Selah
The common room smells like dying smoke and last night’s ale.
The fire has burned down to coals beneath the gray morning light.
Corvin sets three mugs of kaffo on the table without asking.
Brinna takes the chair across from me, spins it around, and straddles it like she’s settling in for a performance.
I wrap both hands around the mug and tell them what they need to know. Not everything, but enough.
“I worked as an archivist’s assistant for a noble house,” I begin.
“The kind of archive that exists to protect old money and older names. Eight months ago, I found a secondary registry. Hundreds of names, all of them mixed-blood families going back generations. They were of gargoyle descent mixed with dark elf nobility. Their unions violate bloodline law. There were corresponding death records filed alongside them.”
The fire pops softly. Neither of them interrupts.
“This relic was stored in the same locked room,” I say.
“I’d seen it used before. They pressed it against a man’s wrist, and the stone went black.
I didn’t understand what that meant until I read the ledger.
It identifies forbidden bloodlines. They were using it to find families and erase them.
The children too. So I took it and ran.”
“Well,” Brinna says. “That’s a lot.”
“Yes.”
“And now an entire noble house wants you dead.” She tilts her head, considering. “And you’ve brought their hunting relic into our inn. And… there’s him too.”
Droza stands against the wall of the room, arms crossed, gold eyes fixed on the space around me like he’s cataloguing every potential threat in it. He exists in the room the way a storm exists on the horizon.
“He followed you down from your room,” Brinna says pleasantly. “Followed you through the hall. Stood outside the kitchen door until you came in here.” She lifts her mug. “Rennic came by about the morning delivery and couldn’t get any words out.”
I don’t look at Droza. I can feel him watching anyway.
“He’s not—” I start an explanation, but she cuts me off.
“I don’t need to know what it is,” Brinna says. “I’m not interested in the magical explanation.” The smile that crosses her face is slow and thoroughly entertained. “I’m interested in the fact that he just turned his head to look at Corvin for sparing a glance at you.”
I finally look over. Droza has, in fact, fixed Corvin with an expression of silent, unreasonable evaluation.
Corvin looks unruffled. He has probably survived worse.
“This is going to be a problem,” I say.
“Oh, absolutely,” Brinna agrees. She sounds delighted about it.
“I don’t mean to make trouble,” I say.
“It’s no trouble. This inn has always welcomed any traveler who needed rest. Stay as long as you need,” Corvin says.
Either way, I’m not comforted. These are good people here, and I feel like I’m putting them in danger by staying.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
Gullhaven never goes fully quiet, but there’s a lull between the lunch crowd and the evening rush.
Corvin retreats to his ledgers, and Brinna disappears somewhere she doesn’t explain.
The common room thins out to a handful of sailors nursing their ales in comfortable silence.
My gargoyle shadow is busy keeping an eye on them.
I take my coat, the relic, and nothing else.
The back door opens into a narrow alleyway behind the inn that leads toward the harbor road. From there it’s a straight walk north along the cliffs to where the road branches, one fork heading inland toward the trade routes, the other dropping down toward the water.
I make it approximately four minutes before the tether pulls tight.
A dull pressure starts behind my sternum, the same low ache I’ve been carrying all morning. As I move further from the inn, it sharpens. By the time I reach the cliff road, it has become something closer to a hand closing slowly around my ribs.
I pull my coat tighter and focus on the road ahead, trying to ignore the sensation climbing steadily up my throat.
I don’t hear footsteps. He doesn’t make footsteps, exactly. What I hear is the specific, unmistakable sound of something very large landing with controlled precision on the path behind me.
“I knew you’d follow me,” I say, without turning around.
“Then you were not as clever as you believed,” Droza says, “because you left anyway.”
I turn to face him. He stands closer than I expected, wings spread slightly against the wind. His gold eyes remain flat and unimpressed.
“I’m not running,” I say. “I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”
“You left without telling anyone.”
“That’s generally how leaving works when you don’t want to be stopped.”
His jaw tightens. “There are hunters in this region.”
“I’m aware. That’s why I’m going.” I force my voice to stay calm. “Every day I stay here puts these people at risk. Vaedrin knows I came through Gullhaven. He’ll burn the whole harbor down to find me if he has to.”
“So your solution is to walk out alone onto an open road.”
“My solution is to stop making other people pay for my problem.”
When Droza speaks, his voice has dropped to something quieter and considerably more dangerous.
“You will not last a day.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you are human. Injured. And there are at least two dark elf scouts who passed through the northern road this morning.” He takes one step forward. “I know you were frightened enough walking out here that I felt it from inside the inn.”
My face burns somewhere between anger and embarrassment. I take a step back, and my heel finds the end of the path where it crumbles toward the cliff.
Droza moves before I finish the step. His entire body shifts, wings spreading slightly wider and weight dropping forward.
I look down at my feet, then back up at him. “I’m not going to fall.”
He says nothing, but he doesn’t relax either. I take another small step toward the edge, testing. His eyes track the movement immediately. His hands, crossed over his chest until now, drop to his sides.
“Step back from the edge.”
“I’m three feet away.”
“Step back.”
We stand there, wind between us, and the argument dissolves into silence.
Then he goes still in a different way entirely. His head turns slightly toward the northern road. His nostrils flare.
I hear it a second later. Voices, low and unhurried, come from the path above us. Dark elf scouts move like they own the ground they walk on, because they do.
There is only one place to hide. A shallow cut in the cliffside is barely wide enough to disappear into shadow as long as no one looks too closely.
Droza moves first, and I follow because there is no other option.
The space is too narrow for him. His wings fold tightly against his back as he turns outward toward the road, shielding me against the rock wall behind him.
He smells rain, stone, and salt air.
The voices drift closer, pause, then continue past.
Neither of us moves.
Cold wind lashes across the cliffs, but heat radiates steadily from his body beside mine. I hate how quickly I notice it. I realize my hand is gripping the sleeve of his coat. I let go immediately.
“This changes nothing,” I say quietly. “I’m still a danger to these people.”
“Yes,” Droza says, “but you do not get to make that decision alone.”
He steps back onto the path first, scanning the road above before he moves. I follow, and the tether in my chest settles back into its familiar ache.