Page 40 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

I wake up to hear Calder cursing.

I get to my feet quickly, thinking we might be under attack. Thinking he might be about to attack me.

When I rush out of the shelter, all I see is him glaring at the snow. The pieces come together quickly. Someone—or something—stole the food he had left outside.

I swallow, shame biting more than the cold.

Calder hauls his pack onto his back and turns toward the forest. I know what that means now.

“I’m going with you.”

Calder doesn’t say a word.

I don’t know how to hunt. I’ve never accompanied my father on one for sport. I’ve never had to hunt for food. It’s always been served on golden platters. Even in Sunling training, when our food was a far cry from the Mainland castle feasts, it was provided for us.

I realize now I don’t know the full extent of survival. Of going hungry. Of desperation.

Calder looks like he has known it.

I don’t know anything about him, other than his father. I try to remember what his father was fighting against, but I can’t. I was too young. Or maybe I didn’t pay enough attention.

Was he cast out when his father was executed? Is Calder so skilled at hunting because he was forced to survive beyond the Moonling castle?

I wonder why he was even permitted to start training ... Instructor Cleo must care about strength more than lineage.

Calder slows down, and I follow. I pay attention to the way he steps, quietly, even his large form barely making a sound through the forest.

I try my best to calm my breathing. To become one with the snow, and the trees, and the hissing wind.

The cold sears my nostrils, but I try to embrace it. If I’m going to learn Moonling’s ability, I need to find the cold within me, just as I found the fire.

Calder doesn’t have arrows. I wonder how he’s going to hunt another animal, and how he was able to ensnare the first.

We walk in silence for an hour. Then, out of nowhere, Calder stops and ducks. I do the same, seeing it a second later. A deer, with a crown of white antlers. It’s almost undetectable in the snow, quieter than we are.

Calder reaches back for his blade.

I wonder what he’s going to do. Throw it at the deer?

I don’t find out. Because I lean forward, and my knee cracks a branch. Immediately, the deer turns—and looks right at me.

It does not run. No.

It charges. Right at us.

Calder remains fixed. He outstretches his blade, as if he’s going to go head-to-head with its antlers.

But the beast bows its head, and it’s like a wall of blades surging toward us, ready to rip us to shreds.

I turn and run.

“Come on!” I yell, looking over my shoulder, but Calder remains steady. The deer charges toward him.

Then, right at the last moment, it veers past him—to me.

It’s faster than I am. I run and run, choking on frigid air, looking over my shoulder, watching it nearly impale me—

And then it’s gone. Everything’s gone.

Because I didn’t see the cliff ahead.

And I’ve gone right over its edge.

At the last moment, I grab onto something, anything —and my hand grips a rock, the skin of my palm splitting. My body hangs, my legs kicking over hundreds of feet of empty space.

I’m going to die. The fall will kill me instantly.

There’s the scraping, crunching sound of an approach—

I look up, and I don’t see a crown of horns.

No. I see Calder, peering over the edge curiously as my grip begins to weaken.

This is it, then. The moment he’s been waiting for. The moment he can watch me die and perhaps feel a fraction of vengeance for his father’s death.

Our eyes meet. I want to beg him to tell my mother I’m sorry. I want to ask him to tell Egan I’m proud of him. I want to say a thousand things to Enya.

I open my mouth, feeling my fingers begin to slip. Wondering if he plans to kick me to hasten the fall.

But he does the unthinkable.

He reaches a hand toward me.

This has to be a trick. It has to be false. A lie .

His gaze is clear.

I reach the hand that isn’t holding on to the rock toward him. He grabs it. Without a moment of hesitation, he pulls me back up. Blood soaks the snow in front of us. The deer that was chasing me lies there, Calder’s blade buried in its side.

This could have been the end. I would have been dead, if it wasn’t for him.

I’m still here. I get another chance at this. Endless relief and gratitude heat me from the inside. I fall forward, hands erupting in flames.

“You got it,” Calder says simply.

Then he lifts the deer onto his back and turns toward our shelter.

“Why?” I ask later from my place by our fire, as Calder chomps at his hunt, his teeth breaking bone.

He hasn’t spoken since he pulled me to safety, but now he looks up at me. “Why what?”

“Why save me?”

He continues eating. It’s only when the entire dinner is almost gone, that he says, “You’re my roommate,” as if it is as simple as that.

I blink. “But ... you could have let me die.”

You could have used me to get back at my father , I think. He doesn’t know my father wouldn’t necessarily care.

Calder just blinks back at me. “Why would I do that?”

Is he purposefully playing dumb? Is this a mental game? Is he going to make me suffer, torture me over the course of this month, kill me just when I believe I might survive?

“The fire, then,” I say, looking for an explanation. A reason he hasn’t already killed me in revenge yet. “You saved me, because you needed my fire.”

He snorts. Talks with his mouth full of food. “No. I had lost all faith in your fire, Sunling.”

My eyes narrow. “So why?” I ask again.

Calder looks at me, puzzled, as if wondering why I’m so set on getting an answer to this question. Then, his expression turns serious. He nods in understanding. He tears the remaining meat off the bone, then sets it down. Leans back. “We are not defined by our lineage.”

I stare. He can’t mean that.

“I am not my father. And neither are you, yours.”

He’s right. I am not my father. I’m nothing like him. They say he’s a great king. I suppose it’s a good thing I’ll never be one.

Calder tilts his head, studying me. “Cycles can always break. New generations give new hope, do they not?”

It’s the most he’s ever spoken to me. I’m unsure of how to respond. Unsure whether I understand.

Meal finished, he wipes his fingers in the snow. “Calder,” he says, introducing himself for the first time, his hand outstretched.

“Oro,” I reply, offering my own.

And, also for the first time, he smiles.