Page 89 of Savage Devotion
"What are you really offering?"
Everything.The word hovers unspoken but understood. My loyalty, my faith, my willingness to build something unprecedented together. The abandonment of safe choices in favor of necessary ones.
"Partnership," I say aloud. "Real partnership, not just tactical cooperation or temporary alliance. Shared purpose. Shared risk. Shared consequence."
"And if it fails?"
"Then we fail together."
"And if it succeeds?"
"Then we succeed."
He reaches for the knife, fingers closing around the hilt just below mine. For a moment we both hold the weapon, our hands overlapping on mountain-steel that pulses with retained heat. The metal seems to thrum between us, conducting more than temperature.
"This changes everything," he says quietly.
"Everything was already changing. This just makes it intentional."
He lifts our joined hands, pressing my knuckles against his chest. Through leather and cloth, I feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat—strong, consistent, uncompromising. The knife rests between our palms, still warm, still carrying the healing.
"Feel that," he says. "That's what you're trusting. That's what's yours to claim."
His heart.Not just metaphorically, but literally—the physical center of his strength, the source of his loyalty, the core of whatever this is becoming between us.
"And this." I guide his hand to my chest, just above where my heart hammers against ribs. "This is what you're claiming."
The moment stretches, balanced on the edge of revelation and commitment. Outside, voices continue calling orders and questions, the camp reorganizing itself around the absence of clear authority. Inside, two people from warring peoples hold a weapon that represents healing instead of harm.
"We should address the camp," I say eventually. "Before rumors and fear make choices for us."
He releases my hand but keeps the knife, sliding it into his belt where it rests beside his own weapons. The sight of mountain-steel among human-forged iron strikes me as profoundly symbolic, with integration rather than replacement, addition rather than substitution.
New ways of building on old foundations.
We move toward the tent entrance, but he pauses at the threshold, hand on the canvas flap.
"Ressa."
"Yes?"
"Whatever happens next, with the camp, with our clans, with this war, know that you're not facing it alone."
The simple statement settles in me like warm stone. Not passion or poetry, but something more valuable—the promise of presence, of shared burden, of loyalty that doesn't bend under pressure.
"Nor are you."
He nods once, sharp and decisive, then pushes through the tent flap into whatever waits beyond. I follow, stepping from the relative safety of enclosed space into the uncertain territory of consequence and choice.
The camp spreads before us, torches burning in the gathering dusk, figures moving with the restless energy of people unsure what comes next. Some cluster around Heldrik's larger pavilion, voices carrying fragments of anger and traditional authority.Others gather near supply wagons and cook-fires, watching, waiting, measuring options.
And a smaller group, but not insignificant, stands in the open space between factions, looking toward our tent with expressions of curiosity rather than judgment.
Possibility.
Kaelgor's hand finds mine as we walk forward together, fingers intertwining with the natural ease of shared purpose. The mountain-steel knife rests warm against his hip, carrying the promise of healing and the trust offered and accepted.
The camp's restless energy shifts as hoofbeats thunder across the outer perimeter. Not the measured cadence of patrol returning or the frantic gallop of a messenger arriving, but something different, deliberate, formal, carrying a weight that makes conversations pause mid-sentence.
