Casimir

I was taught from a very young age how to detect the presence of another living being. The rustling of leaves, prints in the earth. As deserters, the risk of being stranded alone was always a possibility.

Crouched low in the shrub, my eyes narrow in on the rustling of the low-hanging branch. Light from the moon slips through the spines of the trees, highlighting the snare I fashioned from frayed fragments from the horse's saddle.

"I'm not surprised," Lei's voice drifts towards me. "I always thought he was weird. All those intense looks and everything."

"Everything is easier to recognise in hindsight."

"Will you two shut up?" I ask, standing up, exasperated. Killian and Lei both sit stretched out on the rock face behind me, frustratingly relaxed considering Killian's supposed to be on watch and Lei and I are supposed to be finding something to eat. "You're scaring away all the game."

Lei waves a hand. "There's no game around here."

"How do you know?"

She taps her ear. "Enhanced hearing, remember?"

I fight the urge to roll my eyes, leaning back on my knees and sighing. "Well I was right, wasn't I?" Lei continues when I don't respond.

"About what?" I ask.

"Freya and Alaric. I told you something weird was going on between the two of them." She wrinkles her nose, as if the thought sickens her. "You were both there when she found out he'd been reading her mind."

I glance at Killian, curious at his reaction. Ever since I met him, I was skeptical of his interest in Freya. Especially after finding out his true identity, I was sure it was nothing more than some cruel act. But over the past few weeks, my perception shifted.

Both of us sit on a secret that could end so much suffering, at the sacrifice of her life. And yet he hasn't told anyone. No one who didn't care about Freya could keep a secret like that. Why would they?

But Killian doesn't react at the implication in her words. He just shrugs and says, "Don't act like you weren't just as pissed as she was."

"Pissed, yeah, but not betrayed like she was. I never trusted him."

I raise a brow. "And Freya did?"

"If she hadn't, do you think she would've reacted like that?" She shrugs, shaking her head. "I tried to warn her, but she wouldn't listen. Always meeting him in the middle of the night to 'train,' disappearing into caves. He said he was training her to control the cloud, but I don't know... there was some weird Kinjri stuff going on. "

"She doesn't give her trust out to just anyone," Killian says. "Trust me, I know."

"And who's fault is that?" I dig.

Killian doesn't rise to the bait, ignoring my comment. "All I'm saying is if she trusted him, there was a valid reason why."

"Why are you defending him?" Lei raises a brow.

Not him, I think, her.

"You still haven't told me why he hates you, by the way," Lei adds.

His lips twitch upwards. "A story for another time." He rises to his feet, stretching his arms over his head lazily, exposing a slither of his toned stomach. "I'll leave you two to it, then. If neither of you are going to sleep, I will."

"Oh come on, Killian," Lei says as he wanders away from us, back to camp. She rolls her eyes and leans back against the rock face as the darkness embraces him.

Freya

Sleep evades me, even as it falls over the camp.

After storming away from Alaric, I didn't want to talk to anyone. I lay on the ground and closed my eyes, fooling myself that the shifters couldn't hear the very awake state of my heart. But nobody called out my bluff, not even Casimir.

My mind reels. After several hours of lying still, staring at the dying embers of the fire, I sit up, pulling my cloak around my shoulders. Killian, Lei and Casimir are nowhere to be seen. Only Sanaa and Jaycee remain in the camp, fast asleep on the other side of the fire.

Pulling my boots on, I quietly slink into the trees, my breath a white cloud in front of me as I head in the direction of the stream, veering left when the sound of the water trickling over the rocks filters through.

I don't want to talk to Alaric, painfully aware of what he can do. As I wander closer to the stream, I can't help but wonder what range he can read minds. Do you have to be a certain distance away from him, or just in his range of vision?

The thought haunts me as I reach the stream, kneeling at its edge. I'm far enough away from where Harris and Alaric are still restrained that I can't see them, but the worry plagues my mind as I pick up a flat rock from the edge of the water, glancing down stream to where I know they sit, shrouded in the darkness of the overhanging branches.

"I don't think you'll manage to hit him if you throw it from this far."

I leap three feet in the air, my heart beating wildly in my chest as I spin around. Killian stands in the treeline, his hands raised in surrender.

My shoulder sink in relief, my heart beat slowing. "Hasn't anybody ever told you not to sneak up on somebody?"

"I made plenty of noise, you just weren't listening." He raises a brow, eyeing the rock still in my hand.

"Shouldn't you be resting like the others?" I ask.

"Somebody has to keep an eye out."

"I assumed Lei and Cas already were."

"I didn't mean on camp." He gestures to me. "You have an annoying tendency to wander off on your own."

I raise a brow. "You don't think I can take care of myself?"

"Oh I know you can," he insists. "Doesn't mean you should have to."

I stare at him, trying to ignore the flutter in my stomach at his words. In the dark of the night, there's something so warm about his pitched black eyes. I search his face, comparing it to the one that's been running through my mind the past few weeks. Midnight, sleek hair, sharp angles, smooth skin. The only difference is the faint scar on his left cheek.

My fingers twitch to touch it, but I think better of it. "I thought shifters couldn't scar," I say instead.

"Silver knives," he says. "Ironically, Ereon has a large stash of them." I wince internally as his eyes brush over me and he reaches forward to tug a strand of my hair. "You look different, too."

I reach up self consciously, touching the edges of my hair. "Hana cut it. She didn't want anyone to recognise me from Ereon's posters." My cheeks warm beneath his gaze. "It's... short."

He shrugs. "Did I ever tell you I have a thing for short hair?"

My stomach flips, his casual approval doing strange things to my head. It doesn't matter the time and distance that's been between us, the nonchalance at which he offers compliments doesn't cease to surprise me. But the haircut isn't the only change.

The markings on my arm rise to mind. I've been too afraid to look at them. I know he's seen them, probably heard all about them from Lei or Alaric. But he doesn't bring them up. I'm grateful.

"Casimir told me what you've been through," I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. "What you did, both of you, to find us. You risked a lot."

"Life is boring without a little risk."

I settle back into the tree. His lightness warms me more than I expected. The seriousness of the past few weeks has fatigued me. Killian's arrogant manner and constant jives irritated me when they first met. I hadn't realised how much I missed it.

"Lei told me what you've been through," he says.

"Much more boring than you, I can assure you."

"You knew we were alive," he says, tone more serious. "She said you were so sure. So annoyingly sure, to quote her."

"I... I didn't know," I admit.

"Ah, foolish hope."

"It wasn't foolish."

"Wasn't it?"

"Well you're alive, aren't you?"

He tilts his head to the side. "Thank the heavens for that."

I can't bring myself to vocally echo his sentiment. My mind is too caught up on the fact that he's real, that he isn't a vision inside one of my dreams or a figment of the cloud.

"Lei told me that hope is purely denial in disguise," I say eventually.

"Perpetually cynical, she is."

"You used to say the same about me."

"I did, didn't I?" he muses, raising a brow as if in deep thought. "There are a lot of things I've said about you, Freya."

I narrow my eyes, trying to read the message beneath his words. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He doesn't answer, despite my prying eyes and accusatory tone. I thought over time, I'd grown better at reading him. But as usual, all deeper meaning to him is covered in layers of metal chains I can't unwind.

"Why did Alaric hate you so much?" I ask, lowering my voice. "What did you do to him?"

"You are so quick to believe it is me who did something to him?"

"You don't exactly have a squeaky clean history."

"And he does?" Killian quirks an eyebrow.

I clench my jaw. "That's different."

"How?"

He didn't make me care for him. He didn't make me want him.

"Fine. Don't tell me." I fold my arms across my chest and turn away from him, settling on the edge of a rock at the water's edge. Killian stays silent, but he doesn't leave. I feel the warmth of his presence in the air all around me.

Eventually, he lets out a sigh. "It's a long story..."