Chapter 12
TWELVE
KASTER
The fight is brutal.
I abandon technique. Abandon strategy. Abandon everything except the single imperative burning through every nerve: keep it away from her.
The Executor’s talons tear through my shoulder. I take the wound and keep pressing. Its teeth find my forearm. I let them sink in and use the anchor point to drive my other hand through its eye socket.
Blood. Screaming. God-made flesh trying to regenerate around my talons while I tear and tear and tear.
Soreia’s voice cuts through the red haze.
“Kaster—above!”
I look up.
A third Executor descends from the ridgeline—smaller still, built for speed, angling not toward me but toward her. The others were distraction. This one is the killing blow.
Time slows.
I’m three feet from the second Executor. Five feet from Soreia. The third is fifteen feet up and dropping fast, trajectory locked, talons extended for the strike that will end her.
I can’t reach her in time.
I can’t stop it.
I can’t—
My body moves anyway.
I throw myself toward her position with everything I have left. The second Executor’s teeth tear through my side as I pass—I feel ribs crack, feel flesh part, feel poison flood fresh wounds—and I don’t care. None of it matters. The only thing that matters is reaching her before the third one does.
The Executor lands.
I land on top of her.
The impact drives the breath from both of us. Stone scrapes my back as I roll us sideways, talons raking the ground where her head was a heartbeat ago. I feel blood—mine—soaking through my shirt, pooling between us. Feel her gasp against my throat as my weight pins her to the stone.
The third Executor turns.
I’m on my feet before it completes the motion. Wounded. Poisoned. Bleeding from a dozen places that should have killed me. And I don’t care. Don’t register the pain. Don’t acknowledge the damage.
All I see is the creature between me and her.
All I feel is the absolute certainty that it’s going to die.
I don’t use a blade. I let the dragon bleed through—teeth elongating into serrated daggers, skin hardening into obsidian plating. I tear into the Executor with the raw, animal hunger of a beast that hasn’t been fed in a thousand years.
Not fighting. Destroying. There’s a difference. Fighting implies strategy, implies goal beyond immediate devastation, implies the possibility of retreat or negotiation.
I don’t retreat. I finish things.
The Executor tries to regenerate. Power floods its wounds, tries to knit flesh that I keep tearing open. I feel Soreia’s magic reach toward it—weak, flickering, but present—and the knitting falters.
The creature screams.
I don’t stop.
When it’s over, I’m standing in a ruin of ichor and torn armor. The second Executor lies behind me, still twitching—not dead, but damaged enough that it won’t rise quickly. The first hasn’t moved since I tore out its spine.
Three Executors. Gods-made killing machines designed to end threats permanently.
I’ve destroyed them all.
The realization should bring satisfaction. Instead, it brings cold clarity: they’ll reform. Without her magic to anchor the deaths, they’ll reform and come again. The fight isn’t over. It’s never over.
I turn to check on Soreia.
She’s sitting up. Pale. Shaking worse than before. But her eyes—
Her eyes are locked on me.
She’s not flinching. Not pulling back. Her hands are loose in her lap, not raised for magic she can barely access.
She’s watching my shifted hands, the ichor coating them, the ruin I’ve made of three god-forged things, and she looks the way a person looks when a question they’ve been carrying finally gets answered.
“Can you walk?”
The words come out rough. Animal. I taste copper on my tongue—my blood or hers, I can’t tell anymore.
She nods once. Tries to stand. Her legs give, and I’m there before she hits stone.
“The guard station.” I angle us toward the structure ahead. “We need shelter.”
She doesn’t argue.
She leans into me instead.
The guard station offers minimal shelter—four walls, partial roof, no door. I clear the interior before letting Soreia enter.
She lowers herself to the floor against the most intact wall. Her breathing is shallow—the kind that comes when the body has nothing left to give.
“The poison.” Her words rasp. “Your wounds aren’t healing.”
“They’ll heal.” Eventually. Maybe. The divine toxin is still working through my system, fighting my regeneration to a standstill. “Don’t waste your magic on me.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were thinking about it.”
Silence. She looks away first.
I position myself at the entrance. Back against stone. Eyes on the path outside. Every angle covered, every threat avenue monitored.
Standard defensive positioning. Nothing unusual.
The lie sits poorly.
I’ve never kept watch like this—not with this intensity, not with this desperation, not with this need to keep my eyes open even when exhaustion pulls at my awareness. My body demands rest. The poison damage requires sleep to finish healing.
I refuse.
Because she’s behind me, and she’s vulnerable, and the idea of sleeping while she’s unprotected makes my skin crawl in ways I won’t examine.
Night falls.
The temperature drops as darkness claims the pass. Cold enough to see breath. Cold enough that Soreia’s shivering becomes audible despite her attempts to hide it.
I should add my body heat. Dragon fire runs hot enough to warm a person without burning them.
I don’t move toward her.
I don’t trust myself to stop at heat.
The hours blur into each other. Moon rising. Stars wheeling overhead through gaps in the ruined roof. Wind howling through the peaks with sounds that might be weather or might be an approaching threat.
I watch it all.
Behind me, Soreia’s breathing steadies. Deepens. The rhythm of genuine sleep rather than the fitful dozing she’s managed since the shelter on the plains.
She needs rest. She burned herself hollow keeping me alive.
The cold deepens before dawn—always coldest in the hour before sunrise—and Soreia’s shivering intensifies despite her sleep.
I should wake her. Tell her to move, generate body heat through motion.
I close the distance instead.
My body makes the decision without consulting my mind. One moment, I’m at the entrance, watching the path. The next, I’m beside her, close enough that my heat reaches her skin.
She shifts in her sleep. Turns toward me. Her face relaxes as the shivering eases.
I don’t bother with an explanation. Not even to myself.
I watch her sleep.
The first rays of sunlight touch the mountains. Gold light spilling over gray stone, turning the pass from hostile to merely desolate. Birds call from somewhere in the distance—actual living birds, the first I’ve heard since the plains.
Life continues. Despite the gods. Despite the monsters. Despite everything that wants us dead.
She continues.
The relief that brings is so profound, it borders on pain.
She wakes with the sun.
Her eyes open slowly—confusion first, then recognition, then awareness of how close I am. Close enough that my body heat has been keeping her alive through the coldest hours.
“You didn’t sleep.”
She says it without inflection. Certain.
“I don’t sleep when there’s threat potential.”
“There’s always threat potential.”
“Then I don’t sleep much.”
She studies my face. I keep my expression neutral. Controlled.
“The poison—”
“Fading.” True enough. My healing has finally begun winning the war, wounds closing in increments small enough to ignore. “Another day and it’ll be gone.”
“You need rest to heal properly.”
“I need to keep watch.”
“I can take a shift.”
“No.”
The refusal lands like a blade. She blinks.
“That’s not sustainable.”
“It doesn’t need to be sustainable. It needs to work until we’re clear of the pass.”
Her expression shifts. I watch her weigh my words, my tone, the absolute refusal to share a burden that should logically be shared.
“You’re not going to sleep at all, are you.”
I don’t answer.
I don’t have to.
We move at midday.
The path ahead is clear—no Executors visible, no movement on the ridgelines, no sound except wind and grinding stone. The bodies of the creatures I killed are gone.
We reach the end of the pass by late afternoon. The path widens into a shallow valley—dead grass, scattered boulders, the remains of what might have been a waystation before violence reduced it to rubble.
I should feel relief. The worst of the ambush terrain is behind us.
I feel the distance between us—four feet, maybe five—like an itch under my skin.
Too far. If we’re hit—
I close the gap without deciding to.
Soreia glances up as I fall into step beside her. Close. Closer than the situation warrants.
“Problem?”
“Open terrain ahead. Better to stay tight.” True enough. The rest of it stays behind my teeth.
Her gaze lingers on mine for a long moment.
“Okay.”
Night arrives.
We make camp in the ruins of the old waystation—two walls standing, partial roof. I scout the perimeter while Soreia settles against the most intact wall.
“You should eat.” I lower myself beside her, near enough that our knees nearly touch. “Your magic draws from physical reserves.”
“I ate this morning.”
“That was twelve hours ago.”
She makes a sound that might be amusement. Pulls dried meat from her pack and tears off a piece.
I watch her chew. Watch her swallow. Watch the column of her throat work and the way her lips curve afterward.
She sleeps within arm’s reach.
Curled on her side, facing me, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Vulnerable. Open. Trusting me with her unconscious body in ways that make my spine tighten.
I position myself between her and the darkness. Back against stone. Eyes on the darkness beyond our partial shelter.
Sleep pulls at me. The poison is mostly gone now. My body needs rest. Demands it. Threatens to shut down whether I consent or not.
I refuse.