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“Take my cloak,” he snapped after another ten minutes of trying to ignore her clear distress.

“I’m fine,” she said, not looking at him.

“My boots are better protected and my pants are thicker than yours. Take the damn cloak and stop shivering so loudly.”

She didn’t even look at him as she gave in, throwing her arm out to take the cloak. Too afraid her shaking fingers would drop it into the river, he ignored her outstretched arm, pressing close to her and carefully draping it over her shoulders. He hooked it around her throat, ignoring her gaze, even as he let his fingers hesitate there, pressing against the soft skin of her neck. It was ice cold and she shivered against him even as he forced himself to pull away. He crouched briefly and tied the bottom so it wouldn’t drag in the water. He made the mistake of looking up at her between his lashes. Her face was flushed despite the cold, lips parted. He pushed back up to his feet before he did something stupid.

“Thanks,” she said, mumbling the word, shoulders slumped in the same shame he felt every time she had helped him. Something like empathy shuddered through him.

“You called me Fox earlier.”

“You weren’t answering to Ocon,” she said.

“I liked it.”

She didn’t respond to this and his face flushed. He was happy it was too dark for her to see. They were walking side by side now and the silence grew heavy between them.

“I don’t do well in small spaces,” he said, the words slipping from him.

“I noticed.”

“I was trapped once…” he meant to say more, but his voice cracked and his mouth snapped closed. “Thank you for helping earlier.”

She shrugged off the gratitude, but he could have sworn her lip ticked up in a smile for the briefest moment.

“I think this river might feed directly into my home cenote,” she said. The words were sudden, but it was clear in her tone she’d been thinking about it for a while as they walked.

They were walking directly back to her base, if she was correct.

“How do you know?”

“The starworms,” she said. “They aren’t incredibly rare, but colonies this large are. I haven’t been upriver from our base, but others have and they’ve talked about the colonies that line the river.”

He was silent for a few minutes, mind caught between freezing and spinning. “I guess congratulations are in order. You’ve managed to get me back to your allies.”

“They aren’t going to kill you.”

“They weren’t perhaps, but I doubt after this little adventure they’ll be so forgiving. And as you said, the prisoners I was a bargaining chip for are likely all dead now. What use am I?”

“All we want is our freedom.”

“And you’re willing to kill hundreds to get it.”

“If that’s the only language your people speak,” she said, voice raw in the darkness. “Do you know we tried negotiating? A hundred cycles ago, the resistance started as a political group wanting to negotiate our rights. In response, your king’s grandfather murdered them at his dinner table.”

“That’s donkey shit. I’ve read our history books cover to cover. The resistance pretended peace and then tried to assassinate the king.”

“And who wrote those history books?”

He opened his mouth, ready to retaliate when a shudder ran through the ground around them, sending Fox stumbling to the side. He heard the splash of water and looked over to see Sofia, on her knees and drenched in water. The cloak was lying heavy on her shoulders and dripping.

“Shit!” she said as he pulled her up. He could already feel her shaking beneath the sodden clothes.

“Are you good to keep walking?”

“Yes.” She took a shaky step and he saw the wince as she placed her weight down, but she kept moving. He didn’t say anything and let her continue forward, holding her pride together with the barest of threads.

“We should stop at the first part of dry land we find,” he said. “Even if we can’t get out of the tunnel tonight, we need to rest.”