Page 17 of Scorched By Fate

“Barely old enough to be here,” she muttered, quieter now but no less sharp. “He had this laugh. Quick and stupid and bright—damn near drove Kaiya insane this past week.” Her lips twisted, as if memory could still find humor in agony. “Then he just … stopped.”

Guilt flashed across her eyes. The kind that left scars deeper than any blade could carve. I knew the weight well; it lived in my own chest some nights with wounds I’d long since buried.

“You did what you could.”

She barked a laugh—not cruel, not humorless, but something sharp and self-deprecating. Her head tilted down briefly. “I couldn't do shit."

The air tightened around us—not choking, but charged. I wanted to reach out, to tug that weight from her shoulders and crush it under my claws before it swallowed her whole. But my hands stayed where they were, clenched against my knees. Her scent was sharp in the stillness, krysfruit wrapping around the ember-smoke of grief laced in her skin. Everything about her pulled against the ache in my chest I’d tried—and failed—to quench since the first time I’d met her.

I should have left. Should’ve delivered my orders and gone to deal with the rest of the mission’s logistics. But the thought of walking away while Yaris’s shadow still lingered in her expression made my claws curl hard enough to bite into my own palms.

“He wasn’t on you,” I said finally, my voice low enough it barely carried across the space between us. “None of this is.”

She didn’t look at me. But her lips pressed into a tight line as her hands curled at her sides, nails dragging against the fabric of her pants.

“Harrovan.” My voice shifted deliberately, the single name slicing into the quiet between us, though the tension in it made my stomach twist.

That made her finally look at me. “What?”

“That’s where we’re going.” The words left me heavy as the stone beneath us. “Darrokar ordered it. You and I leave at dawn.”

Her reaction wasn’t what I expected. Not anger or frustration. Not even the exhaustion driving everything else. It was just stillness. Like she hadn’t registered the words yet. Like her mind was playing catch-up with her defenses.

Her lips parted once, then snapped shut. She shook her head, faint and definite. “No.”

I blinked. “No?”

“I mean no. As in, not happening. As in, my place is here,” she said, steel sparking through the weariness clogging her voice. “You can’t just … Hell no. I’m not leaving the healers now. They need me.”

“They need you to retrieve the cure.”

Her frame stiffened, her arms raising to cross tightly over her chest as though bracing against me—or perhaps herself. “They need me now.”

“They’ll need you more if they’re still alive when we return.”

The response silenced her, but her eyes cut dangerously toward mine, a flicker of heat beneath both her defiance and grief. “You’re so sure we can even find it?”

“Yes.” I meant it, even though the rough trek through Harrovan clawed over my mind like a poorly woven net. Her mortality against its dangers would haunt me every step beyond the city’s barriers, but here, now, watching her try to climb a wall made of her own stubborn will and bruised instincts—I wouldn’t let her crumble only to chain herself to failure’s corpse.

Selene’s jaw twitched, tension tracing her frame as she exhaled sharply through her nose. “You’ve been up there, then? Harrovan?”

“No.” My tone stayed steady; it softened only where her shoulders stiffened further. “But I’ll make sure you’re not left to face it alone.”

Her lips almost curled into a smile before her eyes dropped again, low and far away from the dim blue glow of the river.

The silence pressed down again, heavy but not the same weight as before. It shifted too much, too soon. Too clear. Above the grief thick in the air, something else edged closer, closer to the space we’d left untouched since the moment we first crossed paths.

I crossed it before I could think better of it.

My hand moved first—not grabbing, not holding, but hovering above her shoulder as my wings shifted open, slow, deliberate. The tip of my left one curled toward her back, brushing her upper spine like a shield offering itself where words would always fail. “Let me give you strength,” I murmured, my voice low and rough-edged against the quiet.

She didn’t jerk away. Didn't move at all, in fact, as my claws hovered against her, hesitant to thunder through whatever fragile thread she was clinging to here in this little alcove. After too many suspended heartbeats, her body softened, muscles easing toward the contact.

Her voice barely breached the quiet, but when it did, it refused to waver. “Just for a little while.”

Something in me cracked wide open. It wasn’t a break, not really, but a fracture deeper than I cared to name. As her weight shifted just slightly against my wing, I felt her warmth leeching through the fragile space we'd allowed between us.

I let it happen.

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