Before – Homeworld, Millennia Ago, After the Burn
Rynna blinked into the pale morning light. The inside of the tent tinted gold where it filtered through the stretched canvas overhead. The space beside her was empty, sheets still warm where Malekar had lain.
Gooseflesh bloomed over her skin, a shiver skating up her spine. She didn’t need to see him to know he was there. Waiting.
The silence clung to the air as she drew the silk sheet up so it skimmed the curve of her breasts. Reclining fully, she let the fabric slip from her grasp. Then, deliberately, she stretched, arms reaching overhead, back arching as her spine lifted from the bedding.
A yawn curled past her lips. “Errrahhhh…” She rolled to her side and propped herself on one elbow. Her palm cradled her cheek as she faced him, lids still half-lowered.
He stood braced against the central support beam, arms folded in loose repose.
His weight sank into one hip, knees angled just enough to suggest patience rather than restlessness.
Head tilted, he studied something only he could see, and whatever it was, it held him still.
His chest rose and fell like a man listening for something faint and far away.
But his eyes—those eyes that normally danced with amusement when they were alone, sharpened by wicked intentions—were quiet now.
Rynna’s brow pulled tight. “Why so serious?”
Malekar didn’t answer right away. A breath. Then another. His gaze shifted, until it landed on her, as though surfacing from something deep.
“The giant,” he said at last. “Why did he take his own heart? He seemed…unreasonably afraid of you. Or maybe your sword.”
“I don’t know,” she said, sitting up. “It was odd.”
Malekar hummed, the sound neither agreement nor doubt. He knew not to push her.
Instead, he shifted his stance, the conversation already turning. “I saw you leave an extra supply pack with the children before we departed.”
Her stomach sank. She hadn’t expected anyone to notice.
She didn’t even know why she’d done it. Those children were strangers. Most wouldn’t live to see the next season. And yet, something in her bones had moved her hand to act.
She didn’t speak. What could she say? But her fingers itched, closing tighter around the fabric pooled at her side.
Malekar’s eyes dipped to the motion, catching it.
He moved, pushing off the post with a gradual pivot of his shoulders, bare feet silent on the woven mats.
“I don't give a damn where you came from.” His hand lifted, raking through the short strands of his raven-dark hair as he exhaled. “That was the deal. Your secrets stay yours.”
Another step, close enough now to touch.
“And I know we agreed not to care. That it would be cleaner that way.” His jaw shifted. “But here we are. And I do. Gods help me, I do.”
She sat up, crossing her arms over her chest, but her scowl softened, cracking open despite her instinct to run.
Why was he saying this? Why now? He’d promised not to care. Promised they’d keep things clean. Detached. But still… something inside her eased, pressure loosening after being braced too long.
Her thoughts scattered.
“What do you want from me?” Her voice cracked in the stillness as she pushed off the bed, passing through the tent. The extra riding skirt lay coiled in the corner like something abandoned. She yanked it free and shook out the folds.
“I don’t know.” The words came low, stripped bare.
Rynna stilled.
“I just—” He hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you. And I don’t want you to hurt me. Or kill the others.”
She found the black tunic next and pulled it over her head.
“They didn’t say anything, but after what happened with the giant—they’re shaken. Vorian especially.” His hands came together, rubbing palm against palm. “You know him. He’ll try something while you’re sleeping. And when he fails…the others will rush in to protect him. And they’ll die.”
Rynna stepped into the skirt and reached for the belt. Her fingers moved in silence, slipping through the loops with deliberate care until the leather pulled snug.
“One of you could always step in.” The buckle fastened in a single, steady motion. “Take me during the first Devouring.”
It didn’t matter. The implication hung between them. He was telling her to leave.
Her hands dropped to her sides, and whatever fragile thing remained of her heart broke then, the sound of it vibrating deep in her chest.
“Do you really believe that one of us could take you?” His hands hung loose at his sides, shoulders level.
Rynna hesitated.
No. She didn’t believe it. Even if they all came for her at once, the outcome wouldn’t change. She already saw the ending. And it wasn’t them left standing.
“If only it were that easy.” The words snuck out quieter than she meant, pulled from some place she hadn’t planned to touch.
Then her brows pulled tight. Her mouth flattened.
“I see.” She ground the words between her teeth. “Well. I guess that’s that.”
Her hands rubbed together, rough and rapid, a motion with no purpose, as if she could scrub away the conversation. The nearness. The stupid, fragile thread that had stretched between them just moments ago.
“Not forever.” He stepped in, reaching. “Never forever. Just a couple of years. Give them time to forget their fear.”
She wrenched free from his grip, snatched her sheathed sword from the nearby table, and grabbed her boots in the same motion. Then she walked out into the gray hush before dawn, the tent flap closing shut behind her.
He didn’t chase her.
Across the camp, Empty Night lifted her head from the hay. Her ears twitched once, then again, before she moved, hooves tracking through the packed earth.
Rynna pulled on each boot with quiet purpose, leather straps tightening beneath her fingers, one after the other. Her sword followed, guided over her shoulder, the scabbard sinking into place against her spine.
Around her, the camp stirred. Tents flapped lightly in the breeze. A cough. A shift of fabric. But no one stepped out. No one dared.
“Fine.” She shook her head, her mouth curving into a shape too bitter to be called a smile.
She stepped over the camp’s fire ring, now only charred embers, her fists tight at her sides. The mare watched her come, ears flicking once, then again, before she dropped her muzzle, offering the thick fall of her mane without a sound.
Rynna didn’t slow. Her hand closed around the dark strands, muscles flexing with familiar tension. And in one smooth motion, she launched upward and settled onto the mare’s back, the worn blanket molding to her shape as if it remembered her.
Her gaze swept the tents one last time—the loose scatter of canvas, the faint heat still rising from half-buried embers, the trampled earth marked by a night’s worth of footsteps.
Something in her quieted, like a flame drawn low.
Nothing here was meant to last, but for a moment, she’d almost let herself believe it could.
She turned her head and spat, the saliva dark against the dirt.
“Immortal cowards.”
Then, louder: “Let’s go!”
Empty Night’s nostrils flared at the sound of Rynna’s voice and shifted her weight forward, one hoof striking hard against the ground. Her body followed, moving into a heavy trot with growing urgency.
Rynna leaned in, and the mare stretched into a faster gait, each stride longer, stronger.
Then the gallop came—sudden and full—like thunder peeled open across the plains, driving them toward the river, into the cool wind and the waiting quiet beyond.
Wind tore past her ears, loud enough to strip thought from sound, and for a while, the ache behind her breasts dulled beneath the rush.
When they reached the silty blue edge of the river, Rynna leaned back, fingers tightening in Empty Night’s mane. The gallop melted into a trot, then a walk, the mare’s hooves crunching softly through gravel and dry reed. The quiet settled around them in layers.
Smoke smudged the sky to the north, thin black threads rising from what remained of the village, pointing toward the pale glimmer of the inland sea beyond. She didn’t need to see it up close. She knew that stretch of land too well. They’d already razed it, taking its spoils.
West was no better. That road stank of old ash and past sins. She’d ridden with the others there, as well, burning fields until the soil turned to glass.
A shape caught her eye along the water’s edge—bones, long picked clean, ribs splayed wide, skull half-buried in silt. No flies. No tracks. Whatever had died there had done so alone, and nothing had dared touch it since.
She stared a moment longer, then turned her eyes south, her thoughts snagging on something Vorian had scoffed earlier: “This supposed Queen does not care for her people.”
It stuck.
There’d been rumors, murmurs around campfires, of names muttered by merchants before their mouths closed for good. A Queen who called herself divine, ruling beside a Consort-King. These lands, the ones Rynna had left for dead, were said to lie under that throne’s shadow.
Her knuckles shifted against the leather.
How could a supposed goddess let her people bleed while the Horsemen roamed free? How could she call herself a protector and offer no shield?
Perhaps Rynna would ride south and see the woman who dared to crown herself thus, while corpses still smoldered on her borders. Maybe she'd show them what wrath really looked like.
Rynna’s eyes narrowed on the trail ahead, where green reeds bowed under the breeze and wildflowers tangled along the bank. Her lips curved. It was the kind of smile that knew exactly what it wanted.
“Let’s go, girl.” Her hand smoothed along the mare’s neck in one slow, grounding stroke.
The sooner they got there, the sooner she’d have something to distract her from the gaping wound bleeding unseen beneath her tunic.