Chapter 6
SIX
SOREIA
My legs give out.
I don’t remember deciding to sit. One moment, I’m standing, watching the last hunter die, and the next, I’m on the ravine floor with my back against the wall and blood dripping from my nose onto my shirt.
The stone is cold beneath me. Small mercy. Everything else burns—my eyes, my sinuses, the inside of my skull where I’ve scraped my reserves raw.
Seven kills. Not all mine, but I anchored most of them. Made endings stick when divine regeneration should have reset the count.
I’ve never anchored that many in a single engagement.
I’ve never survived an engagement that required it.
Kaster stands in the center of the ravine, surrounded by bodies that won’t be getting back up. Blood runs freely from the wound in his side, from the parallel slashes across his shoulder, from a cut above his eye that makes him blink against the red.
He’s breathing hard. The sound fills the ravine, echoing off stone walls until it surrounds me.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks.
Then he turns and looks at me.
His attention lands like a physical weight.
I’ve been looked at before. Weighed. Measured for threat potential and survival likelihood. I know what calculation looks like in a killer’s eyes.
This isn’t calculation.
His gaze moves over me—checking for injuries, probably. Noting damage. The unsentimental arithmetic of whether his investment in keeping me alive has paid off.
But the assessment takes too long. Lingers in places it shouldn’t. His eyes catch on my hands, my throat, the rise and fall of my breathing.
I’m suddenly aware of how close we are.
The ravine isn’t wide. Fifteen feet of killing ground that felt enormous during the fight and now feels like nothing at all.
He’s standing six feet away, close enough that I see the individual drops of blood tracking down his face.
Close enough that fire bleeds off him and reaches me despite the cold stone at my back.
Dragon fire. I noticed it before—that constant blaze that marks his kind. But I didn’t feel it like this. Didn’t let myself register the way it pushes against my skin, fills the space between us, makes the air heavier to breathe.
“You stayed up.”
His voice is rough. Combat-raw. The words don’t sound like praise.
“You told me to.”
“Most people don’t listen.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Don’t know why he’s still looking at me like I’m a puzzle. Don’t know why my heart is pounding harder now than it did during the fight.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Brief. Barely noticeable.
He looks away.
“We need to move.” He straightens and turns toward the ravine’s exit. “More will come.”
I can’t stand.
The realization arrives with embarrassing clarity. My legs won’t take my weight. My magic has hollowed me out, consumed whatever reserves I rebuilt over the last two days, and left nothing but exhaustion in its place.
Kaster makes it three steps before he realizes I’m not following.
He stops. Turns. His expression doesn’t change, but his body goes still in a way that reads as a decision.
“I need a minute.”
“You don’t have a minute.”
“Then I need thirty seconds.”
He closes the distance between us in four strides. Before I can protest, he crouches beside me and slides an arm behind my back, lifting me to my feet with effortless strength.
The contact is—
Heat floods from his arm into my back, cutting through the magic-cold in my limbs. Not just warmth—pressure, solidity, the specific weight of something that has decided not to let me fall.
His body against mine. His arm holding me upright. Dragon fire pouring into my exhaustion-cold limbs. His face inches from mine, near enough that I see the individual lines of old scars across his jaw.
“Walk.” The command comes out low, private. “I’ll hold you up.”
“I don’t need—”
“You don’t have to need it.” His grip tightens. Not painful. Secure. “You have to do it.”
I walk.
We make it out of the ravine before the next wave arrives.
I hear them coming—the distant sound of movement through dead forest, clicks and calls that carry in the unnatural silence. More hunters. Maybe the same pack, rebuilt. Maybe reinforcements.
It doesn’t matter. We’re not staying to find out.
Kaster half-carries me for the first hundred yards, taking most of my weight while maintaining a pace that shouldn’t be possible given his injuries. Blood still runs from the wound in his side. He hasn’t stopped to treat it. Hasn’t acknowledged it exists.
My hand rests against his ribs for balance. I feel the damage beneath his skin—the wet seep of the gash, the way his muscles tense with each step as if fighting through pain he refuses to voice.
He should be resting. Should be letting the wound close before he pushes farther.
He’s not stopping.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Aware.”
“You should—”
“Later.”
The word cuts off discussion. I don’t argue.
We climb out of the ravine through a narrow passage he seems to know by instinct—a gap in the stone walls that leads to higher ground. The terrain shifts beneath my feet, loose rock and ash replacing the bone-littered floor of the kill zone.
By the time we reach stable ground, I can support my own weight again. Barely.
Kaster releases me the moment I stand independently. Steps back. Creates distance.
The absence of his fire is startling. Like stepping out of sunlight into shadow. My body notices the loss before my mind processes it—skin prickling, muscles tensing against the sudden cold.
I don’t ask him to come back.
I don’t let myself think about why I want to.
We find shelter in the hollow of a dead tree—massive trunk split by lightning or age, creating a space large enough for two bodies to fit if they don’t mind proximity.
We mind proximity.
Or at least, we pretend to.
Kaster takes the opening, positioning himself between me and the outside world. His back is to the split in the trunk. His eyes are on the dead forest.
I press against the far curve of the hollow, putting maximum distance between us. The gap is maybe four feet. It feels like nothing.
“They were waiting.” My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by exhaustion. “The hunters. They flanked around your patrol route and cut me off.”
“I know.”
“How did you find me?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. His mouth tightens—consideration, not tension. Choosing his words.
“I backtracked when you didn’t reach the checkpoint.”
“You set checkpoints?”
“Mental ones.” His eyes don’t leave the tree line. “You should have reached the western edge of the forest twelve minutes before you entered that ravine. When you didn’t, I doubled back.”
Twelve minutes. He was tracking my pace without telling me. Calculating my position based on assumptions he never voiced.
“You knew they might try to separate us.”
“It’s what I would do.” A beat. “They’re learning. Adapting strategy based on what worked with the scouts.”
The scouts tested us. Cataloged our patterns. Reported back. And the gods responded by sending creatures specifically designed to exploit the vulnerabilities those reports revealed.
They know I’m the weaker target. Know the Anchor exhausts me. Know that killing me removes Kaster’s ability to make permanent kills.
“They’ll try again.”
“Yes.”
“With bigger monsters.”
“Probably.”
His honesty shouldn’t be reassuring. It is anyway.
“I can’t anchor seven again.” The admission costs more than I want it to. “I barely anchored these. If they send more—”
“Then we adapt.”
We. Not you. We.
I don’t comment on the word choice. Don’t let myself read into it.
His head turns slightly, bringing his profile into sharper relief against the gray light filtering through the split trunk. Blood has dried on his face. The wound above his eye has stopped bleeding, dragon healing finally winning the race against damage.
He catches me looking.
I don’t look away.
I shift against the hollow’s curve, trying to find a position that doesn’t aggravate the bruises forming across my shoulders and back. The stone was harder than I realized during the fight. Now my body is registering every impact.
“You could have left me.”
The words emerge before I can stop them. Not accusation. Question.
His attention sharpens. Those burning eyes finding me in the dimming light.
“In the ravine. You could have kept scouting. Let the hunters finish what they started. I would have taken at least one of them with me—probably more. Would have cost them, even if I died.”
“That’s not—”
“You didn’t owe me intervention. Our arrangement was one day. I proved I could keep pace. You didn’t promise to double back if I got separated.”
Silence stretches between us. The dead forest creaks and settles around our shelter, sounds that might be wind or might be movement.
“You anchor kills.” His voice is level. Controlled. “Without you, they regenerate. I fight the same creatures over and over until I exhaust or they escalate beyond what I can handle.”
“So it’s practical.”
“Yes.”
“Strategic.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing more than that.”
A muscle ticks near his temple.
“Nothing more.”
The lie hangs in the air between us. I don’t call him on it. I don’t have the energy, and I suspect he doesn’t have the language.
Some truths aren’t meant to be spoken. They’re meant to be demonstrated.
He came back for me. Tracked my position. Threw himself into a kill zone against seven hunters because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
That’s not strategy.
I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if he does either.
But I file it away, this moment of silence that says more than words could, and close my eyes against the darkening hollow.
Sleep finds me faster than expected. No dreams of claws. No visions of ending. Just darkness, and the steady sound of his breathing four feet away.
I wake to his hand on my shoulder.
The touch is brief—enough to rouse me, not enough to linger. By the time my eyes open, he’s already back at the hollow’s entrance, silhouette dark against the pre-dawn gray.
“Movement.”
One word. I’m on my feet before the second heartbeat.
My body protests—every muscle stiff, every joint aching. But the magic is there, rebuilt enough overnight to be useful. Not full. Not even close to full. But present.
It will have to be enough.
“How many?”
“Can’t tell yet. Multiple signatures. Coming from the southeast.”
The direction we need to travel. Of course.
I move to stand beside him at the entrance, near enough that our shoulders nearly touch. The dead forest stretches before us, gray trunks fading into mist that clings to the ground.
Shapes move between the trees. Too far to identify. Too coordinated to be random.
“Hunters?”
“Different.” His voice is tight. Focused. “Bigger.”
Bigger than the hunters. The gods are escalating faster than I anticipated.
I look at him. He’s looking at me.
“Stay where I can reach you.”
The words hit like a physical impact. Not request. Not suggestion. Command, yes, but beneath that—
Beneath that, I hear need.
I nod once.
We step out of the hollow as one unit, and move to meet whatever’s coming.