or a curse. Maybe both. She loved someone once. And it didn’t save him. So now she carries knives.
A root catches my boot. I stumble, catch myself. Look up.
Still no glance. No flicker. No shift.
Just her back. Her braid. Her breath fogging in the cold.
I wish she would shout at me. Spit venom. Snarl. Threaten. Bite. Anything.
Instead, she gives me nothing.
And somehow… that’s worse.
***
We stop earlier than usual.
Long before the sun rises.
Long before Selis would normally call it.
The cold’s gotten worse. It settles in the marrow, makes my teeth ache, my breath tight. My fingers are too stiff to feel the cuff on my wrist. Even Selis, who never seems to feel anything, pulls her cloak tighter. Her jaw is locked. Her mouth a sharp, cold line.
Without a word, she lights a fire.
Our first fire.
No ceremony. No curse. Just flint, steel, motion. Sparks catch. Flame rises. Quiet and orange in the dark.
She doesn’t look at me while she does it. Doesn’t say don’t read into this . Doesn’t need to. She builds it like she builds everything else—fast, efficient.
I curl in beside it, knees drawn up, trying to pull the heat into my bones. My hands shake. My breath fogs. I can't tell if it’s the cold or the weight of her silence anymore.
She sits across from me, her back to a slab of stone, sharpening one of her knives with long, deliberate strokes. Sparks jump from the edge with every pass. It’s the only sound between us. Steel against whetstone. Like she’s trying to grind something out of herself.
We haven’t spoken since earlier.
Since I said his name.
The flames flicker between us, catching gold on her braid, shadow on her cheekbones. I wonder if the warmth reaches her at all. She sits too far back. Like she doesn’t trust the fire not to burn her.
Say something.
Anything.
But I wait too long.
I’m always too slow with her.
“Earlier,” I say, my voice a thread of breath. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry. ”
The scraping stops. The blade stills in her lap. But she doesn’t look up.
“Didn’t ask for an apology,” she mutters, flipping the knife in her palm. “Doesn’t change anything.”
“I know,” I whisper. “That’s why it’s an apology. Not a bargain.”
That gets her.
Not much. But enough.
She lifts her eyes—just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see it.
Not anger. Not quite.
There’s something burning in her gaze. A heat that isn’t rage. A grief that’s been lit and relit so many times, it doesn’t know how to be anything else.
The knife turns again. The scraping resumes.
But it sounds different now. Slower. Less like war.
“You only said it because you think your gods put me in front of you,” she says. “Because you believe all your pretty little dreams mean something.”
Her voice cuts through the firelight—not cruel, not mocking. More like accusation wrapped in exhaustion.
“You think you saved me,” she continues, “because Selene or whoever stitched a thread between us.”
She drops the knife onto her lap. The blade catches the light—red, gold, a flicker like it remembers blood.
I meet her gaze and hold it.
“That’s not the only reason,” I say.
That stops her.
Completely.
Her brow draws, not into anger—into confusion. Like she expected me to lie. Or retreat .
“Then why?” she asks, voice rough.
And I don’t hesitate. Not this time.
“Because I didn’t want you to die.”
She flinches. Just the smallest flicker, but I see it. Like the words touched something raw, something she’s hidden beneath steel and scars and silence. She picks up the knife again and starts sharpening it too hard, like it’s safer than my words.
“I’m your captor, Naera.”
“I know.”
“I chained you. Dragged you through snow. Called you pathetic. I’m delivering you back to the ones who raised you in a cage.”
“I know.”
She glares at the fire now. Like it betrayed her by listening.
“So why,” she snaps, “do you keep looking at me like I’m something worth saving?”
My throat tightens. Not because I don’t know the answer, but because I do. Because it’s always been there, underneath every step, every glance, every time I watched her bleed.
I swallow hard, and let the truth come out soft...
“Because I’ve spent my life praying to a goddess I’ve never seen,” I whisper. “And then I saw you .”
I exhale slowly, like saying it takes something out of me.
“You didn’t feel like mercy. You felt like a reckoning.”
The word lands between us, weighty and unflinching.
“Like everything I’d ever asked for arrived in the wrong form. Teeth instead of wings. Fire instead of light.”
She flinches—barely. But it’s there.
I look down at my hands, still faintly lit—soft at the edges, as if the glow itself hesitates .
“And I think,” I continue, softer now, “I was meant to see you like this. Not as salvation necessarily. But as the sharpest thing Selene ever put in my path.”
My voice barely carries. The words taste like confession.
The silence that follows stretches, lingers, waits. And then—quietly, like she doesn’t want to ask but can’t stop herself:
“So you still think I was sent to save you?”
I meet her eyes.
“No,” I whisper.
And then the truth slides out like breath.
“I think I was sent to save you .”