Chapter 14 Kragna #2
We smell the smoke before we see the fire.
The scent of Rizzo’s camp clings to the air like old sweat—burned meat, oiled steel, piss, horsehide, and pipe ash. It smells like survival. It smells like home to some of them.
To me, it smells like a grave waiting to be filled.
River rides ahead of me, shoulders squared, jaw tight. She hasn’t said much since the ambush. Doesn’t have to. Her silence says enough—every now and then she shifts in the saddle, like she wants to turn around and check that I’m still behind her, but won’t let herself.
I don’t give her the satisfaction. I stay close. Close enough that if anyone tries to take her from me again, I’ll rip their goddamn face off.
The camp hasn’t changed much since we left. Same patchwork tents, same hammered stakes in the dirt, same cluster of lean, weather-beaten rebels huddled around maps and spitfires, muttering plans like they’re sacred.
But the mood changes the second we ride in.
Eyes snap toward us. Hands drift to weapons. Whispers rise like wind before a storm.
They weren’t expecting us back.
They sure as hell weren’t expecting us to bring news.
Rizzo storms out of his tent like a man late to a knife fight. His beard’s longer, face more lined than I remember. But his eyes are sharp as ever—silver in a tanned face, like moonlight over scars.
“River,” he says. His voice lands like gravel in a drum.
She swings off her horse without breaking stride. “Miss me?”
He doesn’t smile. Just looks her over head to toe. Then glances at me. Flinches, just barely.
Still not used to seeing me upright and unchained.
“Thought you were dead,” he mutters.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
He motions us into the war tent without waiting. We follow.
Inside, it’s dim, lit by oil lamps and one low brazier glowing like an angry eye. Maps sprawl across a table crusted with old blood and melted wax. There’s a bottle of something half-drunk nearby. It smells like regret and fire.
Rizzo plants his hands on the table, leans in. “Tell me.”
River doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just lays it all out.
The meeting with Skeela. The offer. The forged invite. Every word measured, every detail sharp as a blade. She speaks like someone used to people not believing her—clear, steady, defiant.
When she finishes, Rizzo lets out a long breath through his nose. “You’re telling me,” he says slowly, “that the half-blood daughter of the bastard who carved this war into our bones wants to play nice?”
“She wants power,” River says. “And she knows Laertiez won’t give it to her.”
“So she stabs him in the back and we hand her the throne?”
“No,” River says. “We use her to gut him from the inside. Then we figure out what comes next.”
Rizzo shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to,” she says. “You just have to admit it’s our best shot.”
He looks at her for a long time. Like he’s seeing someone different. Someone older. Harder.
Maybe he is.
Then his gaze cuts to me. “And what do you think?”
I meet his eyes. Hold them. Don’t speak.
I don’t need to.
Whatever words I could offer wouldn’t matter. He doesn’t want my opinion. He wants to measure how dangerous I am. How loyal. Whether I’m her sword or her leash.
So I just stare.
Eventually he looks away.
River presses her palms to the table. “We don’t have to like her,” she says. “We just have to beat Laertiez before he burns the last of the world down.”
Rizzo nods once. Then again. But it’s grudging.
“You’re betting everything on her,” he says.
River’s smile is thin. “No. I’m betting on us.”
We’re dismissed after that. No fanfare. No welcome. Just a mutter about debriefing tomorrow and a flask handed off like an apology neither of us wants to accept.
We find an old tent near the edge of camp—just canvas and dust and a cot that creaks if you breathe too hard. River peels off her weapons and rubs at her temple like she’s carving the headache out from behind her eyes.
I sit on the cot, watching her move. The tight lines of her body. The tension she carries like armor. She doesn’t belong here.
She never did.
Not in the city, not in the woods, not among the Rangers. Too soft for the killers. Too hard for the healers. Too human for the monsters, too monstrous for the humans.
Same as me.
Maybe that’s what draws me. Maybe it’s the way she doesn’t ask for permission before carving herself a place in a world that doesn’t want her.
Or maybe it’s just her mouth.
Her fire.
Her everything.
I speak before I mean to. “What are we doing?”
She doesn’t turn around. “Trying not to die.”
“No. Us. You and me.”
She goes still.
Then she turns. And walks toward me.
She sits beside me on the cot, shoulder pressed against mine. I feel her warmth through the cloth. The weight of her presence. The ache behind my ribs.
She doesn’t answer right away.
Just reaches for my hand.
Her fingers slip between mine, tight. No tremble, no hesitation. But it’s not comfort she wants. Not heat. Not sex.
It’s connection.
“I don’t know what this is,” she says quietly. “But I know it’s real.”
I grip her back. Just as hard.
We don’t say anything else.
We don’t need to.
Not tonight.