CHAPTER 6
The river should have soothed her.
It didn’t.
Faelith knelt at the water’s edge long after her men had settled into their brief rest, watching the current rush over stones worn smooth by centuries. Sunlight glinted off the surface, bright enough to sting her eyes. She blinked hard, but the burn in her ribs didn’t ease her blurred vision.
She could still feel the Changelings’ scream vibrating in her bones. Still felt the weight of her men’s bodies as they fell. She still felt Cian’s arms around her as she nearly broke apart.
That last memory unsettled her most of all.
Kneeling by the river, Faelith stared at her wavering reflection, her thoughts tangled. She had always been taught to distrust humans, especially those with swords; her people’s history was full of reasons why.
That suspicion had shaped every cautious word and wary glance. Yet the memory of Cian stepping between her and the Changelings broke through those lessons with unexpected force.
She pressed her fingers to the icy water, watching the ripples fracture her reflection, and wondered how it was possible to feel both fear and gratitude toward someone she was supposed to despise.
Part of her clung stubbornly to distrust, reminding herself of all the stories, even her own memories.
The warnings passed from elder to child, the sharp lessons of betrayal she had learned by heart.
But another part, a quieter and insistent voice, whispered that maybe there was more to people than the stories allowed.
Faelith remembered Cian’s hands pulling her up, the look in his eyes when he faced the monsters at her side. In that moment, he had not seen her as weak or helpless, but as someone worth saving.
The cold water on her hands made her realize that what happened last night was starting to blur the lines she had always drawn. Perhaps trust and fear could both exist, sharing space in the same heart, even when she least expected it. That thought unsettled her more than anything else.
She didn’t know what to do with that.
Faelith dipped her fingers into the river, letting the cold numb her skin. Her reflection wavered on the surface, pale and hollow-eyed, streaked with dirt and grief. She barely recognized herself. She cupped a handful of water and began to clean her face.
Behind her, she sensed movement. She didn’t need to turn to know who it was. His presence pressed against her awareness, subtle but impossible to ignore.
He didn’t come closer. He didn’t speak. But she felt him watching her, the way one watches a wounded animal—careful, cautious, unsure whether to approach or keep distance.
She hated not knowing which she wanted.
When they mounted again, she kept to the front. It was easier to lead than to think. Easier to watch the trail than to feel the weight of the man riding behind her, silent as a shadow.
The forest changed as they traveled west. The pines here were younger, their trunks slimmer, their bark pale and unweathered. Branches tangled low and close, crowding the path as if the trees hadn’t yet learned to give the world space.
Sunlight slipped through in quick, uneven flashes, thin bright streaks that flickered across the ground rather than the steady gold of older woods.
Her men rode quietly. The kind of quiet that came after loss, when words felt like an intrusion.
Hours passed. The rhythm of the horses’ hooves should have lulled her into calm, but her mind kept circling back to the same impossible questions.
Why had he saved her? Why had he stayed?
Cian had every reason to run the moment the Changelings descended. He could have vanished into the trees, left them to die, and no one would have been left alive to blame him. Instead, he had fought like a man detached, like someone who had seen horrors and never wavered.
She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand him.
A branch snapped somewhere to their right. Faelith stiffened and raised a hand to halt the group. Her men reached for their weapons. Cian was already turning his horse toward the sound, eyes narrowed, scanning the shadows.
“Deer,” he murmured after a moment, pointing towards the brush. “Two of them. They’re moving off.”
She didn’t know how he figured it out. She didn’t ask. But when a buck and doe broke through ahead, pausing just long enough to be seen before bounding off into the trees, the tightness in her shoulders eased.
If the deer felt safe enough to graze nearby, then for the moment, so were they.
They rode on.
As the sun fell lower, the forest grew denser. The air grew cooler. Faelith’s thoughts roamed despite her efforts to anchor them.
Every time her eyes drifted closed, she saw the moment Cian had grabbed her on the cliff, his hand closing over her wrist, his body standing over her as the Changelings lunged.
She remembered the heat of him, the strength in his arms, the way he held her as she trembled with rage and grief.
She remembered feeling safe.
That frightened her more than anything.
Near dusk, they stopped to water the horses again. Faelith dismounted, her legs stiff from hours in the saddle. She walked a short distance from the group, needing time for herself, needing air.
The forest was quiet here, the hush of evening settling over the trees like a blanket.
She didn’t hear Cian approach. She only sensed him, an awareness that had become familiar, prickling along her spine.
“You’re favoring your left side,” he said quietly.
She turned, startled by his observation. She had thought she’d hidden it well. He stood several paces away, arms crossed, his expression carved from stone. His gaze flicked to her side.
“You took a hit last night,” he said. “You’re moving differently.”
“I’m fine,” she replied, sharper than she intended.
His brow lifted. “You’re not.”
She bristled. “I don’t need your concern.”
A beat passed. Then, a quiet confession.
“Bit late for that, isn’t it?”
The words hit her harder than they should have. Not for what he said, but for the way he said it. Flat. Honest. No shield, no softness. Just the truth laid bare between them.
She didn’t know how to respond.
Cian stepped closer, slow enough that she could have stopped him if she wanted to. She didn’t. He reached out, hesitated for a heartbeat, then brushed his fingers lightly along her side, just above the bruise she had been trying to ignore.
The touch was barely there, a whisper of contact, but it sent a shiver through her.
“You’re hurt,” he said, voice low. “You should let someone look at it.”
She swallowed. “And you think that someone should be you?”
“No.” His gaze held hers, steady and unflinching. “But you won’t let anyone else near you, will you?”
Her throat tightened.
He wasn’t wrong.
She stepped back, breaking the moment before it could turn into something she wasn’t ready for. “We should keep moving. We need to reach the foothills before nightfall.”
Cian didn’t argue. He gave a small nod and stepped aside, letting her pass. But as she walked by him, she felt his gaze on her. He watched, trying to understand her as much as she was trying to understand him.
They rode until the sky turned violet and the first stars pricked through the canopy. Faelith’s men set up a small camp, their movements slow with exhaustion. She helped where she could, though her ribs protested with every breath.
Cian kept to the edge of the clearing. He had lit his own fire and sharpened a blade with slow, deliberate strokes.
The sound was rhythmic, almost soothing. She found herself watching him when she shouldn’t have been. Watching the way the firelight caught the shadows in his hair. Watching the way his jaw tightened when he thought no one was looking. Watching the way he moved—controlled, precise, dangerous.
He didn’t look like a man who saved people.
He didn’t look like a man who would have held her as gently as he did.
And yet he had.
He was a prisoner the humans arrested for murder, yet she couldn’t see that in him either.
She needed answers.
Faelith approached him and slid down the trunk of the tree across from where he sat. She drew a steadying breath and began to offer an olive branch. “I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you for saving me… for saving my men.”
Cian kept his eyes on the blade he was sharpening. His posture stayed tense and deliberately distant, and he gave her no reply.
The blade whispered against the whetstone, steady as a heartbeat. Only when Faelith settled did the rhythm slow, then stop. His thumb brushed the edge, testing its sharpness, as if he were stalling while he searched for the right words.
“You don’t owe me thanks,” he said quietly.
“It’s not the only thing I wish to discuss.”
A faint exhale left him, almost a laugh, almost a warning. “No. It isn’t.”
The fire popped. Shadows shifted across his face, carving out the hard lines she had been studying when she knew she should not. He did not turn toward her, but she felt the tension in him, coiled and wary.
“Cian,” she said, calmer now. “Who are you?”
His jaw flexed. “Just a man, surviving one day at a time.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He finally looked at her then, truly looked. His eyes were sharp and assessing, as though he were deciding how much truth she could bear.
A shiver moved through her.
He set the blade aside and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, gathering himself.
For a long moment, Cian did not speak.
The fire cracked and hissed, throwing restless light across his face. It caught the tension in his jaw, and the faint tremor in the hand still curled around the whetstone.
He looked like a man bracing for a blow he had already taken a hundred times.
When he finally exhaled, it was slow and deliberate, as though he were forcing the air out of lungs that did not want to release it.
“You want the truth,” he said. “Not the story the humans told. Not the version I let people believe because it is easier than explaining the rot underneath.”
Faelith stayed quiet. She let a small nod preserve the silence around them.