CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aran quickly found a hunting trail in the woods and told us we should stick to it, to avoid robbers or vultures on the main road.
I never knew much about his life—really, or about him—but it seemed so obvious by the way he moved through the forest. He’d spent a lot of time out there, probably with his father and brothers.
He seemed like the kind of man who’d enjoy hunting. The quiet. The control. The chase.
“There’s a lot of these tracks around Novil too. These look really similar. If I’m right, there should be some huts along this trail. Hopefully some water too. I’m almost out,” he said, holding up his waterskin and taking a sip.
Between the two of us, Aran and I probably had enough survival skills to get by. Just stay warm, my father used to say. Stay warm and fed, and you’ll be fine.
Staying warm shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
“Huts?” Will asked. “You mean those nasty old sheds?”
I could see on his face how badly he’d rather sleep at an inn again.
“Unless you’d rather sleep out in the open,” Aran shot back, grinning. “With all the bugs, and snakes, or bears.”
“The ones on the mountain back home weren’t so bad,” I offered. “Maybe these aren’t either. I used to stay in them on hikes when it started pouring.”
“A sleepover,” Aran said, smirking at Will. “Fun.”
Clearly trying to get a rise out of him.
I couldn’t bear seeing them like that.
And the bastard was right.
Soon we stumbled across a hunter’s cabin, or huts, more like.
They didn’t have doors, but they were equipped with four cots, a table and benches, dusty cabinets.
A few moth-eaten blankets hung on nails.
Outside, a burnt-out fire pit. Those kinds of huts were scattered all through the woods, along lakes and mountains and winding trails.
Built for fishermen or hunters to take shelter for a night.
The elements in Vestance were brutal, and without the huts, a lot of people would’ve frozen to death in the winters.
Most travelers didn’t use them anymore. Not if they could afford not to.
Not when inns had blankets and hot stew and doors that locked.
I wanted to stay as far away from inns as possible though.
Far away from towns, and markets. I didn’t trust myself in crowded places after what happened.
Not with the thing inside me. I needed somewhere quiet.
Remote. A place where no one could see me fall apart.
Where I could figure out what I was, if I was anything that could be figured out at all.
The healing, sometimes, felt like a gift.
But the fire? Maybe Aran was right, maybe I was cursed.
If the gods had given it to me, maybe they were laughing at the irony. At the cruelty. If I’d had it earlier, things could’ve been different. I could’ve saved my family. I could’ve burned the vultures.
But I didn’t.
And all I had left was an ache for vengeance.
Vengeance and shame.
But standing there, looking at the little cabin—this tiny, quiet camp nestled deep in the forest—it made me feel like maybe the people who came before us really had cared for each other.
There was an unspoken rule: never take more than you needed.
Always leave the place in good condition for the next person.
And even if you did take something, you paid your respects by bringing something back.
“Thank the gods,” Aran said suddenly, and rushed toward a stone basin carved into the rock, water flowing from a pipe straight out of the hillside.
Clean, clear spring water. There was something like it back home in the mountain near Novil, although that one had been carved prettier.
The water always tasted better than anything else, maybe just because you were so thirsty when you finally found one.
Aran dunked his head under the pipe and let the stream pour directly into his mouth, then straightened up to fill his bottle.
There were fountains like this all throughout the trails in Vestance.
No one owned them. No one tried to. They were gifts from the earth, meant to be shared.
Maybe that’s why I loved my country so much.
It was built by people who believed in taking care of each other.
Who believed the land would take care of us too, if we respected it.
I still believed in that. Aran didn’t.
He wanted to take everything.
“Every man for himself,” he said, eyeing the supplies in the hut.
But I stopped him. Because I didn’t want to live in a world where we couldn’t trust our neighbors. Where most people weren’t good. The Eredians were already trying to break everything we’d spent centuries building.
I wasn’t going to help them.
Aran hadn’t really listened to me before. But… he did. Maybe he was afraid I’d burn him again. Or maybe he just finally respected me. Whatever the reason, it was strange. So much had changed, and yet, some things hadn’t.
For a little while, it felt like it used to. Just the three of us. Me, Will, and Aran. Moving through the world together. We’d had a special bond after Licia vanished. It was like we were survivors of the same wound. And we’d needed each other, even if Aran acted like he didn’t.
Losing a friend that young, never knowing what happened to them…
That kind of thing doesn’t go away. It scars you.
And with Aran back, there were moments—small, slippery ones—where it felt like nothing had changed, and I’d catch myself forgetting.
But then I’d remember.
I wasn’t the same Kera anymore.
And he wasn’t the same Aran.
His face had changed too. The boyish softness was gone. There was a beard growing along his jaw. His hair always falling into his eyes.
And he drank.
Something had been feeling off between me and Will too.
He kept his distance in a way he never had before.
I wasn’t sure if he was afraid of me, or afraid for me, or if it had nothing to do with me at all.
Maybe it was everything we’d been through.
Something inside him had fractured in a way I couldn’t fix.
He was still furious about Aran, that much was clear.
I heard them arguing over Aran drinking during his first night watch.
Will had shouted that it wasn’t safe, and Aran snapped back that all soldiers drank, so why couldn’t he?
I didn’t step in. As long as they weren’t tearing each other apart, I counted it as a win.
Still, it struck me as strange how quickly Aran had forgiven me.
I don’t know why. After everything, he should’ve run.
I would’ve run. If someone had left me screaming on the ground, skin blistered and smoking, I’d be halfway across the continent by now.
But Aran didn’t go anywhere. He stuck around.
It was like he saw something in me. A mystery he couldn’t walk away from.
A puzzle he needed to solve, even if it meant getting hurt again.
One morning, he told me to come with him to a nearby village.
No explanation. Just “Come on, get up. You’ll want to see this.”
Will wasn’t really speaking to me—still furious, still grieving—so I went.
Not because I trusted Aran, but because…
I didn’t feel like I’d explode if I did.
I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t even tired for once.
I wasn’t dreaming. I was awake. Calm. Present.
And that felt rare enough to follow it wherever it wanted to take me.
I kept asking where we were going, but Aran only grinned and said, “It’s a surprise.”
A surprise? Like I hadn’t just almost murdered him. Twice. He had a surprise for me?
I stared at the back of his head as he led the way, completely unbothered. Just whistling softly like we were out on some leisurely stroll and not on the run from a town I may or may not have set on fire.
I couldn’t make sense of him. Aran was one of those rare things in life I never quite managed to grasp, because there were so many versions of him.
The soft, sensual one I’d caught glimpses of when he was with Selma.
The ruthless, wild one who’d nearly died picking a fight with soldiers.
The broken version, the one who let Will beat him bloody and didn’t even try to fight back.
And now there was this weird, almost brotherly version of him.
I guess that was the version he'd been around Will. The Aran that made Will demand I healed him. Aran was showing that side to me, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
I never knew which Aran I was going to get.
And after what I’d done—after what he knew I was capable of—why the hel was he even near me?
Let alone dragging me somewhere with a godsdamn surprise?
There had to be a catch.
Then a small village just… appeared at the edge of the forest. It was almost hidden, like it didn’t want to be found. No main roads passed by, and I guess that’s why it felt so desolate.
As long as I kept my distance it would be fine. As long as I stayed awake. Because when I was awake, I could be careful. I could think. The danger only came when I slipped, into dreams, into memories, into moments where the world blurred.
The village was smaller than Novil for sure, but there was a market, tucked between a handful of crooked old buildings.
I expected to find the usual: barking dogs, market noise, children darting between carts, a soldier barking orders.
But there was none of that, just silence.
Not heavy, not dangerous silence, but peaceful.
Like the war had never touched that part of the country. Like it had been spared.