Chapter 4
K.
The storm broke an hour past dawn. It’s not the sun that tells me this—thick clouds swallow it whole—but the shift in air pressure against my skin, the way water no longer hammers the stone outside.
She breathes.
Four seconds in. Six seconds out. I’ve counted this rhythm so many times that the numbers have worn grooves in my mind. Her chest rises beneath the wool cloak, steady now. Nothing like those first ragged hours when her lungs kept forgetting their purpose.
I should move. Check the perimeter. But my body refuses. For some reason, leaving her side feels… wrong.
Her eyelids flutter, casting shadows across cheekbones too sharp beneath pale skin. The blue-tipped hair fans across the wool I layered under her head—strange coloring, that. Unnatural. Yet it suits her somehow. Makes her look caught between this world and something wilder.
The thought unsettles me. Not because it’s strange—everything is strange—but because I want to keep looking. To memorize where blue fades to dark, the exact curve where her jaw meets her throat. Things that have nothing to do with keeping her alive.
I force my attention back to her breathing pattern.
Assess. Observe. Wait.
The words arrive unexpectedly; old drill, I imagine. I have done this before—kept watch over the fallen. Somewhere with white walls and a metal smell. Or stone walls and ash. The images slide away before I can grasp them.
I flex my hands against my knees. Warm leather beneath my palms. Cold stone under me. The fire needs tending.
Rising takes effort, each movement measured not to disturb the silence I’ve built around her. Ten paces to the cave mouth. Gray light bleeds through mist that clings to the mountainside like smoke.
Rain drifts down in sheets. The peaks stand silently, utterly still. Watching.
Something in my chest responds to those mountains—recognition I have no right to claim.
I test the air. Wet shale. Cedar resin. Distant smoke. My body takes in each scent, each direction, each potential threat, without consulting the shattered thing my memory has become.
I have waited in places like this before.
The knowledge surfaces like something breaking water. Somewhere echoing with footsteps. Or thunder. I cannot tell which.
How long have I been here? Days blur. I remember light once that didn’t come from fire—bright, humming, reflected in something smooth. Glass maybe. Water. Both.
The image evaporates.
“Now,” I murmur the word to steady myself. Pull myself back from that blank space where my past should live. “You are here now.”
The fire has burned low. I add two logs. Not three. Perhaps three days of wood left. Little food. The iron bird’s corpse might yield scraps, but it sits half a day’s walk downslope, and I will not leave her.
Not yet.
Not ever, whispers a voice I don’t recognize. I push the thought away.
Flames rise. I watch sparks climb, too bright. One coal pulses at the heart of the fire—crimson bleeding gold—and my chest tightens in response. I lean closer without deciding to.
Iron. Heat. A voice shouting orders in words I should know—
I squeeze my eyes shut. The flashes die.
When I open them, the fire is only fire.
“Exhaustion.” It has to be that. But my body feels strong. Ready. Like it’s been ready for something I can’t fathom.
Her breath stops.
The silence hits before thought does. I’m across the cave, on my knees, hands pressed to her chest before I choose to move. Her ribs are too fragile beneath my palms. Skin too cold.
No!
The word shapes itself without sound. Heat floods down my arms—not gentle. Demanding. I don’t know what I’m doing, only that she cannot slip away while I have breath to stop it.
Her heartbeat stutters. Once.
Nothing.
I press harder. Heat builds until my hands glow against the borrowed shirt she wears, until air shimmers between us. She cannot… I will not—
Her chest jerks. Air tears into her lungs in a rush that sounds like ripping fabric.
I don’t move. Can’t. My hands remain pressed to her ribs, counting beats I just forced back into rhythm. One. Two. Three. Four.
Real. Alive. Here.
Relief tastes like metal. Or terror at how close I came to failing her.
My hands shake as I pull them back. No marks on her skin. No evidence except my pounding pulse and heat still coiled beneath my palms, reluctant to fade.
I stare at my hands like they belong to someone else.
The body can be coaxed back sometimes.
But this was more than coaxing.
This was refusing to let go.
I sit back on my heels and force myself to breathe. To think. She’s stable now. Breathing steady. I did not harm her with… with whatever that was.
These mountains hold power. I said it to her earlier because I know it to be true. I’ve felt it in the walls around me. Tasted it in the air. A steady hum of something… waiting.
She makes a sound. Soft, wordless. Shifts beneath the cloak.
I’m beside her again before logic can intervene. Without thinking, I brush silky hair from her forehead. Her skin is cool now under my rough palm. Smooth. Healing.
My hand lingers longer than necessary.
Pulse visible through her throat. I count it. One. Two. Three. Four. Strong. She’s a fighter. I catch myself smiling, which seems odd, considering the circumstances.
A crackle runs between us—static charge where our skin almost meets. I pull back. Expect it to fade.
It doesn’t.
The sensation remains. Warmth that has nothing to do with fire and everything to do with proximity. I flex my fingers, trying to shake it loose.
Storm. Charged air. That’s all it is.
But my palm still burns with the echo of contact, and when I glance down, her hand has shifted in sleep. Closer to mine. Like her body knows something her mind doesn’t.
I don’t move my hand away.
She sleeps on, unaware. I watch color slowly return to her cheeks, watch her breathing settle into that steady four-and-six rhythm.
Time drags by. I’ve checked her pulse seven times in the past hour.
There’s no reason. Her breathing is steady now. Color improving. By any measure, she’s stable.
Yet here I sit, fingertips pressed to her wrist again, counting beats I already know are strong.
This is not rational.
I should be planning. Determining our next move. Instead, I’m monitoring the exact rhythm of her heartbeat like it’s information I’ll need to survive.
Perhaps it is.
The thought unsettles me because I don’t know where it comes from. Then again, most of my thoughts come from some unrecognizable place since…
Since what?
My mind refuses to cooperate.
Outside, the rain passes. Smoke curls upward from the fire, carrying a metallic scent I recognize but can’t place. Blood on a blade left too long. Old iron.
I breathe it anyway. Let it anchor me.
Every sound feels painfully loud. Each drip from the cave mouth. Each exhale from her lungs. My pulse, too fast for rest.
Her expression twitches—some dream I can’t follow. She looks like someone who laughs easily. Or did, before the machine fell from the sky and broke her into pieces that I’m still learning to tend.
“Tiger,” she says, her eyes fluttering briefly, unfocused. “Tiger!”
“Rest. You’re safe,” I tell her, smoothing a hand over her forehead. Her skin is soft, like silk. Tension eases from her. Her breath settles once more. I lean back against the wall and continue my vigil.
Color spreads across the horizon through the cave mouth. Dawn or firelight reflected off distant clouds; I can’t tell which.
She sleeps. Her breathing fills the cave with proof that someone survived this.
I remain, back against cold stone, eyes fixed on that wavering line where night hasn’t quite released its hold. But my attention keeps drifting back.
To the way her hand curls into wool. To the faint flush returning. To odd blue strands catching firelight.
I tell myself I’m watching for signs of distress. Monitoring recovery.
But truth sits heavier.
I don’t know how to look away.
Perhaps it’s because she’s the most peculiar female I have ever encountered.
Or maybe it’s something else. That she’s the first human connection I’ve had since this all began.
The fire pops once. Water drips somewhere deep, counting seconds I can’t measure. Her hand shifts again—this time fingers brushing mine where they rest on the wool beside her.
The contact jolts through me. Brief. Accidental. She doesn’t wake.
I should pull back.
I don’t.
And I keep watch. Not because it’s the only thing that makes sense in a world I no longer recognize.
Because it’s the only thing I want to do.