Swift-River moved through the Deadmounts in opossum form, tracking Miikka's scent. Leather. Metal. Nervous sweat.

  She knew that smell. Had known it in Ruby's lair, when his coin clattered to the floor and his hands shook too badly to retrieve it. When she'd pressed a copper scale into his palm and promised to come back.

  I'm coming back for you. I swear it.

  His smile had failed before it formed. Sure. I'll just wait here. Count to infinity.

  Three years later, she was keeping that promise.

  The scent led her toward the orc encampment. She could hear them now. Shouted commands. Metal on leather. Warriors mobilizing. Miikka had led her directly into danger.

  Why here? Why toward witnesses?

  She pressed forward. The tree line ended at a clearing filled with organized chaos. Orcs moved with purpose, forming hunting parties. Torchlight caught tusks and blade edges. Someone bellowed orders about compromised escape routes and shifting signals.

  Swift-River slipped between massive boots and tent stakes. Opossums meant good luck to orcs. No warrior would harm her. But discovery in any form meant questions she couldn't answer.

  A shadow fell across her path.

  She froze.

  Green fingers, thick as oak branches, closed around her body.

  The orc lifted her to his face. She went limp. Played dead. Every instinct screamed to shift, to fight, to flee. She held the opossum stillness and let her heart hammer against ribs too small to contain it.

  His palm was warm. Callused. The hand of someone who had worked and fought and bled. She felt his pulse through his skin, steady and slow.

  He studied her with eyes the color of burnt amber.

  Don't see me. Don't see anything but a lucky creature. Please.

  His nostrils flared. His brow creased.

  Then his thumb stroked along her spine. Gentle. The touch of someone who understood small fragile things.

  ***

  Roar'Z held the opossum and felt wrongness he couldn't name.

  The weight sat heavy in his palm. Too heavy. And the creature's stillness held something behind it. Not the limp surrender of a frightened animal. Controlled stillness. Trained stillness.

  He looked into its eyes.

  Something looked back.

  Something old. Something that knew him, though they'd never met.

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  A warrior called his name. Reports of movement at the northern perimeter. He had seconds, not minutes.

  The opossum smelled of copper and distant heat. Not rot. Not death. Something else. Something that made the hair on his arms rise for reasons his mind couldn't catch.

  He set the creature down gently. Turned toward his warriors.

  Later. Figure it out later.

  ***

  Swift-River didn't breathe until his footsteps faded.

  Her tiny heart slammed against her ribs. She could still feel the warmth of his palm. The impossible gentleness in those massive fingers.

  He saw something. He chose to let me go.

  She didn't know why. Didn't have time to wonder.

  She ran.

  The orc camp blurred around her. Shouts and torchlight and the thunder of boots. She wove between legs and supply crates, following Miikka's scent toward the northern edge.

  Then she cleared the last tent and almost broke from cover.

  Vardan's shadow swept across the ground in front of her.

  She jerked back, pressing against a tent stake. Her heart lurched. Shadow-Mane's massive wings blocked the stars as the sorcerer circled overhead. Sulfur stench rolled down in his wake.

  Stupid. Careless. The orc rattled you and you almost walked into Vardan's patrol.

  She waited. Counted wingbeats. Watched the shadow shrink as he banked east, away from her position.

  When the sky cleared, she ran again.

  The forest swallowed her. Ironroot trees rose like pillars, their silver-touched bark cold against her paws when she paused to orient. Miikka's trail led northwest. Uphill. Away from the camp's chaos.

  She found the first wrong thing fifty paces in.

  A broken twig at eye level. Snapped clean, pale wood exposed to moonlight.

  Too obvious.

  She moved on. Found a boot print pressed deep into soft earth. The kind of mark someone makes when they want to be followed.

  He's not running. He's leading.

  Another hundred paces. The trail paused at a stream crossing. Stones placed just so, creating an easy path. No halfling who'd survived Ruby's service would leave a trail this clear.

  The pattern assembled in her mind.

  He knows I'm following. He's known since the camp. Maybe before.

  This isn't a hunt. It's a test.

  She shifted back to her half-elf form. Copper scales shimmered along her forearms as her body remembered its true shape. She crouched by the stream, water rushing cold over stones, and thought.

  He's testing my stealth. My nerve. Whether I'll follow him into a trap.

  Or whether I'm still the Swifty who pressed a scale into his hand and promised to come back.

  The fears surfaced. She let them.

  What if Ruby broke him completely? What if the Miikka I knew is already gone?

  What if he blames me for escaping? For leaving him behind? What if he's spent years hating me for a promise I didn't keep?

  What if he won't turn, and I have to...

  She couldn't finish the thought.

  Her fingers found the silver scars at her wrists. Permanent reminders of what freedom cost. Of what she'd sacrificed to escape Ruby's binding.

  She could turn back. Report to Adamar. Let someone else handle Miikka. The safe choice. The smart choice.

  I swore it.

  She rose and followed the trail.

  It led her through a stand of young ironwoods, their branches too thin to hold weight. Past a boulder split by ancient roots. Up a ridge where moonlight pooled in a small clearing.

  The trail ended at the clearing's edge.

  She saw the coin first.

  Silver caught the light. Sitting on a flat stone at the clearing's center. Placed there. Waiting.

  No Miikka. No ambush. Just the coin.

  Swift-River stepped into the open.

  She crossed the clearing without hiding. Without hurrying. Let herself be seen if he was watching. Let him see her face, her true form, the woman who'd made a promise in a sulfur-stinking corridor.

  She stopped at the stone. Looked down at the coin.

  Her throat tightened.

  She bent. Picked it up. The metal was cold against her palm.

  Once, in Ruby's lair, she'd retrieved this coin from the floor when his hands shook too badly to hold it. She'd pressed it back into his grip. Felt how light he'd become.

  Now she straightened. Held the coin out toward the shadows at the clearing's edge.

  The metal caught moonlight. Her arm didn't waver.

  I came back, Miikka. Just like I promised.

  She waited.

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