Tharos
TWENTY-EIGHT
She works without complaint.
The gash on her side is worse than I thought.
Deep enough that I can see the layers of muscle beneath, though thankfully not deep enough to have hit anything vital.
She threads the needle with hands that barely tremble, then begins stitching herself closed with the same matter-of-fact efficiency she brings to everything.
I’ve seen soldiers do this. Mercenaries who couldn’t afford to wait for healers, who learned to patch themselves in the field because the alternative was bleeding out in some nameless ditch.
But watching her do it—watching her face stay controlled as she pierces her own flesh, pulls the thread through, ties off each stitch with a precision that speaks of too much practice—
“You’re staring.”
I jerk my gaze away. Too late. She’s already noticed.
“You should be dead.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “The fight in the Heartgrove. The possession. Any one of those moments should have killed you.”
“You’ve mentioned.” She ties off another stitch, snips the thread with a small blade from her kit. “Several times, actually. Is there a point to this observation, or are you just enjoying the reminder?”
“You keep surviving when you shouldn’t.” I watch her reach for the medicinal salve, begin coating the burns on her arms where the vines touched her. The skin there is angry red, blistered in places. It must hurt like hell. She doesn’t flinch. “What makes you different?”
“Stubbornness, mostly.” She finishes with the salve, starts wrapping the burns with clean bandages. “And a healthy disregard for odds. Numbers have never impressed me. What matters is what you do when the numbers are against you.”
“And what do you do?”
“Whatever it takes.” She meets my eyes finally, and there’s raw intensity in her expression.
The air in the hollow feels suddenly thinner.
“I fight. I survive. I refuse to stay down no matter how many times I get knocked there.” Her mouth quirks—not quite a smile, but close.
“My partner used to say I was too stupid to know when I was beaten. She meant it as a compliment.”
“Cyrilla.”
“Yes.” The smile fades. “Cyrilla.”
Silence falls between us. The kind of silence that has texture, that fills space with things neither of us is saying. I think about what she told me before—about the relationship that was dying, the contract taken without goodbye, the years of guilt and grief that brought her to this forest.
“You know all of that already.” She’s wrapping the last bandage now, her movements slowing as the immediate work is done. “What I don’t know is why you saved me. The truth, this time.”
“I told you the truth.”
“You told me you chose to. You told me I matter.” She sets aside her supplies, turns to face me fully.
In the dim light of the hollow, her eyes are dark steel, sharp enough to cut.
“What you didn’t tell me is why. You’ve spent your whole existence avoiding attachment.
Knowing that caring about anyone gives the King leverage.
So why care about me? Why risk everything for someone who came here to kill you? ”
The question hits somewhere deep. I feel it reverberate through me, stirring things I’ve kept buried for years. Decades.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” I look at my hands. The scars there, layered over decades. The dark staining of sap and soil that never quite washes off. The claws my nails have become, useful for violence and little else.
“And now?”
Now. Such a simple word for such a complicated truth.
“You didn’t run.” I force myself to meet her gaze.
“When the King took me—when I became the thing that was trying to kill you—you didn’t run.
Everyone runs. The hunters, the travelers, the fools who stumble into Briargrave thinking they can survive.
When they see what I become, what the forest can do through me, they run. They fight. They die.”
“I fought too.”
“You fought differently.” The memory surfaces: her standing with my hands around her throat, dropping her blades, trusting me to break free. “You fought like I mattered. Like saving me was more important than saving yourself.”
She’s quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is softer than I’ve heard it. “I think I told you already. The exit ramp closed somewhere I wasn’t paying attention.”
“When?”
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe in the bone hollows, when you told me about Seren. Maybe in the Heartgrove, when you pushed the King back. Maybe before that.” She shrugs, a small motion that jostles her injured side. She hides the wince, but I catch it anyway. “Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?”
The question hangs between us. I search for words that won’t reveal too much, won’t make me more vulnerable than I already am. Can’t find any.
“Because I don’t understand it.” The confession costs me.
“I don’t understand how someone can look at what I am—the violence, the blood, the years of letting this forest consume everything in reach—and decide that’s worth fighting for.
Worth risking their life for. I’ve done nothing to deserve that kind of loyalty. ”
“Maybe loyalty isn’t about deserving.” She shifts, and suddenly she’s closer.
Not touching, but near enough that I can feel her warmth, smell her scent beneath the blood and medicine.
“Maybe it’s about choosing. I chose to stay.
I chose to fight for you. I chose to trust you when every logical part of my brain was screaming that I was going to die. ”
“And the illogical part?”
“The illogical part kept thinking about what would happen if I didn’t try.” Her voice drops. “About what it would mean to walk out of this forest knowing I let you become that thing’s puppet. Knowing I could have fought and didn’t.”
“So it was guilt.”
“No.” She reaches out. Her fingers brush my arm—just the lightest touch, barely there, but I feel it like a brand. “It was different. A feeling I haven’t had in a long time.”