Oliver released a breath he’d been holding too long. “This trial…” His voice was quiet, stripped bare. “There’s no way around it. I will be sentenced to death.”
“No,” I said immediately. “You won’t. I won’t let that happen.”
Castor stepped closer, placing a steady hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “You aren’t going anywhere, son,” he said. “We will make sure all three of us leave with that shard.”
Oliver’s shoulders sagged, tension bleeding out of him in a way that hurt to watch.
The guard cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “Best get you to your rooms.” His hand brushed my arm.
I whirled. “Touch me again,” I said quietly, “and you won’t have a hand left to lift.”
He withdrew his hand quickly. For a beat, he scanned me. Assessing if the threat was real. I met his eyes. Calm, steady. He looked away.
“Apologies, miss. Please follow me.” He moved to the front and led us into the east hall.
We followed him down a long corridor lined with doors.
Too many.
Too close together.
The air smelled like stone and oil. Every door felt like a cage.
My bare feet slapped softly against the cold floor.
“Miss,” the guard said, glancing back over his shoulder, “if I may ask, where are your shoes?”
“I like to feel the ground beneath my feet,” I said.
Beside me, Oliver exhaled, a sound that almost became a laugh.
The guard stopped.
The corridor stretched ahead of us, long and bare, built to swallow sound.
“What’s so funny?” he asked Oliver.
His hand hovered near his sword.
I stepped between them.
I didn’t rush.
Didn’t raise my voice.
I simply occupied the space.
The guard looked down at me. Young. Overconfident. Certain, the world still worked the way he’d been taught.
“I suggest you keep walking,” I said.
He smiled.
Not kindly.
“Per our laws,” he said, “I don’t understand why you still stand.”
His gaze slid past me to Oliver.
“Especially you,” he added. “You should be hanging at the front gate by now.”
I felt Oliver’s panic spike through the bond, sharp, involuntary. A remembered noose tightening around his neck.
I moved closer.
Not fast.
Close enough that the guard’s breath changed.
His hand tightened on his sword.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
My voice was calm. Too calm.
“He lives.”
I tilted my head slightly, studying him. Not with anger.
With assessment.
“That’s not a request.”
The corridor went very still.
The guard’s mouth twitched. “What are you going to do if I decide otherwise?” he asked, and spat near my feet.
The bond flared, hot, sharp. Oliver shifted forward.
I lifted one hand.
He stopped instantly.
I didn’t look at the sword when the guard drew it. I didn’t look at his hands at all.
I looked at his eyes.
“I,” I said quietly, letting the word settle, “suggest you take us to our rooms.”
I paused.
The wind brushed my ankles, slow and deliberate, like something circling.
“And if I don’t?” he asked.
I tilted my head.
“Then,” I said, calmly, “this will be the last choice you ever make without permission.”
Silence swallowed the corridor.
The guard’s grip tightened—not with confidence, but with the sudden understanding that drawing the sword hadn’t made him safer.
It had made him visible.
His weight was on his front foot. Overcommitted.
He swung for my stomach.
I didn’t jump back. I didn’t panic.
I stepped aside, small, clean, like I’d been standing in the wrong place by accident.
Let him pass. Let him turn. Let him expose his back.
The blade cut air.
Castor and Oliver moved at the same time.
I lifted a hand.
“No,” I said, and my voice stopped them more effectively than any command in this village ever had. “I’ll handle it.”
The guard turned, breath already rough. He stared at me like he couldn’t reconcile how he’d just missed.
“What’s a little—”
I was behind him before the sentence finished.
I jumped, hooked my legs over his shoulders, and locked them around his throat.
Not frantic. Not messy.
Precise.
Pain sparked up my thighs as I cinched down, muscle burning with the hold.
Not a crush. A seal. Cut the air, keep my own breath steady.
His sword hit the stone and skittered away.
He clawed at my calves. His boots scraped uselessly against the floor as he staggered backward, trying to find balance, trying to find air.
His face darkened. Purple spread fast. The hallway narrowed to the sound of him falling.
He hit his knees.
A crack sounded from them.
The sound was wrong in a place this quiet, too loud, too final.
I released him.
He collapsed forward, coughing hard, sucking in air like it was something he’d been foolish enough to waste.
I kicked his sword farther down the hall without looking at it.
He began to crawl away on his elbows, dragging his legs like they’d forgotten how to be legs.
I followed at a walk.
Not hurried.
Not angry.
Just… there.
“Please,” he rasped. “I didn’t mean it.”
I stared at the back of his neck as he crawled.
“You did,” I said softly. “You meant every word.”
I moved closer. He flinched hard enough to scrape his cheek on the stone.
And then Oliver’s voice filled my mind through the bond—tight, urgent. Not fear for the guard.
Fear for what I was becoming.
Sahora. Stop. If you kill him, they won’t give us the shard. They’ll lock down the shrine. They’ll turn the village into a grave before they let us touch it. Please, let him live.
My jaw clenched.
For a moment, I didn’t answer him.
Because the truth was, I didn’t want to stop.
Not because I was bloodthirsty.
Because ending the threat would be easy.
Because restraint was the harder skill.
Fine, I sent back. But if he threatens you again—
That will be the last thing he does, Oliver finished for me, like he already knew. Please.
I stopped walking.
The guard froze, waiting for the blow that didn’t come.
Castor stepped in close behind me, just enough to block the corridor with his body, just enough to make us harder to see from either end.
I crouched beside the guard.
Close enough that he could feel my breath.
“Oliver wants you alive,” I said quietly.
His eyes darted toward Oliver like Oliver was the mercy and I was the punishment.
“You will tell no one what happened here,” I continued. “Not your captain. Not your father. Not the men at the gate.”
The guard nodded too fast.
“I will know if you do,” I said, not threatening, promising.
His throat bobbed. He couldn’t swallow.
I stood.
And as I turned away, I added one final thing; calm, careless, like it wasn’t important.
“Next time you reach for a sword,” I said, “be sure you’re willing to die with it in your hand.”
Then I walked back to Oliver without looking behind me.
Because I didn’t need to.
The guard hauled himself upright, coughing once as if his body still hadn’t forgiven him. He pointed down the corridor with a stiff hand.
“The two rooms on the left,” he said.
Then his gaze slid to Oliver, sour and resentful.
“You’ve got a dangerous woman,” he muttered. “Hope you can keep her on a leash.”
Oliver’s eyes widened.
“Say that again,” he said quietly.
The guard scoffed, as if he’d forgotten what it felt like to choke.
Oliver stepped closer, just enough to make the man’s breath catch.
“Talk about her like that again,” Oliver said, voice low and steady, “and it won’t be her you need to worry about.”
The guard turned away without another word.
Castor watched him go for a beat longer than necessary. Then he shifted his weight, glanced between Oliver and me, and jerked his chin toward the far door.
“I’ll take the second room,” he said. Practical. Neutral. Like this was any other stop on the road.
He paused, just long enough to meet my eyes.
“You did fine,” he added quietly.
Then he turned and walked away, boots receding down the corridor, the sound swallowed quickly by stone.
The door to the first room stood open.
Oliver hesitated.
So did I.
We had shared fires. Shared watches. Shared the slow roll of the night sky and the damp bite of dawn. But this—walls, a door, a bed—was different.
Enclosed.
Oliver cleared his throat. “I—uh. I can take the floor.”
I looked at the narrow bed. Then at the bare stone beside it.
“We’ve both slept on worse,” I said. “Go in.”
He nodded, relief flickering across his face, and stepped aside so I could enter first.
The room was small. Clean. A single bed pushed against the wall, a narrow table, a shuttered window high enough to keep anyone from looking in. The air smelled faintly of oil and old linen.
I closed the door behind us.
The latch clicked.
The sound settled.
Oliver stood near the table, hands flexing at his sides like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. I moved to the bed and sat, bare feet pressing against the cold stone floor.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Oliver exhaled slowly. “You were right.”
I looked up.
“He would have killed me,” Oliver said. “The moment I froze. I felt it.”
I nodded once. “Yes.”
Another pause.
“But,” he said.
I waited.
“But if you do that again,” he continued, quieter now, “out there where they can see; it won’t end with one guard.”
“He reached for a sword.” My chest felt tight. Was he really angry that I saved him?
“I know,” Oliver replied quickly. “I’m not saying you misread the danger.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He leaned back against the table, wood creaking softly under his weight. “I’m saying that to them… that wasn’t a fight.”
My brow furrowed. “Explain.”
“They wanted a reaction,” he said. “A mistake. Something they could point to and say, See?”
“See what?”
“That you’re dangerous. That you don’t belong here.” His mouth tightened. “That I can’t control you.”
I stared at him.
“They wanted me smaller,” I shift on the bed slightly
“Yes.”
“And you begging.” It was a simple statement, one that I hated.
“Yes.”
The pieces slid together with an unpleasant kind of clarity.
“That is a stupid way to run a place,” I said.
Oliver huffed a short breath. “You’re not wrong.”
I looked down at my hands, at the faint tremor still lingering there—not fear. Aftermath.
“So insults,” I said. “Posturing.”
“We ignore,” Oliver folded his hands in front of him.
“And threats?” I asked
“We watch.”
“And steel?”
He met my eyes. “Then you end it. Immediately.”
Good.
Silence settled again, thicker this time but not hostile.
I leaned back on my hands, letting my shoulders finally loosen. “No one taught me this.”
“I know,” Oliver said. “You weren’t raised for politics. You were raised for survival.”
“That rule makes more sense.”
He smiled faintly. “It usually does.”
I looked at the bed again. One pillow. One blanket.
“This is going to be awkward,” I said.
Oliver flushed. “I can…really…I don’t mind the floor.”
“You’re not sleeping on stone when there’s a bed,” I said. “Just… don’t crowd me.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
I lay back, staring at the ceiling. After a moment, Oliver eased down on the far edge of the bed, careful, like he was approaching something that might spook.
The mattress dipped.
I felt it.
“Next time,” I said, eyes still closed, “you tell me when the rules change.”
“I will,” Oliver promised.
“And next time you freeze,” I added, “I will still protect you.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I know,” he said finally. “I just want to make sure we both survive long enough for it to matter.”
I turned onto my side, facing the wall.
For now, I would learn their rules.
But I would not forget mine.
I stared at the wall, stone pale in the low light, my breath finally slowing. The room felt too small now that the danger had passed. Too quiet.
I became aware of Oliver behind me, his breathing, careful and measured, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be there.
The thought crossed my mind before I could stop it.
I don’t want to be alone right now.
A shift in the mattress.
Then warmth, hesitant at first. His arm came around me slowly, giving me time to pull away if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
I moved back against him instead, fitting myself into the space he offered. His breath hitched, just once, before settling again. He adjusted, careful not to cage me, only holding me where I chose to be held.
The heat of him soaked into my back. Steady. Real.
As sleep crept in at the edges, I felt his mouth brush close to my ear.
“I love how wild you are,” he whispered. “They tried to cage it once. They won’t do it again.”
My eyes closed.
This time, when sleep found me, I let it.