Ressa woke to the sound of breath that wasn’t hers.

  Not close. Not touching. Just there.

  She lay still, eyes open in the dim, and listened. The fire outside had burned down to coals. Somewhere beyond the hide wall, Big Mama shifted—a low, familiar vibration as massive weight settled into earth.

  That sound meant safety. Always had.

  The breathing behind her was uneven. Not sickness. Not fear. Just someone who didn’t sleep deeply anymore.

  She didn’t turn.

  Communal sleeping wasn’t strange. Goblins slept together when tunnels collapsed, when storms trapped them, when there were too many bodies and not enough space. Warmth was practical. Proximity was survival.

  This wasn’t that.

  This was choosing to lie beside someone she blamed for something that still didn’t have edges. Something that came back at night if she let her mind wander too far.

  Her body had stopped shaking sometime before dawn.

  That was what unsettled her.

  Ressa stared at the inside of the tent and catalogued the feeling like an injury. No tremor in her hands. Jaw unclenched. Breath slow enough to count without forcing it.

  She hated him.

  She hated that sleeping near him dulled the sharpest parts. That the dreams came less often. That the tight, collapsing feeling in her chest loosened just enough to breathe through.

  She rolled onto her back carefully, listening.

  He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t reached. Hadn’t shifted closer.

  That mattered.

  “You awake?” she asked quietly.

  A pause. Then, “Yeah.”

  “You sleep at all?”

  “Some.” His voice was rough. Not from one bad night. From too many. “Not well.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “You breathe like you’re waiting for something.”

  “I usually am.”

  She turned her head just enough to see his outline in the dark. He was staring at the tent ceiling, hands folded on his chest. Not relaxed. Just still.

  “Waiting for what?”

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  He didn’t answer right away. When he did, it was careful. “For whatever I missed. Whatever I should’ve seen coming.”

  She understood that.

  Hated that she understood it.

  “I don’t forgive you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know if I ever will.”

  “I know.”

  He never argued with the parts of her that hurt. Never tried to smooth them over or explain them away.

  That made it worse.

  And better.

  “Why do you let me stay here?” she asked.

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  “Because you’re tired,” he said finally. “And I don’t know how else to help.”

  Her throat tightened. She swallowed it down.

  “You can’t help.”

  “I know.”

  They lay there after that. Not comfortable. Not resolved. Just existing in the same space without tearing it apart.

  Eventually, her breathing slowed. The sharp thing in her chest dulled enough that sleep could find her.

  When she woke again, he was already gone.

  Maurik had been awake for hours.

  He sat with his bow across his knees, watching the eastern rise bleed light into the plains. The savanna was honest land—no cover, no forgiveness. You saw danger coming, or you paid for it.

  He trusted that.

  What he watched now wasn’t danger.

  It was change.

  Ethan trained at the edge of camp, as he did most mornings.

  Not loudly. Not like someone proving strength. Just working through forms with the patience of someone who’d learned that sloppiness killed people.

  Maurik watched him cycle weapons—bow, knives, short blade. Movements efficient. No wasted motion.

  Good work.

  Then Ethan stopped.

  The air shifted—not sharply, not threateningly. Just… differently.

  The shadow moved.

  Not like before. Not as spectacle. It slipped loose like a tool being tested, lagging a fraction behind Ethan’s step, then correcting.

  Learning.

  Ethan cut. The shadow followed—deeper angle, harsher line.

  Maurik felt it in his gut.

  Not danger.

  Focus.

  Big Mama lifted her head where she rested near the camp’s edge. Didn’t rise. Didn’t bristle. Just watched, tail still.

  Recognition.

  Ethan slowed, breathed, grounded himself. The shadow folded back into him without protest.

  Good control.

  Krill appeared beside Maurik, quiet as ever. “He trains more now.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good.”

  Maurik nodded. “It is.”

  Krill watched Ethan reset his stance and start again—this time without the shadow. Just blade work. Clean. Honest.

  “Ressa sleeps there,” Krill said, not accusing. Just stating fact.

  “Yes.”

  Krill tilted his head. “She sleeps again.”

  That mattered more.

  Maurik’s mouth twitched. “It does.”

  “He’s not Big Fang,” Krill added.

  “No.”

  “He listens.”

  “Yes.”

  Krill was quiet for a moment. “He carries too much. But he carries it forward.”

  Maurik watched Ethan miss a knife throw, adjust, and try again.

  “That’s what keeps him alive,” he said.

  Krill nodded. No disagreement there.

  Ressa saw the training later, from the spring.

  She didn’t watch the blades.

  She watched how quickly his attention snapped to the shadow when it stirred. How immediately he corrected it. How he spoke to it—quietly, firmly—and it settled.

  Not submission.

  Coordination.

  She felt the pressure then—the same steady presence she felt near Big Mama. Not threat. Not fear.

  Awareness.

  When she looked closer, she didn’t see power.

  She saw someone tired. Someone checking his hands between throws. Someone who stopped before exhaustion made him careless.

  Someone trying not to become something worse.

  That night, she returned to his tent again.

  No announcement. No permission.

  “You train too much,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  “Your hands shake.”

  “I know.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  He didn’t deflect. “Because if I stop moving, I have to think.”

  That answer hit harder than any justification.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But I sleep better here.”

  He didn’t answer that. Didn’t make it into something more than it was.

  They lay back to back. Not touching. Not alone.

  Outside, the camp slept easy.

  Inside one tent, two people rested—not because the world was safe, but because they trusted each other enough to be still.

  And for now, that was enough.