Chapter 5 River
RIVER
I’m not supposed to be noticing the way he moves.
But I do.
Every damn time he steps over a root or pushes aside a branch, I catch myself watching. He’s too big to be quiet, but he is. Somehow. A troll that walks like he doesn’t want to disturb the world around him—hell, even the birds come back when he passes.
It’s unsettling. The quiet. The soft shuffle of leaves underfoot.
The long stretches of nothing but breath and mist and the wet whisper of mossy trees bowing overhead like they’re trying to listen in.
I focus on the trail ahead, mind ticking like a metronome.
One step. Then another. Don’t look back. Don’t feel.
Don’t want.
“You’re makin’ that face again,” he says behind me, voice low and rumbly like distant thunder.
I don’t turn. “What face?”
“The one like you swallowed a porcupine and it’s clawin’ its way back out.”
I snort, despite myself. “I’m walking through an ancient, possibly haunted, mist-drenched forest with a troll who wants to play tour guide. Forgive me for not smiling.”
“You’d look prettier if you did.”
I stop cold. “You want to keep your tusks, don’t you?”
His chuckle is warm and lazy, like he knows I’m bluffing. “There she is.”
“There who is?”
“The spitfire under all that soldier bullshit.”
I whip around to face him. “You think this is an act?”
He shrugs, one huge shoulder rolling beneath leather straps and shaggy fur. “I think you talk like someone who got real good at pushing people away before they could hurt you.”
My stomach twists, and not because I’m hungry. “I talk like someone who survived.”
His molten gaze holds mine. For a breath, maybe two. The air between us crackles—hot and sharp. Then I turn away and start walking again, faster this time. Stupid troll. Stupid feelings. Stupid flutter in my chest like a damn bird caught in a net.
The mist thickens as we push higher into the hills. The trail narrows, overgrown and slick. I slip once, catch myself on a twisted branch, and hiss through my teeth. Kragna’s there in a second, close enough to feel the heat rolling off his skin.
“You alright?” he asks, voice soft in a way I don’t expect.
“Fine.” I yank my arm away before he can touch me. “Don’t go getting all nursemaid on me.”
He steps back with hands raised. “Didn’t mean to offend, soldier girl.”
“It’s River.”
“Right.” He says it like a prayer, slow and deliberate. “River.”
I wish he wouldn’t say my name like that. Like it tastes good in his mouth.
We walk in silence again, though this time it’s loaded. Not awkward, exactly. More like… charged. Like the air before lightning hits. I feel his eyes on me sometimes. Watching. Not leering, not like most men I’ve known. Just… observing. Measuring. Like he’s trying to figure me out piece by piece.
Finally, I break. “What?”
He doesn’t pretend not to know what I mean. “You fascinate me.”
My boots crunch dead pine needles. “I’m not here to be fascinating.”
“Too late.”
I rub a hand over my face, suddenly exhausted. “You’re relentless.”
“I’m a troll. We don’t give up. Especially on things that matter.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Not yet,” he says. “But I’m tryin’ to.”
We stop for a break in a clearing wrapped in low fog and shadow.
I sit on a fallen log, stretch my legs, and sip from the canteen.
The water’s stale, metallic. Still better than nothing.
Kragna crouches nearby, rummaging through his pack and producing some dried meat.
He tosses me a strip without a word. I take it, and chew.
It’s salty and gamy and tastes faintly of smoke and something vaguely sweet—maybe crabapple.
He watches me eat, and I know he’s thinking something, so I give him a look.
“What?” I ask through a mouthful.
“Just wonderin’ how long it’ll take before you stop lookin’ like you’re gonna bolt.”
“Depends. How long until you give me a reason to?”
His smile’s slow and rueful. “Fair.”
We eat in silence. The fog curls around us, thick as wool, pressing in like it wants to be part of the conversation. I glance at him. His eyes are on the trees, distant. Thoughtful.
“You ever eat a person?” I ask, because subtlety’s never been my strong suit.
He doesn’t flinch. “Yeah.”
That catches me off guard. “Just… yeah?”
“I’m not gonna lie to you.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
He meets my eyes again. “Not anymore.”
It’s honest. That’s what shakes me. He’s not trying to scare me. Not trying to seduce me, or manipulate me. He’s just saying it plain. And that somehow makes it worse. Makes it real.
“I should be terrified of you,” I mutter.
“You are.”
He says it with no malice, no arrogance. Just fact.
“And yet here we are,” I say.
“Yet here we are,” he echoes, nodding.
I pull my knees up and rest my chin on them, the cold damp of the log seeping through my pants. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why help me?”
He exhales through his nose, looking older for a moment. Sadder. “Because you were drowning. Because you looked at me like I was a monster, but you didn’t scream. Because you’re still here, and that means something.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I got.”
I shake my head and mutter, “You’re gonna break me.”
“No,” he says, voice rough. “I’m gonna hold the pieces.”
I hate the way my throat tightens. The way my eyes burn. I don’t cry. Not anymore. Not since the auction. Not since the chains.
“Don’t say things like that,” I whisper.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll believe you.”
I stare at him, and he stares right back.
There’s something happening here. Something I don’t have a name for. His eyes—those molten, impossibly bright eyes—burn into me, not with hunger, but with something quieter. Deeper. It’s not lust, exactly. Or maybe it is, but not the gross, leering kind I know too well. This is... different.
He leans in slightly, and I swear my breath stops in my chest.
Is he going to kiss me?
Why the hell would I even wonder that?
My lips part without permission, some reckless part of me whispering maybe, just maybe—but then—
CRUNCH.
A sick, wet dragging sound slices through the air like a cleaver through sinew. Kragna’s head snaps toward the trees. My hand’s already on my rifle, fingers tight around the grip. We freeze, side by side, breath caught, hearts pounding.
The fog parts—and out lumbers the stuff of nightmares.
She’s bigger than a wagon and just as wide.
Six heads, all lemurian and serpentine, jerk and bob on long, scaly necks, each one hissing, snorting, muttering to itself in some ancient tongue.
Her hide is a patchwork of scale and fur, the color of old bruises.
Between her claws drags a moose-like carcass, limp and bloody, antlers shattered, belly torn open like a burst wineskin.
I raise the barrel out of instinct, but Kragna’s hand is suddenly on mine, firm but gentle, pushing it down.
“She won’t hurt us,” he says low, without taking his eyes off the beast. “She’s… a friend.”
My mouth opens. Shuts. I’ve got a million questions, but I can’t seem to make my tongue work.
The creature—Hydra? Harriet?—shuffles past, one of her heads eyeing me with a sort of feline boredom. Another head burps, loudly. A third sneezes. The others just mutter and hiss among themselves like they’re having a six-way argument and nobody’s winning.
She lumbers off into the gloom with her kill, the dragging sound fading into the mist.
I blow out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “You have weird friends.”
“You should see my neighbors.”
“I feel like I just did.”
He grins, wide and boyish, and I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve never seen something so monstrous look so... gentle.
We walk again, the silence now humming with unspoken things. My chest still aches from the adrenaline crash, my head spinning with too many thoughts I don’t want to unpack. But the forest doesn’t care. It keeps on being what it is—vast, damp, secretive.
The trail narrows near the ravine. Trees grow denser, curling over like skeletal fingers clawing at the light. We step through a break in the underbrush and my boot hits something.
It clinks.
I look down.
A shell casing. Cold iron. One of ours.
I freeze.
Kragna notices and slows, watching me. I crouch, pick it up with shaking fingers. It’s scorched. Still smells faintly of magic and sulfur. The kind of shot that only leaves a barrel when shit’s already gone to hell.
I scan the forest floor. Bits of gear are half-buried in the loam—shredded cloth, a shattered scope, a broken belt buckle. Someone’s knife, snapped in half. Blood stains on stone, turned brown with age.
This is where it happened.
Where we were ambushed. Where they died.
I feel it like a blow to the chest. The past cracks open like a fault line under my feet, and the memories come rushing up, fast and hot and ugly.
They screamed. I remember that. The way their voices got choked out mid-word. The wet slap of flesh against stone. The crunch of bones. The laughter—deep, cruel, unhurried. The taste of copper in my mouth as I bit back panic. The burn in my lungs as I ran. Jumped. Fell.
The river.
The cold.
And then nothing.
I sway where I stand.
Kragna steps close. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay or try to touch me again. He just rests one massive hand on my shoulder—warm, grounding, real.
That one quiet gesture means more than all the pretty speeches I’ve heard in my life.
I breathe, shaky and shallow. Nod once. And we move on.
Neither of us speaks for a while. The path bends near the ravine’s edge, where the cliffs open into a yawning drop, jagged and moss-slicked.
I glance over the side. Water churns far below, frothing and loud even through the fog.
I remember the jump. The impossible leap.
How the air screamed in my ears as gravity yanked me down, how the world shrank to nothing but fear and freefall.
“I almost died here,” I say, mostly to myself.
“But you didn’t.”
His voice is low, steady. He doesn’t sound surprised.