Page 21 of Embers of Midnight
“Little flame is wrapped,” he says, low. “I’ll get meat. Thirty minutes.”
“Take Vex,” I answer without looking back.
The crow drops from a spruce branch like he understood the assignment before I spoke. He cuts a clean line across the pale sky and vanishes into the direction Ash points. Ash gives me one more glance over the top of the collar he keeps pretending isn’t a scarf, then melts into brush and shadow like the woods decided he belonged.
Our camp sits where the land dips, out of crosswinds, where snow piles thinner because the ground remembers a summer path. We stacked tents this morning when the search grid still felt like a plan and not a pulse. Now I use my heel to widen the packed area in front of the big canvas and shoulder inside, careful not to jar her head.
“Heat up,” I tell the small stove and the stones banked around it, and that is less an order than a release. Flame likes cooperative boundaries; so do I. I breathe shallow heat into the coals until a steady orange holds, then check the vent and the tent line twice. If I burn this canvas, I will never hear the end of it.
I lay her on the bedroll I doubled before we left. My jacket swallows her. The collar brushes her cheek. She fits there as if it was made for this and for a second I have to press my tongueagainst my teeth before it turns into a prayer. I’m not a man who prays. I’m a man who sets conditions and keeps watch.
“Temperature?” Darian asks from the opening. He knows I know.
“Warm.” I tuck the blanket along her ribs and leave the jacket open enough at the neck for air. “No sweat. No shock.”
Caelum sets a ward tab at the tent flap, two fingers to the rune until it answers. “I’ll tune the quiet lower so Ash can find us by sound if he needs to.”
“Good.” I pull my hand back from her forehead before I get possessive about it. “Tell me if you feel anything shift.”
He nods and goes. Darian holds my eyes a half second longer than usual. It means I’m allowed to sit here and watch her breathe instead of pretending I don’t want to. He leaves me the silence.
I keep the heat steady and listen. Breath. The faint click of the stove. Wind on canvas in a way that doesn’t threaten lines. Outside, Caelum thumps a boot against a stake to take up slack. The camp reorders around my focus until my body lets go of the last motion twitch. I roll my shoulders once and they stop trying to grow wings.
She looks nothing like the thing we chased. Out there, on the riverbank, she was mass and velocity, horn bright with snowlight, steam burning off her hide, death on four legspointed straight at despair. She could have run through us and left tracks that boiled the snow. She chose the other direction. That is the only reason my hands aren’t more bloody than they already are.
Here, wrapped in my jacket, she is small. Not weak—human, and breathtakingly beautiful in a way that lands like thin air at altitude. Collarbone under wool, the clean line of her jaw, a mouth that finally isn’t braced to bite, lashes clumped where meltwater dried, heat steady under my palm. I have watched wings catch fire and cities glow; none of it touches this. It isn’t decoration; it’s the right arrangement of bones and will. The wound on her side is shallow and clean because she did most of the work; I finished the rest because my hands stay steady when it counts. I want the world to keep its distance. I want her to wake and never learn how close she came to being alone.
I slide two fingers under the blanket, lay them along her wrist again and count. One, two, three. It’s habit. It’s also proof. If her breath shifts, I’ll catch it here first. The idea of missing a change makes my stomach go tight in a way I won’t give a name.
Footsteps crunch outside. The flap lifts. Caelum’s face comes through first, then the rest of him folding into the small space with more grace than it deserves. “She’s stable,” he says, soft. “Ash is on game. Darian is measuring the circle for a quick exit if we need it.”
“Good,” I say again, because anything else would turn into questions I can’t answer until she opens her eyes.
Caelum crouches on the far side and doesn’t reach for her. He knows better. He looks at my jacket around her like he’s filing it under a heading he hasn’t printed yet. “You’ll want food ready,” he adds. “She’ll wake hungry.”
“I know,” I say, and he nods like that is the right answer.
When he leaves, I ease out long enough to set the pot on the tripod over the low fire. The broth is from our base stores, thick and salt-forward, not the kind of thing you serve guests, the kind of thing you put in someone who needs to stay on the correct side of the world. I chop root into it and keep the pieces small, something she can handle without looking at her hands too long. If she wakes scared, I want the first thing she tastes to be warm and steady.
Ash returns as the broth starts to roll. Vex arrives first, a black bolt that lands on the frame and tilts his head at me like he expects me to compliment his wing work. I grunt. He preens anyway. Ash follows with snow on his shoulders and two ptarmigans hanging from his gloved hand.
“Snow chickens,” he announces, in case I forgot how to see. “Two. Plucked while walking because I love you and hate doing that part with numb fingers.”
“Useful,” I allow, and take them. “Thank you.”
He looks past me into the tent, meets the shape of her under my jacket, and his throat works. He blinks hard, once, and when helooks back his grin has teeth again. “I brought the small ones on purpose. She’s going to be starving and furious about it.”
“She’ll be fine,” I tell him, because I need that in the air. “And you’re not cutting the meat. You’re going to sit and keep your hands still before you take your own fingers off.”
“Bossy,” he mutters, but he sits. Vex hops to the pot rim and eyes the steam like it owes him a favor. Ash snaps his fingers once. The bird sighs in pure melodrama and relocates to the sled handle.
Darian returns with a nod that can pass for a smile if you squint. “We have a line home if we need it,” he reports. “Short, safe, two ticks to warm.”
“Good,” I say, and that’s the third time.
We fall into the kind of quiet that lets me work and lets them watch. I break the birds down, add small pieces to the pot, and keep the fire from roaring. Caelum hands me salt without asking and I use it. Ash peels something he swears is edible and drops it in while I’m not looking. It probably is edible. If it isn’t, I’ll fake it with spices and a prayer to the kind of gods I don’t like to bother.
By the time the stew smells like we might deserve it, the sky is going dark in a way that tells me the day remembers how to end. Darian tightens the tent lines. Caelum drops a hush ward across the camp that keeps sound inside without making my skin itch. Ash checks her again, and this time I let him. He touches the back of her hand with two fingers and then tucks them under myjacket like he’s fixing a fold. He calls it maintenance. I call it what it is and say nothing.
