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D aisy screamed.

The sound was shrill and scraping, far too loud in the sudden dusty darkness. And for a fraying, frantic instant, Daisy was sure time had spun backwards, hurled her back into that cave, that horrifying dungeon, with — with —

“Daisy!” hissed a voice, that voice — and Daisy flailed all over at the feel of hands. His hands. Touching her, holding her, running warm and steady up and down her back. So dizzying, so familiar, and she gulped desperately for breath, for her shattered shaking awareness. She was — she was —

The words wouldn’t come, wouldn’t focus, but the hands were still here, still stroking solid and safe. Caressing over the gooseflesh still shivering across her skin, and… speaking to her. Shouting , in that language they both knew so well.

You are safe , his hands said. I am here. You are mine. My sun. Safe .

Filak.

The certainty came with a shaky, shuddering exhale, sagging Daisy’s shoulders, sinking her forward into his solid weight. Filak was here. She was… safe.

“ Ach, sólin mín ,” came his voice, so low and soft, a flickering light in the darkness. “ You are — safe. I swear this.”

Oh. And despite the choking darkness, the wheeling echo of being trapped again, Daisy felt herself nodding — nodding! — and sinking heavier into Filak’s warmth and his touch. Believing him. Trusting him.

“Wh-what happened?” she finally asked, between her still-broken breaths. “ Where — where are we? Can we get out?”

Filak’s hands kept stroking, and she could feel his nod, close against her head. “ Ach ,” he said firmly. “ I … make this. Make safe.”

Wait. He meant — he had done this? Made the room collapse? He’d trapped them in here… on purpose?

Daisy’s heartbeat spiked again, but Filak kept stroking her, and then carefully guided her forward in the darkness. So he could bend and reach for something — and suddenly the darkness blazed with light. Revealing the sight of Filak , dusty but unharmed, standing amidst a wash of stony rubble, and holding out their familiar lamp toward her.

Daisy let out another relieved breath, and she clutched the lamp tight, glancing toward the room around them. Another one of those ancient stone-walled rooms, but now with what looked like several huge, jagged stone pillars jutting between the floor and the ceiling.

“Safe,” Filak told her again, patting one of the pillars with his hand. And wait, he was saying he’d done that, he’d put those there — and at Daisy’s disbelieving stare, he launched into a swift stream of Aelakesh , while gesturing and walking around the small room, and kicking his boot at various walls.

And though Daisy couldn’t understand all of it, she could catch enough to follow what he meant. The Skyli was already unstable, particularly that huge white domed room, and when he’d opened the eye in the ceiling, it had compromised the room’s structure, and maybe even this entire side of the Skyli . So he’d calculated the nearest safe area — this room, apparently — and fortified it, and blocked them in.

“Safe, sólin mín ,” he said again, with a reassuring smile toward her, as he strode toward one of the room’s original walls, and spread his hands against it. “ I dig, ach? You draw.”

Oh. Drawing . Right . Daisy groped for her sketchbook with a sudden, sweeping gratefulness, nearly tearing a page as she yanked it open. But yes, oh gods, it was already helping, even with her hand trembling like that on the paper, making a mess of that line of the pillar. But also turning her terror into lines and shapes, into art, into… seeing.

And the more she drew, the more she realized — this room was different than the others they’d seen so far. This room almost looked like a bedroom, or maybe even… a home. And despite the ruins of it, she could still make out what appeared to be a pair of bunks carved into the stone wall behind her, and over there was a rounded stone table, still with a few items scattered across its top. A rusted knife, a small stone bowl, and what might have been the remnants of an actual book , shrivelled and stained with mildew.

By the time Daisy finished the sketch, the fear had faded entirely, and in its place, there was only a quiet, slowly growing sadness. The disconcerting awareness of all the living, breathing people who had once lived here in the Skyli , and abandoned it hundreds of years before. The people who were now only ghosts, living only in memory, in the things they’d left behind.

That feeling kept lingering as Daisy closed her sketchbook, and went over to where Filak had already broken through most of the wall, his hands stroking against the stone with surprising care. Almost as if he felt it too, as if he couldn’t bear to break this room any more than he already had.

But he was still doing it, still doing his best to help Daisy , to keep her safe. Because he wouldn’t trap her in the dark again, he wouldn’t — right? — and when the wall broke away to reveal yet another tunnel, open and untouched, she couldn’t stop her relieved smile toward him, or her impulsive squeeze to his lean sweaty waist.

“ Fallegt , Filak ,” she breathed, into his shoulder. “ Thank you.”

He dismissed it with an easy wave of his dusty hand, and then guided her out through the wall, and into the winding tunnel behind it. Which had yet more new rooms radiating out from it, and when Daisy peeked inside, holding out her lamp, she found they were again… that kind of room. Bedrooms . Homes . Some large, some smaller, some with fireplaces and chimneys, others with baths and drains. And most of them still had stone furniture, too, tables and bunks and platforms, along with more rusted, ruined items scattered across them. Tools and weapons, pottery and utensils, a few more books, and even some frayed, rotted textiles.

But again, the damage throughout these rooms was far too evident, too. Many of them had sagging walls and crumbling corners, collapsed doors and cracked splintering ceilings. And they all carried a distinct scent of mildew and decay, and one entire area was fully flooded, with unidentifiable rotting things floating in the water.

Daisy didn’t miss Filak glancing around at it too, his frown deepening with every step — and she could feel his full-body flinch when they reached a section that was almost entirely rubble, with a huge gaping rift in the midst of it. And at one point, he whirled around mid-step, waving both hands over Daisy’s head — and she shivered all over at the sight of rock spattering out around them, skipping across the stone floor. Because … Filak had broken it apart. The rock that had been about to fall on Daisy’s head, and kill her.

After that, she joined him in jogging the rest of the way out, until they finally reached a familiar-looking tunnel — the one they’d come in through the day before, with all the broken walls. But now Filak was eyeing those piles of rubble with misgiving, too, almost as if he regretted breaking them, and opening a path to such a beautiful, devastating place. To the place that was supposed to be his home.

“So… you can fix it, right?” Daisy asked into the silence as they walked. “ Filak fix Skyli ?”

Filak’s mouth twisted into a grimace, and he jerked a sharp shrug of his shoulder. As if… he wasn’t certain. After all that work and effort, all that time finding the Skyli … he wasn’t certain?

Daisy blinked toward him, frowning, and then impulsively squeezed at his arm, drew him to a stop. “ You’ll fix the Skyli ,” she said again. “ You will… stone-see. Steinsjáandi . Magic .”

But Filak’s reply was all swift, incomprehensible Aelakesh , his other hand wildly waving behind them. Surely referring to all that devastation, the sheer daunting scale of it. So many rooms, so much danger, and he was only one orc, and gods only knew how long it would take for him to make it safe enough to bring his people here.

And the longer Daisy listened to him, the more it all pitched and churned in her belly. He wasn’t supposed to be giving up, not already. He couldn’t abandon the Skyli . It was his ancestors’ home, maybe even their long-lost gift to their descendants — and it was so important to Filak , to everything he longed for. He needed his kin. He needed a home. He couldn’t abandon this. He couldn’t .

“Then maybe we’ll have to ask for help, after all,” Daisy said, quiet but steady, once Filak had finished speaking. “ For hjálpa . From Orc Mountain . From the Ka -esh.”

But Filak’s body instantly recoiled, and his sideways glance toward her was viciously sharp and disapproving. Snapping her thoughts backwards to that morning, to how adamant he’d been about not telling anyone about the Skyli — especially the Ka -esh, and Rosa .

“ Nei, Daisy ,” he hissed now, his lips curling back to bare his sharp teeth. “ Nei . We no trust them. Ka -esh never help. Orkafjall never help.”

It was the same thing he’d said that morning, and Daisy’s thoughts again flipped backwards, to how hurt he’d been by the Ka -esh, and Orc Mountain . How they’d all abandoned the Nor -ka-esh, and failed them, and forgotten them.

“I know,” Daisy said, as she leaned into Filak’s side, and squeezed him tight. “ The Ka -esh failed you, and that was vile of them. Hr?eilegt . But ” — she took a deep breath, gathered her courage — “ núna ?”

Now? it meant, and Daisy drew back to wave up the tunnel, toward the mountain far ahead. “ You’re not at war anymore, Filak ,” she said. “ All that was years ago. Before Rosa and John - Ka . And if we ask, I’m sure they will help. They want to be” — she searched for the word — “ vinir . Friends .”

But Filak’s scoff was loud and mocking, his reply rushed and harsh and angry. And though Daisy again couldn’t follow all of it, she recognized enough words to get the general sense of it — sálugjald, women, blood, dead . All the accusations the Ka -esh had thrown upon him, perhaps. All the ways his own clan had judged him, and mistrusted him, and shunned him.

And then something else, something that seemed to make him even angrier, punctuated with a purposeful wave toward Daisy , and a stab of his hand toward his heart. As if — oh. The murder accusation. How Rosa had told Daisy about the blood on Filak’s scent, when he’d first come to the mountain. How they’d truly believed he had attacked his own people, his own family, and then abandoned them.

“Ka-esh — forsake me,” Filak said, his voice cracking. “ They cast me away. Just as — my kin. My father. My gods .”

He flailed his hand at his marks, and then upwards, toward the sky, maybe even the sun. “ I pray, I pray, I pray,” he added, the words heaving through his chest. “ I seek. I work. I try. But it is only — no. Always no. No , no, no!”

It was the most he’d ever said at once in common-tongue, and every word was like a heavy thudding drum, striking against Daisy’s chest. Each blow sinking the comprehension deeper, dark and wretched and sad.

Filak had been so alone. He’d lost his family, his kin, his home — and he’d truly believed even his gods had abandoned him, too. And — and that had to be why he was so covered in his prayers, right? And why he’d stopped eating, too? And maybe even why he’d shaved his head? He’d been desperately trying to please his gods, to win back their favour, to finally stop being rejected and alone.

Daisy couldn’t stop blinking at him, her eyes prickling. “ Ach , Filak ,” she whispered. “ ég sé . I see. But — you’re not alone. Nei alone. Ekki einn .”

Filak’s eyes shifted on hers, speaking of surprise, or longing, or maybe even hope — and curse her, what was Daisy saying with this, and she took a deep breath, let it out. “ It seems to me that your gods have heard you, and blessed you,” she said thickly. “ You found the Skyli . You kept your promise to your people, and found their lost home. You found a place for Ka -esh and humans to be together. To share the sun. And I think” — she took another breath — “ I know the Ka -esh would care about that. They would want to help you.”

She couldn’t say how much of that Filak had understood, staring at her with those strange shifting eyes — but then he scoffed and drew away from her, and stomped off down the tunnel, alone. Leaving Daisy behind with the lamp, her heartbeat spiking as she watched him go. Would he truly leave her, and disappear off into the darkness…

But he hadn’t even gone ten steps before he halted and exhaled, and glanced back at Daisy over his shoulder. And the look in his eyes was so bleak, so lost, or maybe even hurt — and Daisy’s thoughts snapped back to what Julian had told her, back in the sickroom. In all Filak’s time here, his own people have not sought to know him, or understand him, or trust him.

And based on that hurt in Filak’s eyes, he’d wanted his new clanmates to trust him. He’d run away from something truly horrible — his father had just been killed, he’d been thrown out of his own home — and he’d wanted the Ka -esh here to try to understand, to respect his obligations and his griefs, to give him the benefit of the doubt. And instead, they’d judged him, and suspected him, and shunned him. Surely in part due to his gaunt body, and his shaved head, and all his copious marks. To all the ways he’d so fervently been trying to please his gods, and gain their favour, too.

Daisy’s throat spasmed, and her body pitched back toward Filak , her hand again finding his stiff back, stroking up and down. Again speaking that silent language they both knew, shouting that she understood, she was sorry, she knew far too well how it felt. To work so hard, to care and create so deeply, only to be dismissed, underestimated, ignored. Unbelievable . Irrational . Ridiculous and immature behaviour, appallingly unscientific, foolish, dangerous…

Filak didn’t reply aloud, but his glance toward her was grateful, and he pressed a brief, furtive kiss to her hair before again clasping her hand, and drawing her back down the corridor. But he didn’t speak again, and the silence seemed to grow between them, as more chaos juddered and chattered through Daisy’s thoughts.

Filak needed this. He needed his home. He needed to offer the Skyli’s refuge to his people. He needed to give them a place to meet the women they longed for, to build the families they craved. And he needed to keep them safe from all those attacks, safe from the humans’ poisons, safe from the likes of Lew …

But no, damn it, Daisy was not thinking about Lew , not now. She was thinking about Filak , and watching Filak , and… seeing Filak . Seeing that slump in his shoulders, the tension on his jaw, the bitter misery in his eyes. Still speaking to her, shouting to her, screaming with darkness and pain.

He was… afraid. Afraid of losing the Skyli . Afraid of failing his gods and his people. Afraid of asking for help. Afraid of being judged and rejected, abandoned and forgotten. Left to face it all alone, again.

And with a sudden twitch, Daisy’s memories flicked back to the night before, to the chain in the dyflissa . To the way he’d pinned her, cornered her, pressed her beneath his weight. And in truth, he’d done it so often before that too, hadn’t he? Trapping her, confining her, keeping her where he wanted her. Where he could trust she would… stay. So he wouldn’t be alone.

And gods, what if Daisy didn’t stay? Even if the thought of it churned unsettlingly in her stomach, she was still watching, right? Still … seeing. Deciding . Two weeks. And if she wasn’t here, who would Filak have left? Would he be forever alone, forever afraid, until he became a ghost, too? Another forgotten echo in an abandoned underground room, rotting apart into dust?

No. No . The certainty was so strong it was dizzying, shouting through Daisy’s skull. No . Absolutely not.

So once they finally reached the corridor into Orc Mountain again, Daisy clasped for both Filak’s stiff shoulders, and turned him to look at her. Flaring more of that unease through his shadowed eyes, but she held herself tall and straight, and took a deep breath.

“I want to go see Rosa ,” she told him, with as much certainty as she could muster. “ Now .”