Chapter 7 River
RIVER
The pass cuts high into the mountain, a knife wound in the stone.
Frost slicks every rock, and fog wraps around us like wet cloth.
My boots crunch on the ice-crusted trail, every step a gamble, every breath a cloud.
The air stings, sharp enough to slice lungs, and my thighs burn from climbing, but I keep my jaw tight. I won’t ask him to slow down.
He doesn’t stumble. Of course he doesn’t. Kragna moves like the mountain made him, hooves steady even on ice, shoulders broad enough to shoulder the fog aside. He glances back every so often, heavy eyes catching light, and I make sure to glare right back, like I’m fine.
I’m not fine. But pride is armor. It’s saved me more than steel.
“Cold?” he asks at one point, voice low, more rumble than sound.
“No,” I snap, breath puffing white. “I’m peachy.”
His mouth twitches like he’s hiding a grin. That makes me want to shove him right off the cliff.
We climb until the trail narrows, cut so close to the edge that the drop yawns beside us, dark and endless. Fog fills the ravine below, a sea of shifting gray. I keep my eyes forward, hands clenched around my rifle, heartbeat loud in my ears.
Then the river shows itself.
It’s narrow, maybe ten feet across, but half-frozen, jagged slabs of ice floating downstream.
The water beneath surges fast and black, a whisper of thunder under the frost. The only way across is a half-rotten log someone jammed between the banks years ago.
Its surface glistens with rime, slick as glass.
My stomach knots.
Kragna steps onto it first, casual, as if it’s a stone bridge in summer. His hooves don’t even slip. He crosses in three strides, easy as breathing, then turns to wait for me.
I swallow, hard. The river growls under me, dark and hungry. I set one foot on the log. Ice crunches. My rifle weighs heavy across my back, balance already tricky.
“Take your time,” he says.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” My voice shakes more than I want it to.
Another step. The log creaks. The ice shifts below, a grinding sound like teeth. I clench my jaw, move again, breath sharp in my chest.
Halfway across, my boot skids.
The world tilts. The fog, the cliff, the water—all of it spins. My arms pinwheel, a scream tearing from my throat. The river opens below me, black jaws waiting to swallow me whole.
And then he’s there.
Kragna’s hands clamp around my waist, strong and hot even through layers of fabric. He yanks me upright with impossible speed, hauling me against his chest before gravity can claim me. The log groans, ice splinters under us, but he holds steady, unshakable as stone.
For one breathless moment, I’m pressed to him, every muscle tight, his heat bleeding through me. His face is inches from mine, eyes glowing like embers through fog. His breath ghosts across my cheek, warm and rough.
My heart goes wild. Too loud. Too fast.
I forget the cold. Forget the river. There’s only him, the heavy weight of his gaze, his claws gentle where they grip me, careful as if I’m glass.
The moment stretches, fragile and dangerous.
I shove it away.
“Let go,” I mutter, too sharp, too quick. My voice is thin, brittle, but it’s all I have.
He blinks once, then releases me. The warmth of him lingers even as the air rushes back, cold and merciless.
I step off the log fast, almost stumbling onto the bank, pretending like nothing happened. Like the world didn’t stop spinning for a heartbeat. Like I didn’t just almost die—and like being caught didn’t shake me more than the fall would’ve.
He stays on the far side a moment, watching me with that unreadable expression, then follows. His hooves crunch frost. He doesn’t say a word.
Neither do I.
But my skin still burns where he touched me, and no amount of cold air will put that fire out.
The silence after the river crossing is thick. My boots crunch frost and my breath fogs the air, but all I can hear is the echo of his hands on my waist, the way the world narrowed down to nothing but heat and heartbeat. I don’t want to think about it. I can’t.
That’s when the air shudders with a snap of webbing, and Charen drops down from the fog above like a bad dream made flesh. Her little spider body skitters on the ice-crusted ground, her human-shaped face grinning too wide.
“Well, if it isn’t the happy couple,” she sings, voice sharp as broken glass. “Thought I’d check in before you two start rutting on the trail. You’re welcome.”
“Go away,” I snap, fingers twitching toward my rifle.
Charen cackles, silk threads still clinging to her as she shakes herself. “Can’t. Got news. Scouts. Dark elves, maybe twenty of ’em, combing the ridge two gullies over. Heading this way.”
My blood goes hot, then cold. I see my squad again—blood, bone, screaming cut short. Ogres laughing. Boots smashing into dirt that never gave their lives back.
I force the words out. “Which house?”
She shrugs, casual. “Didn’t stop to ask, darling. But they’re armed to the teeth, hungry for trouble. Thought you’d want to know before they painted this mountain with your guts.”
Kragna steps forward, looming, his voice deep. “We detour. Give ’em wide ground. No sense stirrin’ a nest we don’t need to.”
“No.” The word cuts out of me like a knife. “We find them.”
Both of them look at me.
“Girl’s gone mad,” Charen says cheerfully, licking a fang. “Finally broke, eh?”
Kragna’s brows knit, his eyes narrowing. “Why in the frozen hell would we find them?”
“Because it might be them.” My voice cracks like ice, sharp and thin. “The unit that sent the ogres. The ones that slaughtered my people.”
Charen whistles, long and low. “Ooooh. Revenge party.”
Kragna growls, a sound that rattles the stones under my feet. “You don’t know that. Could be any unit. Could be twenty different ones.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re elves. They’re his.” My jaw locks so tight it aches. “Every step they take on this mountain is an insult. Every breath they draw spits on the dead. I can’t just walk away.”
His roar splits the fog, sudden and violent. “Your rage will get you killed!”
It echoes off the cliffs, a sound too big for the space. Charen skitters backward, muttering about how she doesn’t want to get stepped on by accident.
I bare my teeth, stepping into him, close enough to feel the furnace heat of his chest. “And what would you know about it, troll? You sit under your bridge and drink while the world burns. You don’t understand sacrifice. You don’t understand losing everything and having to keep moving anyway.”
His eyes blaze, fire flaring. “You think I don’t know loss?” His claws flex, sinking into stone until it cracks under his grip. “You think I’ve never buried friends, lovers, kin? Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know.”
“Then prove it,” I spit. “Stand with me. Don’t cower behind your caution like an old man afraid of shadows.”
His face twists, torn between fury and something else I can’t name. For a breath, I almost expect him to lunge, to drag me back by force.
But he doesn’t. He just shakes his head, voice breaking low. “You’re going to tear yourself apart chasing ghosts.”
And that… that hurts worse than if he’d shouted again.
I shove past him, boots crunching frost as I storm into the fog. I need space, air, anything that isn’t the fire in his eyes or the echo of my own rage. My chest heaves, throat raw, vision blurred.
Behind me, the fire crackles, Charen cackles, and Kragna doesn’t follow.
Good.
Because if he did, I might not stop myself from breaking.
The fog swallows me whole as I march off, boots sinking into crusted snow, breath ragged in my chest. Every step burns, but I keep moving, stubborn and stupid, because turning back now would mean he’s right. And I can’t let him be right. Not about this. Not about me.
The night air is knife-cold. My fingers ache around the rifle’s grip, my ears catch every snap of twig, every crunch of frost underfoot. My anger should be warming me, but all it does is make me shake.
Then I see him.
One of them.
A dark elf scout, half-hidden behind a pine, his trousers unlaced as he pisses steaming arcs into the snow. His head tips back, relaxed, unaware. His skin is that same pale ash, his ears tapering to points that make my teeth grit. His hand rests careless on the hilt of a blade.
I raise my rifle before I even think. The cold iron feels like an extension of my arm, my rage channeled into steel and powder.
The report cracks the silence.
His skull snaps back, neat hole punched right between the eyes. He doesn’t even gasp—just crumples, knees folding, piss hissing into the snow as blood pours after it.
My breath comes sharp, almost sobbing. One down. Not enough. Never enough.
Movement.
Three more shadows flinch at the noise, less than twenty paces away. They whirl, blades flashing. My finger twitches on the trigger, but my hands are shaking. Too close. Too fast.
The first lunges, a short sword whistling through the fog.
I fire again, but the bullet tears his shoulder, not his head.
He screams, blood spraying against the snow like paint.
Another rushes from the left, and I spin, rifle butt cracking into his jaw, teeth snapping like brittle stone.
He falls, snarling, but I can’t line up another shot before the third is on me.
Steel arcs toward my throat.
And then Kragna’s roar splits the world.
He hits them like a storm given flesh. One claw rakes across the elf with the shoulder wound, splitting him from collar to gut in a spray that paints the trees. Another he grabs by the leg and swings, once, twice, before dashing his skull against a rock until nothing’s left but ruin.
The last tries to flee. Kragna’s claws flash in the fog, and the head parts from the shoulders with a wet crack. The body stumbles a step before collapsing.
I’m left gasping in the snow, rifle half-raised, ears ringing. My shot was messy. My hands are slick with sweat, my knees unsteady.
Kragna stands there in the fog, chest heaving, gore dripping from his claws. The silence after is louder than the fight.
I stumble back, collapsing against the trunk of a frost-bitten tree. My breath comes too fast, my body trembling all over. I curl my arms around my knees, trying to hold myself together.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t touch me. Just lowers himself down beside me, massive frame folding onto the snow with surprising quiet. The heat of him radiates against my side, steady, immovable.
For a long time, we just sit. Snowflakes drift down through the fog, melting on my lashes, on his shoulders. Blood stains the ground, dark against white. The smell of powder and steel clings to the air.
My rifle rests across my knees, useless now. My hands won’t stop shaking.
But he’s there. Not demanding. Not judging. Just there.
And somehow, in that silence, I don’t fall apart.