Chapter 9 River
RIVER
At first, it feels good. Too good. The farmhouse buzzes with the hum of voices, boots scuffing across the floor, rifles cleaned by hands moving on instinct. My people—what’s left of them—call out greetings, slap my back, tug me into half-hugs that smell of sweat and cordite.
“You’re back,” one man says, grin cracked but wide. “Hell, we thought you were gone.”
“River fucking Majors,” another laughs, shaking his head. “Unkillable.”
They talk like they mean it, like it’s joy and relief. But underneath, I hear the note that grates—the way they say my name like it’s become a legend, like I’m a relic dragged out of a grave. Not a soldier standing in front of them. Not a woman still breathing.
I smile back anyway. My cheeks ache from it.
It’s better than their pity.
The fire burns low in the hearth, casting long shadows against the walls. Men pass bottles, cracked jokes, whispers too low for me to catch. It should feel like home, like slipping back into the skin I shed when the mountains tried to eat me alive. But it doesn’t. Not quite.
They don’t touch me the way they used to. They touch me like I’m breakable. Like I might shatter if they press too hard.
I take a seat near the corner, rifle across my knees, and watch them. It feels like I’m outside looking in, pressed against the glass of something I used to belong to.
Kragna keeps to the edges, looming like a storm cloud no one dares test. His presence gnaws at them—they glance at him and look away, fingers tightening on rifles. But it’s not just him. It’s me too. The way they look at me, like I’m half ghost.
Rizzo drifts from man to man, muttering orders, offering claps on shoulders. When he passes me, I catch his sleeve.
“We found scouts,” I tell him. “Elves. Four dead.”
His eyes flicker. He doesn’t ask how. Doesn’t ask what it cost me. Just nods, once, quick and sharp. “Good.”
Then he moves on.
Like it doesn’t matter. Like they weren’t the same bastards who tore my squad to pieces.
I sit there, throat tight.
The laughter around me feels hollow, tinny, like someone banging spoons on a pot. I sip from a flask passed my way, the burn harsh, the warmth empty. The men joke about Veeto’s horns, about Kragna’s size, about River the unkillable. All of it clangs false in my ears.
There’s something here. A shadow under the words. Plans whispered when I’m not listening. Glances traded over my shoulder.
Secrets.
I can feel them like grit in my teeth, sharp and bitter.
I want to ask. I want to stand and shout until they tell me. But I don’t. Because I already know how it’ll go. They’ll pat my shoulder, call me girl, tell me not to worry.
And that would hurt worse than silence.
So I sit there, jaw clenched, forcing the burn of liquor down my throat. My eyes stray to Kragna, who watches me with that bold stare that sees too much. He doesn’t ask either. He doesn’t have to.
Because the truth is gnawing at me already.
I’m glad to be back among my people.
Until I realize maybe they’re not mine anymore.
The farmhouse grows too loud. The men’s laughter scratches at my ears, false and jagged, every clink of flask against teeth reminding me I’m not really part of it anymore. I slip outside before someone notices, boots crunching over frozen mud.
The cold hits like a slap—clean, sharp, honest. I breathe deep and let it bite.
Out near the edge of the yard, beside a half-built barricade of splintered timber and bent nails, I find him. Kragna.
He’s perched on a beam like it’s a throne, hunched forward, a blade in his hands longer than my thigh.
The metal catches the moonlight, throwing quicksilver flashes across his eyes as he drags a whetstone slow and steady along its edge.
The sound is rhythmic, rasping, like breath drawn through teeth.
I walk over, boots crunching frost. He glances up once, then back to his work, saying nothing.
I sit beside him. Close enough to feel the heat rolling off his body, steady as a forge. My hands fold in my lap. For a while we just listen to the night—the crackle of the farmhouse fire behind us, the distant hiss of arrows being loosed into the dark, the whetstone rasping, rasping.
Finally, I speak. The words come out low, rougher than I meant.
“How many?”
He doesn’t stop sharpening. “How many what?”
“How many humans you’ve eaten.”
The stone rasps once more. Then stops.
He sets it down, slowly, and lifts the blade. Moonlight paints it silver, sharp enough to split shadows. His eyes meet mine, steady, unblinking.
“Thirty-six,” he says. His voice is calm. Not proud, not ashamed. Just fact. “Give or take.”
The number punches the air from my lungs. I stare at him, waiting for a smile, a joke, a twist. Something. But he just looks at me, face carved from stone, and I realize he’s not playing.
“None lately,” he adds after a beat, almost an afterthought.
My mouth opens, then shuts. My throat feels scraped raw. I don’t know what I expected. Less, maybe. Or more. Or a lie.
I want to move. To stand, to walk, to run. But I don’t. My legs stay rooted. My hands clench tight in my lap.
Because if I leave, if I bolt like a scared deer, then it means I can’t face it. Can’t face him. And I’ve faced worse.
So I stay.
The silence stretches between us, thick as tar. His blade gleams. My breath fogs. The cold creeps into my bones, but the heat rolling off him keeps me from shivering.
Finally, he looks away, drags the stone across the edge again. Rasp. Rasp. The sound fills the air, steady as his breathing.
I stare at his profile—the curl of golden horns catching starlight, the ember glow of his eyes when they flick back to the blade, the way his jaw tightens just slightly when he works.
The weight of his confession sits heavy on my chest. Thirty-six. Lives taken, bodies broken, flesh consumed. But he said it like a truth carved into the mountain. And somehow… that honesty means more than if he’d lied to soothe me.
I don’t know what to say. So I don’t. I just sit there, beside the monster with blood on his tongue, and let the night carry the silence for us.
The farmhouse is quieter now, but not by much. Men mutter in their sleep, twitching with nightmares. Someone coughs wetly in the corner. The fire in the hearth is nothing more than a bed of coals glowing angry red.
I move toward the door, desperate for air, when Rizzo’s hand snaps around my arm. His grip is steady despite the thinness in him, bones sharp under skin.
“Walk with me,” he says. No warmth. No softness. Command, plain and bare.
I follow him through the wreckage of what was once a dining room.
The walls bow inward, blackened beams creak overhead.
Moonlight spills through holes in the roof, silvering the dust that hangs thick in the air.
My boots crunch over broken crockery and glass.
The stench of smoke, mildew, and unwashed bodies sticks to the back of my throat.
He stops by what used to be a window. The shutters are long gone, just jagged wood framing a view of the mist-thick fields beyond. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. His shoulders rise and fall, each breath heavy like he’s hauling a mountain with his ribs.
Then his voice comes low, rough. “We can’t hold.”
The words stab deeper than a blade. I knew it already. We all knew it. But hearing him admit it makes the ground tilt.
“Laertiez is pressing harder than we thought,” Rizzo goes on.
His eyes fix on the fog outside, as if he can see the enemy moving through it.
“He’s got numbers, weapons, sorcery, supply lines tighter than a drum.
He can afford to bleed. We can’t.” He shakes his head, lines carved deep around his mouth. “We’ve got scraps and dying men.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Then what?”
“We cut him off at the knees before he crushes us,” he says. “Not here. Not in the field. Inside Kyrdonis itself. Strike where he thinks he’s untouchable.”
“Infiltration.” My throat is dry.
Rizzo finally looks at me. His eyes are sharp, too sharp, but there’s something trembling under the steel. “You’ve walked their streets. You know their ways. The language, the mannerisms. You blend in where the rest of my boys would stick out like bonfires.”
My gut twists. Kyrdonis. The city that caged me, paraded me, tried to sell me like meat. Going back feels like shoving my face into the fire that nearly burned me alive.
And yet…
“I’ll do it,” I say.
The words are out before I can second-guess them.
Rizzo studies me, his gaze heavy, searching for cracks. He doesn’t find any. He nods, once, short and sharp, like it’s settled.
“You’ll need backup,” he says.
The way he says it—it’s not concern. It’s a warning. His voice is sharp with implication. He already has someone in mind. One of his. Someone he can control.
But the thought of walking into Kyrdonis with one of them—these men who look at me like I’m a ghost or a prize—it curdles my stomach.
The silence grows ancient between us. And then I hear myself say it.
“Kragna.”
The air goes tight.
Even the boards beneath our boots seem to groan at it.
Rizzo blinks. His face goes still, carved into disbelief. “What did you just say?”
I lift my chin. My voice is steadier than I feel. “He comes with me.”
The words ripple through the farmhouse. Men stir from where they sit, rifles clutched tighter, eyes widening. Whispers ignite—She’s mad. She’s compromised. A troll? With her? The sound swells, ugly and sharp.
And Kragna—Kragna is sitting near the back, still as stone, a whetstone in one hand, the broad curve of a blade in the other. His eyes flick up when my words reach him.
For a heartbeat, the world holds its breath.
Then his mouth curves. Slow. Dangerous. Amused.
“Trolls clean up well,” he says.
The words slide through the farmhouse like oil over water, slick and impossible to grasp. Some men bark laughter, sharp and disbelieving. Others spit into the dirt, muttering curses.
Rizzo’s jaw locks so hard I hear the grind of his teeth. His eyes cut to me like blades. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
“He’s not one of us.”
“He’s the reason I’m alive to stand here.”
“That doesn’t make him family.”
“It makes him necessary,” I snap, louder than I mean to. Heads turn. The men stare. The weight of it presses hard against my skin.
Rizzo steps in closer, voice low enough only I hear. “You trust him, do you? A troll. Flesh-eater. You think he won’t rip you open the second it suits him?”
My hands shake, but I don’t look away. “He’s had chances. He didn’t.”
“And when the hunger takes him?”
“Then I’ll put a bullet through his eye,” I whisper back. My voice is steady. Too steady.
Rizzo studies me a long moment, then exhales sharp through his nose. He doesn’t argue further. But he doesn’t agree either.
The tension doesn’t break. It just lingers, heavy as smoke.
Kragna, still by the wall, hasn’t looked away from me. That slow smile of his remains, unreadable and infuriating.
And as the murmurs swirl, as the men eye me like I’ve lost my mind, I realize something cold in my chest: I didn’t just volunteer him. I claimed him.
And he knows it.