Chapter 8
K.
We’ve been walking for an hour when Mara finally speaks.
“You can put me down now. I can walk.”
I glance down at her. Color has returned to her cheeks, but I see the tightness around her eyes. The careful way she holds herself against my chest.
“You are still weak.”
“I’m bored.” She shifts in my arms. “And you’ve been carrying me like a toddler. Your arms have to be tired.”
They aren’t. I could carry her for days without strain, and this knowledge sits as certain as the mountain beneath my feet.
Another impossibility. Another piece of wrongness I can’t explain.
“I do not tire easily,” I say.
She studies my face, and I see her processing this. Adding it to whatever mental list she’s building of my strangeness.
“Right.” She says it slowly. “Because of course you don’t.”
I find a flat section of trail and set her down carefully. She winces as her boots touch ground, and I keep one hand on her elbow until she’s steady.
“Better?” I ask.
“Much.” She tests her weight, rolling her shoulders. “See? Totally fine.”
The lie is obvious. But I recognize pride when I see it. She needs to prove she can manage, even if her body argues otherwise.
“We move slowly, then,” I say. “Rest when needed.”
“Deal.”
We walk. I stay close enough to catch her if she stumbles, far enough to let her maintain the independence she clearly needs.
When she slips on a loose rock, I reach for her hand to steady her. It’s small in mine. I file away each detail without deciding to—the way her fingers curl into my palm, the pulse visible at her wrist, the warmth of her skin against mine that somehow manages to register despite my own heat.
The terrain climbs steadily. Pine gives way to scrub, then exposed granite. Wind carries the scent of snow from higher elevations; sharp, clean, promising cold I won’t feel.
Mara feels it, though. I see her hunch against the wind, arms wrapped around herself.
I shrug out of the leather vest, drape it over her shoulders. It swallows her frame, but she pulls it close with visible relief.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
I nod and keep walking.
My mind hasn’t stopped churning since we left the crash site. The operatives below. Mara’s terror when she saw them. Her insistence that we hide rather than seek help.
They’re dangerous. Connected to things she can’t explain.
What things? And why can’t she explain them?
I study her from the corner of my eye as we navigate a switchback. She’s focused on the path, brow furrowed with concentration. But beneath that, I see the tension. The guilt.
She knows more than she’s saying.
The geological survey story never sat right. Too rehearsed. Too bright. And her reaction to those men… that wasn’t surprise. That was recognition.
She knows who they are.
She knows what they’re searching for.
And she’s keeping that knowledge from me, and every instinct I don’t remember developing screams at me to demand truth. To force her to trust me with whatever she’s hiding.
But I don’t. Because somewhere beneath conscious thought, I understand: if I push too hard, she’ll run. And the idea of her leaving—of losing her to danger I can’t prevent—makes something primal rise in my chest.
Possession. Protection. Something older than memory.
The intensity of it catches me off guard. This need to keep her close, to shield her from threats I barely understand myself.
I have no right to this feeling. No claim on this woman I pulled from fire two days ago.
Yet here it sits, immovable as stone.
“K?”
I realize I’ve stopped walking, hand pressed unconsciously to my chest.
“What is it?” Mara’s watching me, concern clear on her face.
I search for words to describe what I’m feeling. That same pull from earlier—distant now, faded to almost nothing. But still there. Still present at the edge of my awareness.
“The pull,” I say. “From before. I feel it again.”
Her expression shifts. Concern. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” I drop my hand, resume walking. “It feels like… an echo. Of something that happened. Something that—” I struggle to articulate sensation without context. “Something that resolved.”
“Resolved how?”
“I do not know.” The frustration bleeds through despite my effort to contain it. “I know nothing. Only that something reached for me, and I answered. And now it’s—” I gesture vaguely. “Satisfied. Or relieved. Or simply gone.”
She’s quiet for several steps. Then: “Maybe it’s nothing. Just your mind trying to make sense of everything. The crash, the stress, losing your memory.”
Reasonable explanation. Logical dismissal.
But the careful neutrality in her voice tells me she doesn’t believe it any more than I do.
Another lie. Another deflection.
We’ve been walking in silence for twenty minutes when I catch movement below.
I stop, one hand on Mara’s arm. She freezes immediately.
“What—?”
“Quiet.” I pull her down behind an outcropping, scan the valley below.
There.
The operatives. Still searching the lower slopes, but their pattern has shifted. More spread out now. Systematic grid search rather than a focused sweep.
I count them automatically. Nine visible. Tactical spacing. Two on perimeter watch, seven working the grid. Professional. Disciplined.
Not rescue.
Hunt.
“They expand their search,” I murmur.
Mara peers over the rock, and I see her face drain of color.
“We need to go,” she says, voice tight. “K, we need to move. Now.”
The urgency in her voice carries weight beyond simple fear. This is specific terror. Intimate knowledge of what those men represent.
“You know them.” I make it a statement, not a question.
She pulls back from the edge, won’t meet my eyes. “I know they’re dangerous. That’s enough.”
“Is it?”
“K, please. We need distance. We need—” She stops, swallows hard. “We just need to go.”
I study her face.
I could press. Could demand she trust me with whatever truth she’s protecting.
But movement catches my eye—one of the operatives turning, radio raised. Speaking to someone I can’t see.
Decision point.
I rise, pull Mara to her feet. “We go. But not back. They search the area we came from.”
“Then where?”
The certainty arrives fully formed, clear as the path beneath my feet.
“There is a place,” I say. “Beyond the high pass. A settlement. Safe.”
I don’t know how I know this. The knowledge simply is—as real as my heartbeat, as certain as my name is lost.
Mara stares at me. “A settlement? Your home? Your village?”
I test the certainty, searching for detail. Find only impression: stone buildings, wood smoke, a valley sheltered between peaks that mirror each other. Familiar but forgotten.
“Perhaps,” I say carefully. “I do not remember it clearly. But I know it exists. And I know—” I pause, searching for words that won’t sound insane. “I know it is where we should go.”
“Okay.” She nods quickly. “Yes. Okay. If you know where it is, we go there. Someone might recognize you. Might help.”
The relief in her voice is unmistakable.
She wants this. Wants me to reach this place I somehow know exists.
Why?
What does she think waits there? What does she hope will happen when we arrive?
I file this observation alongside the others. Pattern without meaning. Pieces that don’t yet connect.
“Then we move,” I say. “Quickly. Before they expand their perimeter further.”
I take her hand—not carrying her this time, but guiding. She follows without protest, and we navigate away from the operatives below. Higher into terrain that grows increasingly difficult.
Mara struggles. I see it in her breathing, the way her stride falters. But she doesn’t complain. Doesn’t ask to stop.
Pride. Or fear. Possibly both.
After another hour, she stumbles.
I catch her before she falls, one arm around her waist. Feel her wince despite her attempt to hide it.
“Enough,” I say. “You need rest.”
“I can keep—”
“You need rest.” Firm but gentle. “We have distance now. We can afford to stop.”
She wants to argue. I see it in her eyes. But exhaustion wins.
“Okay.” The word comes out thin. “Just… just for a few minutes.”
I guide her to a flat section of trail, help her sit against a large stone. She closes her eyes, head tipped back, breathing carefully measured.
I scan our surroundings while she rests. We’ve climbed above the tree line now. Exposed rock and hardy scrub, wind constant from the west. Good visibility in all directions.
No sign of pursuit. Yet.
I return to Mara, crouch beside her. “How is the pain?”
“Manageable.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “Better than it should be.”
“The healing continues.”
“Yeah.” She touches her chest gently. “I don’t know how. But yeah.”
I watch her face, and something in me tightens. She shouldn’t have survived the crash. Shouldn’t be walking, talking, breathing.
Yet here she sits, healing from injuries that should have killed her.
Because of fire that moved like something alive. That wrapped around her instead of consuming her.
Fire I somehow knew wouldn’t harm her.
The fire chose, I told her. The words came unbidden, true despite lacking understanding.
What does that mean? How can fire choose anything?
And what does it say about me that I knew—absolutely knew—it would protect rather than destroy?
“K?”
I realize I’ve been staring. “Yes?”
“You okay? You look…” She trails off, searching my face. “Like you’re a thousand miles away.”
“I am… thinking.”
“About?”
About the impossibility of your survival. About the operatives hunting us. About the pull I felt, connecting me to someone or something I can’t name. About my body’s wrong capabilities and the settlement I shouldn’t know exists.
About the lies you’re telling and why you won’t trust me with the truth.
About the irrational need clawing through my chest to keep you safe, to keep you close, to ensure nothing—not those men below, not the mountain, not your own stubbornness—takes you from me.
“Many things,” I say instead.
She studies me. Something shifts in her expression—awareness, maybe. Recognition of the weight hanging between us.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “Me too.”