Chapter 5
CASSIAN
The sea has moods, and tonight it is restless.
The floes slam together like bones grinding under giants, and the sound carries through the night air in hollow booms. I kneel on the ridge above the cove, breath steady, cloak pulled close, eyes fixed on the faint glow of lanterns moving below.
At first glance, it looks like any fishing party coming late from the ice, but my nose tells me otherwise before my eyes confirm it.
The smell hits sharp—machine oil, solvent, pressed uniforms that stink of factories and cologne. Unsettlingly pristine and foreign. Not a whiff of brine or fish or woodsmoke. Outsiders.
The bear presses forward inside me, restless, claws dragging along my ribs. He knows what this means before I do. Trouble.
Two men climb the trail toward the bluff, their parkas stitched with a fake institute name.
Their steps are precise, evenly spaced, military cadence dressed in borrowed boots.
Clipboards hang at their sides, props for a play no one in this land will ever believe.
They drag a sled behind them, and though a tarp covers the crate, I taste the truth of it on the wind—steel, sharp and oily, the smell of weapons packed tight in oil.
The one in front tilts his head toward the mast planted on the ridge, where a blinking antenna hums faint red into the sky. A third man crouches there, adjusting dials, his movements quick and precise. They are laying a net, but not for the weather.
The second man mutters something low. The wind carries enough for me to catch it. Harrow.
The name burns in my ears. Roman’s captain. His shadow. His discipline. My jaw clenches until my teeth ache, and the bear rumbles in warning.
Hunters.
I whisper rough into the cold, as if saying it aloud might anchor me. “Not our fight.”
My exile has rules. No entanglements. No brothers. No war. The North is silence and penance, and I chose it because it is the only place left where I can breathe without drowning in memory.
I sink lower, eyes scanning the camp below.
The so-called researchers gather around crates and equipment, speaking in clipped terms about grids and heat signatures.
One lifts a case and pulls out a drone, wings folding open like a dark bird, matte black to drink the light.
Its hum is faint, but the bear bristles, knowing what it means.
Surveillance. Tracking. Not of animals. Of me.
The Seal beats faint under my ribs, sharper now, a pulse I can’t ignore. Darius’s call. I shove it down, breathing slow. I won’t answer. Not now. Not ever.
I move along the ridge, watching as two more men break from the group and angle toward the bluff. Toward the camp.
And then I hear it.
A sound carried on the wind, light and unguarded, bright against the silence. Her laugh.
It slices straight through the night, through me.
I freeze where I crouch, chest tight, the knife already in my hand without thought.
I told myself I would forget it, that wild, broken laugh when she came coughing out of the water.
That softer one she gave her dogs after. I told myself it would fade. I lied.
The men hear it too. One tilts his head, smirks, mutters to his partner. Their path bends slightly, their interest sharpened by what they’ve heard.
The bear surges, growling deep in my chest, not loud but thunderous all the same.
I press the knife against my thigh, jaw locked, forcing the words out. “Exile means patience. Exile means silence. No entanglements.”
But the laugh carries again, softer this time, like a flame sparking against dry wood, and the vow splinters in me.
I remember Arvid’s warning weeks ago, his voice gruff as he muttered over nets, telling me that ignoring a call has a cost. He spoke of the Seal then, but I feel the weight of it now, doubled. Ignoring her has a cost too, and I’m not sure I have enough left in me to pay it.
The Syndicate men move closer to her camp. I see one adjust his coat and the brief gleam of a pistol under his parka. My muscles coil, patient, waiting. I could end them before they reach her. Two bodies buried in the snow, gone by morning storm. No one would ever know.
I force myself still, crouched in the dark. My vow holds by a thread, but the bear inside me presses harder, demanding I rise.
A voice drags me from my silence. “You’re watching them too.”
I turn my head slightly, catching the shadow of Arvid leaning on his cane, wrapped in furs. He’s not looking at me, but at the men below. His eyes are pale as the ice itself.
“You should be inside,” I mutter, low.
He chuckles, dry and rasping. “Inside doesn’t keep you safe from men like that. Only watching does.” He studies me a long moment. “You’ll let them pass?”
I don’t answer. My silence is answer enough.
Arvid taps his cane against the rock three times, a habit he’s never explained. “Sometimes letting wolves roam only gets your sheep slaughtered. But it’s your choice, boy. Always has been.” He turns, his figure swallowed by the dark, leaving me with nothing but the sound of his fading steps.
Below, the Syndicate men pause, scanning the bluff. One speaks into a radio clipped to his collar, voice clipped and efficient. “Thermal signature confirmed. Moving to grid B. Possible civilian presence.”
Civilian. That’s what they’ll call her. A target.
The bear shoves hard against my chest, and this time I don’t push him back.
My vow was silence, but silence ends tonight.
I crouch lower on the ridge, knife steady, eyes fixed on their backs. I will wait until they make the wrong step, and then I will move fast enough they never see me coming. They will think it was the storm, or bad footing, or the land itself that turned against them. But it will be me.
The Seal under my ribs beats again, hard enough to ache, as if Darius himself pulls the tether. I whisper into the night, words carved from stone. “You will not touch her, Roman. Not while I breathe.”
The men keep walking. The drone hums above. And her laugh still lingers, warm and reckless against the silence, the only sound that matters anymore.
I told myself exile was enough. Tonight proves it never was.