She wakes to darkness.

  The room is still dim, the faintest grey pressing against the shutters. Dawn has not yet arrived. The wooden floor aches against her hip and her cloak is wound tight around her. She stretches slowly, careful, listening for any sign that she has disturbed Aarav.

  He has not moved.

  He lies on his back, one arm resting across his chest, the other flung above his head. His breathing is deep and even. Untroubled. It surprises her.

  In the quiet, she allows herself a longer look than she has before.

  Sleep softens him. Whatever sharpness he carries when he is awake has eased away, leaving something simpler behind. The low light from the kitchen touches his hair and smooths the shadows along his jaw. He looks nothing like the men who came to the temple in fine cloth and polished manners. There is nothing refined about him. Only something real that appeals to her. She looks away before the thought settles too deeply.

  A sound draws her attention. The faint scrape of a chair moving across the floor.

  Seren rises carefully and slips into the kitchen. Calen sits at the table with a steaming cup before him. He looks unchanged from the night before, save for the weariness pressed into his face. His clothes are the same, now creased. His eyes are rimmed with shadow.

  He lifts a hand in quiet greeting and gestures to the chair opposite. Seren sits. He pours a second cup and pushes it toward her.

  The tea is hot and bitter. She drinks it slowly. Neither of them speaks. The silence feels different from the night before. Heavy, but not stifling.

  At last, Calen sets his cup down.

  “You do not truly know him. Though I do wonder if I ever did.”

  It is not quite a question.

  Seren meets his gaze. “I know enough.”

  A brief, humourless smile touches his mouth. “Enough for what, I wonder.” He leans back slightly, fingers curling around the cup again. “Aarav and I worked together once. A few years ago. I would have called him a friend then. More than that, perhaps. We owed each other our lives by the end of it. He saved mine. I trusted him after that.”

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  Calen’s gaze drifts for a moment, slipping somewhere beyond the kitchen walls. When it returns to her, it is harder.

  “That was a mistake,” he says. “When I expected him at my side, he abandoned me. When it stopped being fun and games, I faced the final reckoning alone.”

  Seren does not say anything, what can she say.

  His voice stays even, but the hurt beneath it is plain enough that she does not need words for it. “I do not know what his purpose is with you,” Calen continues, “and I will not ask. But understand this. Aarav does nothing without reason, and that reason is always himself.”

  Before she can respond, footsteps sound in the main room.

  Aarav appears in the doorway, rubbing at the back of his neck, hair still rumpled from sleep. Calen stands at once, not looking at him, and crosses to the counter where a small basket of fruit rests. He sets it down between them.

  “Eat.”

  Aarav drops into Calen’s chair. “Well,” he says lightly. “Hospitality after all?”

  “Do not grow fond of it,” Calen replies. “I have arranged transport to Solmaris. A trader’s caravan leaves this morning. You will work for your place. It will be quicker than walking and easier to travel unnoticed with others. It is the best I can offer. More than I owe either of you.”

  Seren nods and reaches for an apple. Aarav hums once in acknowledgment and bites into a piece of fruit. They eat without speaking, the only sound the quiet settling of the fire.

  When they finish, Calen clears the table. Whatever softness lingered is gone now, replaced by efficiency.

  “You should go,” he says. “The caravan waits past the southern exit and down the southern road.”

  Seren rises first. “Thank you,” she says, meeting his eyes. “May the stars watch over your path, and your flame endure.”

  Aarav adds his own thanks, but Calen’s expression hardens.

  “Do not thank me,” he says. “I do not wish to see you again. If you come to my door a second time, you will be met with a dagger through the chest.”

  Aarav only smiles, faint and unreadable.

  They step out into the cool morning. The village lies quiet, dawn just beginning to touch the rooftops. The southern road stretches ahead, empty for now.

  As they walk, Seren glances at Aarav. Calen’s words linger in her thoughts, circling in her mind so she cannot shake them.

  The question will not leave her.

  Who is he, truly.

  She has seen him step forward when there was danger. Seen him place himself between her and harm without pause. She has trusted his choices because she had no other choice, and because, until now, those choices have kept her alive.

  Still, there are spaces she cannot see into. Quiet gaps where his words end and silence begins. Things unspoken. Things unknown about him.

  The thought follows her as they walk toward the road, the village slipping along around them.

  Who is Aarav?