Chapter 17 River
RIVER
Kragna’s silhouette swims into view, and for a moment, I think I’m dreaming again.
The fever has me by the throat, hot and wet, like a swamp pressed down onto my chest. My skin’s on fire, my thigh feels like it’s pulsing with broken glass, and I’m not sure what’s real until I see his face.
He’s sitting cross-legged beside me, hunched over like a crumpled mountain. His eyes are locked on mine the moment I blink. Bloodshot. Wild. Terrified.
“Kragna…” My voice croaks out like wind through ash.
“Shh.” He leans in quick, one clawed hand on my forehead, the other cupping my cheek like I might vanish if he blinks. His fingers tremble. “You’re burnin’ up, little bird.”
I try to sit up. The pain answers first—red and sharp and merciless. I let out a strangled sound and drop back down. Sweat slicks my back against whatever animal hide he’s laid me on.
His hand moves down to my thigh, and I flinch before I can stop myself. The wound’s been bandaged, but the ache is ever present. Like it wants to eat its way out of me.
“Arrow was poisoned,” he mutters, not looking up. “Blackroot. Vile shit. Slows the heart, clouds the mind. I got most of it out. I think. Might’ve swallowed some. Don’t care.”
I stare at him. At the jagged line of his jaw, at the blood smeared down his neck—his or mine, I don’t know. His shirt’s torn open. His arms are scraped, bruised, filthy. There’s dried mud in the crease of his brow and his hair’s sticking up like a storm blew through him.
But his eyes never leave me. And I realize—he hasn’t moved. Not really. He’s been right here. Watching. Waiting. Hoping I’d wake.
“You look like shit,” I rasp, trying to smile.
His laugh cracks out sharp and sudden, like he wasn’t ready for it.
“Yeah, well. You try carryin’ a human through the woods while she’s leakin’ blood and mutterin’ about ghosts.”
I remember running. I remember falling. I remember his hands, rough and desperate, yanking the arrow from my leg with a snarl like he was ripping through flesh and time. I remember his mouth on the wound, hot and wet and frantic. And I remember him whispering things I couldn’t quite hold onto.
Now I reach for him. My hand’s shaking, and he catches it halfway, pressing his palm to mine like it’s holy. His skin’s warm. Callused. Familiar in a way that twists something low and deep inside me.
“You stayed,” I say.
“’Course I did.”
“Nobody stays.”
His jaw tightens. “I ain’t nobody.”
I want to kiss him. I want to pull him down into the heat and let it burn away every nightmare, every brand on my back, every time I’ve been someone else’s weapon. But I also want to cry, and I don’t even know why.
“You should’ve left me,” I whisper. “I was slowing you down.”
“I’m not leavin’ you, River. Ever. Not unless you tell me to.” He leans in, close enough that I can smell the leather on his breath and the blood under his fingernails. “Even then, I might not listen.”
I close my eyes. The fever’s still there, pulsing like war drums in my veins, but his voice cuts through it. Steady. Low. Holding me here.
“What… what did you whisper? When I was out?”
He stiffens. Doesn’t answer at first. Then:
“I told you not to die.”
My eyes flutter open.
“I told you I’d burn Kyrdonis to the ground if you did.”
I laugh—a broken, wheezing thing—and tears spring up without warning. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He brushes my hair back from my face, gentle like he’s afraid I’ll crack.
“You scared me,” he murmurs. “I don’t scare easy.”
“I know.”
“You’re not allowed to die, River. Not now. Not after all this.”
“I’m not planning to.” My voice breaks. “But it hurts, Kragna. Gods, it hurts.”
He shifts beside me, long limbs folding awkwardly as he leans in and wraps his arms around me. Not tight. Careful. Protective. One hand still tangled in my hair, the other stroking my back in slow, steady lines.
“I got you,” he says. “Ain’t no one gettin’ through me.”
I press my face into his chest. He smells like sweat and blood and the damp leather of his vest. But underneath, there’s something else. Something raw and earthy and alive. The scent of old forest and beast bone and thunder. It fills my lungs, anchors me.
“I used to think I’d die alone,” I murmur. “That one day, I’d just bleed out in a ditch somewhere, and no one’d even know my name.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me. There’s a softness in his eyes now that doesn’t match the rest of him.
“You ain’t dyin’ in a ditch,” he growls. “You’re gonna live long enough to drive a dagger through Laertiez’s black heart. Then we’ll see what comes next.”
“What if there’s nothin’ next?” I ask, voice small. “What if I don’t know who I am without this fight?”
He tilts his head. “Then we figure it out together.”
His fingers trace the edge of my jaw, rough pads soft on skin that’s rarely been touched like this. I want to tell him everything. I want to ask if he’s as scared as I am, if he wonders what comes after the blood and fire. But I don’t need to. Not really.
I can see it in his face.
He’s never done this either.
Never loved someone enough to sit through the night just to hear them breathe.
And gods, that’s what this is, isn’t it?
He loves me.
The thought is terrifying and holy all at once.
I shift against him, every movement slow and aching, and he adjusts without complaint, tucking me closer like I’m something precious. The fire crackles low beside us. The sounds of the forest creep in—rustling leaves, distant chirps, the low rumble of one of his beast-friends circling the camp.
He hums something then, soft and strange—a guttural rhythm, more vibration than melody. It’s old. Trollish. A lullaby, maybe. Something ancient and full of teeth.
It’s beautiful.
“Singin’ to me now?” I murmur.
“Don’t get used to it,” he grumbles, embarrassed. “It’s just… you look like you needed it.”
I smile, eyes drifting closed.
“Don’t stop.”
And he doesn’t. Not all night. He just holds me and hums and watches the dark like it’s something he can fight off for me.
And maybe he can.
The trees don’t move like the ones I grew up with. They breathe here.
Massive, gnarled things with bark like armor and roots thick enough to trip gods. Moss grows up their sides in shaggy coats, and something always rustles just out of sight. But I’m not afraid.
Not anymore.
Kragna’s territory stretches wild and wide through the northern woods, a place so tangled and ancient not even the dark elves bother patrolling it. They call it cursed. Hexed. Haunted.
I call it home.
For now.
We’ve camped here for three nights, tucked in a hollow between thick rock spires and a stream that smells like iron.
Kragna’s friends—his monsters—come and go like family dropping by uninvited.
Veeto, the centipede-chested madman with too many knives and not enough common sense, arrives first. He brings more of his wretched moonshine in a jug that sloshes like it’s already alive.
“You look like death,” he says cheerfully, handing me a cup. “Worse than usual.”
“Your face looks like an accident,” I shoot back.
He grins like I gave him a compliment and flops down near the fire.
Then comes Toad Knight—six feet of swollen amphibian in rusted armor, a tattered cape fluttering dramatically behind him. He bows low, muttering something about honor and sacred duty and vengeance for the fallen. I think he’s quoting poetry. Or war crimes.
“You smell like wet cabbage,” I tell him, nose wrinkling.
“A gift of my people,” he declares with a sweep of his arm.
Kragna smirks at that. He’s been hovering close all day, watching me like I might vanish again.
He doesn’t say much—he’s not the talking type unless blood’s involved—but his hands are never far.
A brush of fingers here, a squeeze of my shoulder there.
Gentle things from someone who doesn’t do gentle.
Then Bruce stomps into camp, a walking mountain of reptilian muscle with eyes like liquid gold. He noses my hair like a curious dog, lets out a chuff of warm breath, and settles next to the fire like a hill decided to take a nap.
I lean back against him, warmth seeping through my bones, and for the first time in a long time, I laugh.
Real laughter. Stupid, joyful, loud.
“Gods,” I say, wiping tears from my eyes. “We’re the worst-looking family in the realm.”
Veeto raises his cup. “To that!”
“To found families of freaks,” I add, clinking mine against his.
“Toad guts and troll love!” Toad Knight bellows.
“Don’t encourage him,” Kragna mutters.
But I see the ghost of a smile tug at his mouth. He’s relaxed tonight, less stone and more skin. I can see it in the way he lounges with his boots off, one arm slung over Bruce like they’ve shared a hundred nights like this. Maybe they have.
It’s strange, the things that become comfort. The hiss of the fire. The clink of mismatched cups. The scent of burnt meat and wet fur. The low murmur of monsters telling stories around the flames.
For a little while, it’s enough.
For a little while, I almost believe this could last.
Then Charen drops from the trees.
She lands without a sound, drunk and upside down, her web-glider wings twitching as she unhooks herself from the canopy. Her eyes glow like wine spilled across a map, and her mouth is full of fangs and bad news.
“Delivery,” she says with a purr. “Straight from the pale bastard himself.”
She hands me a rolled-up scrap of parchment, slick with webbing and sealed with wax. I peel it open with shaking fingers. It’s Cervantes’s handwriting—flourished, dramatic, smug.
“Dearest Songbird,” it begins.
I already know it’s bad.
Skeela’s name jumps out in the second line. The word captured in the fourth. Failed coup, execution list, resistance crumbling.
I stop reading halfway through.
The fire crackles louder all of a sudden. My hands shake, and the parchment trembles like it’s trying to escape.
Kragna’s beside me in seconds.
“What is it?”
I don’t answer. Not at first. My throat’s too tight.