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V rok

Emily is still wrapped in my arms when I wake.

For a moment, I do nothing. I just breathe her in and savor the warmth of her body pressed against mine. Her scent clings to my skin, soft and sweet, stirring something deep in my chest that I don’t know how to name.

I shouldn’t wake her. She needs the rest. But I can’t stop myself from shifting enough to look down at her sleeping face.

She looks peaceful. At ease. Like she belongs here.

Like she belongs with me .

It’s a dangerous thought, and I know better. She doesn’t belong with me. She’s not mine, and she can never be.

And yet, my arms tighten around her before I can stop myself, my instincts rebelling against the voice in my head warning me to let her go. I want to keep her like this for just a little longer.

Beyond the shelter of the low-hanging branches, the sky has shifted to a soft gray, and I can see the faint edge of dawn creeping in. We’ll need to move soon. We’re close to the nesting grounds now, and if Lily is alive, then we have to find her before it’s too late.

Emily stirs against me with a small sigh, nestling closer and burying her nose against my neck. Her fingers slide across my chest, moving in slow, idle patterns. I close my eyes, willing time to hold still. Just for this.

Then her fingers graze over one of the deeper scars that lies low on my ribs. It’s a jagged, raised line that didn’t heal cleanly. She pauses, then traces over it again.

“This one’s different,” she murmurs, her voice still thick with sleep. “What happened here?”

I stiffen before I can stop myself. For a heartbeat, I consider lying.

I consider telling her it was the result of a hunt gone wrong or a battle fought long ago.

Something honorable. Anything but the truth.

But this small, stubborn, extraordinary female deserves more than a lie.

She deserves the truth. Even if it makes me look weak.

“I was a kitling,” I say quietly. “Training with my father.”

Her hand stills on my skin, but she doesn’t pull away. She waits, patient and calm, like she knows I need the space to say it in my own time.

“He didn’t want me to train with the wooden practice swords the other kitlings used. Said they would make me lazy.” My throat tightens as the memory plays through my mind. “He said it would make me stronger to use a real blade.”

The memory crawls up from some dark place I thought I’d buried long ago.

“I was too slow blocking one of his strikes, and his blade slipped past my guard and cut deep into my flesh.” I pause and take a deep breath, keeping my gaze on the green leaves above me.

I can almost smell the sharp scent of my blood from that day and the searing pain shooting through my abdomen.

“He told me pain would make the lesson stay with me, and it did.”

Emily exhales sharply, and her fingers begin to move again, tracing over the scar. Her touch is gentler and slower now.

“He rubbed dirt into it after. He said it would harden me. I spent two days with a fever when it got infected. But I learned, didn’t I?” I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice, and I mostly succeed.

I can feel Emily shaking her head where it rests on my shoulder. “You were a kid. He was supposed to protect you, not hurt you.”

“He didn’t see it that way,” I say. “To him, softness was a weakness. Pain was a tool. And I was supposed to become something sharp enough to survive anything.”

There’s a pause, long and thick with silence. Then she reaches up and gently cups my jaw, turning my face down until I’m forced to meet her gaze.

“You’re not weak. You were a child who deserved to be treated with love, not cruelty.”

Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. Tears for me. For the kitling I used to be.

It’s a strange thing, being seen like this. Not as a warrior or a danger or a disgrace to the tribe, but just a male. Just me. A wounded young kitling who bled and remembered.

Her words echo in my head, and there’s a small part of me that’s starting to wonder if she’s right.

I’ve spent so long blaming myself. I wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, strong enough.

But maybe I did deserve better. Maybe my father wasn’t making me strong.

Maybe he was breaking something in me I’ve spent so long trying to hold together.

I want to say something light to chase the heaviness away. I wish I had Sorrin’s charm or Draggar’s gentleness, but I don’t. All I can do is pull her closer, bury my face in the curve of her neck, and breathe her in like she’s something sacred.

Because to me, she is.

After a while, she whispers against my ear, “You’re not your father, Vrok.”

A knot rises in my throat. I swallow hard, but it stays there, thick and burning. “I know, but some days, I still hear his voice louder than my own.”

“Then I’ll help you drown it out. One word at a time,” she says.

I pull back just enough to see her face again.

Her eyes are soft gray like the dawn of a new day, and they lock onto mine with a strength that steadies me.

My hand finds her cheek and my thumb brushes over the curve of her jaw.

She leans into the touch, and in the quiet stillness between us something shifts.

Our lips meet in a kiss that’s soft. There’s no heat, no urgency. Just a quiet promise between us. It’s slow and reverent, like we’re both afraid to break the moment. Her breath hitches. My hand stays at her cheek, holding her there like she might vanish if I let go.

When we part, she rests her forehead against mine. We stay like that for a long moment, staring into each other’s eyes in the faint light, our breaths mingling together.

Then, reality crashes back in with the angry squawk of a lisek somewhere in the branches overhead.

Emily lets out a quiet huff of a laugh and pulls back. “Guess that’s our cue.”

My lips twitch. “Sounds like it,” I murmur, reluctantly letting her go.

I watch as she combs her fingers through the tangled strands of her hair, smoothing it back from her face and quickly braiding into one long plait that reaches down just past her shoulder.

Even in the gray world of a new day, her golden tresses seem to give off their own light. One that would rival the sun itself.

I clear my throat, trying to pull myself back to the task ahead. “We should reach the nesting grounds later today.”

That gets her attention, and Emily nods, already reaching for her boots. “Then let’s go.”

We eat a quick meal of bilb berries, their sweetness bursting on my tongue, but my mind is elsewhere.

My thoughts keep drifting to last night, to the feel of her arms around me and her mouth on me.

And to earlier and the quiet pain in her voice.

To the way she looked at me like I wasn’t damaged or weak. Like I never was.

By the time we’re ready to leave, the sky has already begun to lighten with streaks of orange and pink bleeding into the deep blue overhead.

Mist curls off the surface of the lake nearby, drifting in soft tendrils through the trees.

The water is still and glassy, reflecting the colors of the sky like a polished stone.

We make our way around the winding lake shore. The air is thick with humidity, clinging to my skin just as memories of the night before cling to my thoughts.

Neither one of us speaks of it. We don’t have to, but it’s there.

In the way Emily’s fingers brush against mine as we walk. In the glances she sneaks when she thinks I’m not looking, and in the way I’m always looking. The silence between us is comfortable, but it crackles with something unspoken. Something that feels fragile and new.

Emily walks beside me, her stride more certain now than ever before. She’s still the same female who unchained me back in the village, but now, she moves like someone who’s not just surviving anymore. She’s fighting. For herself and for others.

And then a distant screech splits the air.

I go rigid and instinctively reach for the hilt of my sword. Beside me, Emily freezes. Her breath catches in her throat as her hand lands on my free arm.

“Was that a?—?”

“Yes.” My jaw clenches as I scan the sky until I spot the shadow of a winged beast in the distance. It’s an anuroi. We’re close.

A fresh sense of urgency floods my veins. We quicken our pace, our boots crunching softly over the rocky ground as every step takes us closer to the anurois’ nesting grounds. And hopefully, to Lily.

The terrain becomes less forgiving as we near the tall cliffs the beasts’ call home.

Roots claw out of the soil like grasping fingers and white jagged rock formations jut out like broken teeth.

Patches of tall, stiff grass ripple in the wind, their edges whispering against one another like they’re warning us away.

The air feels different here. It’s still heavy with humidity, but it’s strangely quiet. There are no calls of liseks or buzzing sounds of insectoids. And no more screeches from the anurois.

It’s too quiet.

Up ahead, the cliffs rise stark white against the pale blue sky, their jagged edges worn by wind and rain.

They tower over the lanscape like the bones of some ancient creature, bleached and brittle, and streaked in places with rust-colored veins of mineral as if the rock itself has bled.

Cracks mar the surface and narrow ledges break up the vertical expanse, some of them lined with nests made of vines, bones, and the leathery scraps of old anuroi wings.

The wind shifts carrying with it the sour tang of rotting meat and old, dried blood.

Beyond the cliffs, a dense wall of tree looms where the jungle begins again.

Emily slows beside me, her steps growing hesitant. She stares at the cliffs, her eyes wide. “This is it?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.

I nod. “The nesting grounds.”

She swallows, her throat working as she takes in the scene. “It looks dead.”