The moment the big Wolf trotted to a stop, Pait retracted her arms, pretending that they hadn’t been clutching Daivad’s sizable waist a moment before. Thankfully, Daivad didn’t comment on it, just kicked one leg up and over the Wolf’s head and dismounted. He hadn’t commented when the Wolf had first taken off with them on her back, either, drawing a yelp from Pait who immediately clung to Daivad and shut her eyes. And that was how she’d spent the last Mother-only-knew how many hours. She didn’t think he was any more comfortable with it than she was, but she couldn’t help it. The only way she could keep from falling off or maybe puking was to shut her eyes and hold on.

“Wh—? We’re not there already, are we?” Pait looked around. They were in a little ravine with a stream flowing through it, and Pait was surprised to find that the sunlight had faded while her face had been buried in Daivad’s cloak. Or maybe that was just the tree cover.

“We’re stopping for the night.” He scratched the Wolf under her chin, then rolled his thick, bruised neck with an audible pop.

“We are not!” She looked up, trying to figure out exactly how close they were to sunset. “Not without walls!”

“Maxea needs rest.” He sighed. “I need rest.”

Pait had been waiting hours for the chance to finally get her stolen boots back on solid ground, but now she hiked her legs up like if they dangled down too far a monster would burst out of the undergrowth and grab them. “How can you name getting eaten by monsters Restful?”

Daivad waved a hand at the trees around them while he stepped toward the stream. “We’ve faced worse than whatever nightbeasts live around here.”

Wide-eyed, Pait watched the shadows. She opened her mouth to speak, but just then the Wolf, Maxea, moved toward the water, making Pait grab fistfuls of black fur and yelp in alarm. Maxea dropped her head to lap at the stream. But Pait couldn’t convince herself to climb down.

The Wolf didn’t give her any choice—after a minute of noisy drinking, Maxea flopped to the ground with an enormous groan, her front paws resting in the stream, and began to pant. Pait had no idea how the both of them could be so relaxed this close to nightfall with no walls around them. Daivad peeled off his tattered boots and waded his bloody feet into the water downstream of Maxea.

Maxea turned her massive head to shoot Pait a look with flashing, jade eyes. When Pait still didn’t get off her back, the Wolf’s lips twitched and a growl so low Pait felt it more than heard it rumbling out of her.

Pait quickly got off Maxea.

“You mean those words?” Her words came out high and panicked. “You want to sleep? Outside? At night?”

Daivad shrugged off his cloak and tossed it. “You’ve never slept outside city walls?”

“No. I’ve never even stepped outside city walls when the sun was anywhere near the horizon. I practice no magic. And this,” Pait pulled a dagger from her boot, the one and only weapon she had, “won’t make a monster so much as blink.”

“She will.” Daivad tipped his head at Maxea.

It was true that when they’d climbed through the city wall’s drainage grate and Pait had come face to face with the giant black Wolf, she had screamed and, to her absolute shame, hidden behind Daivad, but Pait didn’t expect monsters to be quite as cowardly as that. She was about to continue arguing, but when she looked at him, she stopped.

Now cloakless, she could see he was criss-crossed with scars and painted with bruises—and quite a few fresh wounds from his fight the night before. There was even an old bite mark on his left shoulder, much like the one left on his hand by the little monster this morning, only much, much bigger. And then Pait remembered the leveled buildings in Luvatha, the way the Guard had opened the gate in the middle of the night because they knew if they didn’t, he’d take it down himself.

She felt a little bit safer. A little bit.

Until Daivad said, “Stay with Max,” and started into the trees.

Squeaky, Pait said, “Where are you going!?”

“To piss.”

Oh.

And he disappeared into the undergrowth. Pait realized, suddenly, that she also had to piss. Very badly. But no way she was going to pee in front of him, and also no way she was going out into those trees alone. She would just have to hold it. But … could she?

“How many more hours on this path?” Pait called. When he didn’t answer right away, fear welled up in her, leaving even less room in her bladder. Had he left? She shouted, “Ay!”

“Depends how Max is moving,” he called back, his words run through with a faint growl, “and how much good another round of runes and a night’s sleep does her.”

“Name me a minimum.”

“Half a day.”

Shit. She definitely couldn’t hold it that long. And also: shit. That was another thing she’d have to worry about soon.

The rustling of undergrowth preceded his return. She stood there, saying nothing, scrambling to think of a solution to this increasingly urgent problem…

Daivad couldn’t suppress a groan as, in a series of stiff movements, he knelt beside the stream. He splashed his hands in the water, then swiped his face, slicking a few stray locks back, and lastly dipped his canteen in the stream. Without looking up, he grunted, “If you need to go, take Max with you.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Pait fidgeted, once again looking up at the darkening sky. It had better be now.

She found it only slightly less uncomfortable peeing in front of a giant Wolf than she thought it would be in front of him. At least the Wolf was a girl. As if to make Pait feel better, Maxea squatted and peed too.

Once everyone had emptied their bladders and they’d all returned to the little ravine, Daivad tossed Pait a chunk of jerky—without so much as a Heads up, so it smacked her in the face and she had to scramble to catch it before it hit the ground. Maxea stretched with much groaning and trotted off to find her own dinner. Pait tried to look as unconcerned as Daivad did, but she couldn’t help but analyze every shadow, look around every time a twig snapped. Luckily, Daivad seemed to have chosen a relatively monster-less area to rest in. The dark was silent aside from the trickling stream, those occasionally snapping twigs, and about a thousand cicadas.

Daivad balled up his cloak, stuck it under his head like a pillow, settled back, and closed his eyes.

“The Wolf’s not back yet!” Pait protested. It was well and truly night now.

Daivad grunted. “Keep shouting and you’ll scare her dinner away. She’ll be gone even longer.”

“How can you sleep right now?”

“Can’t if you don’t shut up.”

“Good.”

He opened one ice-blue eye to glare at her, there balled up with her knees to her chin. “I haven’t slept in two days.”

“Which is why you want to get eaten by a monster—to take the ultimate nap?”

Growling, Daivad sat back up. Now that she looked for it, maybe those dark circles under his eyes weren’t just bruises—not only had he not slept, he’d spent the night battling an absolutely unhinged shark Inhuman. Still, she’d rather inconvenience him than die.

With rumbling words, Daivad said, “If I keep my eyes open until she gets back, will that keep your mouth closed?”

“Yes,” she said, not knowing if that was true. She was exhausted too, but she couldn’t imagine sleeping out here, exposed—and she was a nervous talker.

He rubbed his monster-bitten hand over his tired face and sighed. They were silent for a while, not looking at each other, and Pait’s mind jumped from one worry to the next. From the monsters somewhere out there, to where the hell they were going. And what it would be like when they got there. Pait had no idea what she had gotten herself into now.

She looked down at the letters on her arm—still hidden under her cloak so Daivad couldn’t see. In the darkness she couldn’t really see either, but she knew they were there. The arm felt heavy. Her muscles weak. And the skin that wore the mark was painful and sensitive. Shame settled over her, and for the thousandth time that day, tears prickled her eyes. But she would not cry in front of him. Not for real, anyway. Not again.

“What’s it like?” she blurted, to distract herself. “Our destination, I mean.”

Pait could feel him considering her. Eventually, he asked, “You afraid of heights?”

“…What?”

“It’s up in the trees. Big trees.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Safer.”

“So … what, you like, swing from branch to branch? Sleep in hammocks?”

“No,” he growled. “There’s buildings. Bridges. Lifts.”

“So … it’s treehouses.”

His reply was a grunt.

“How many people sleeping inside them?”

“Few hundred.”

She looked up in surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t be shocking, knowing how many people he’d freed, knowing the way people talked about him. But still. Pait had been imagining a ragtag group of a few dozen.

“What … what do y’all do? Up in your treehouses?”

He shrugged. “Live.”

“No plotting rebellions? Training for war?”

“No.”

“Then why keep collecting camps? Why blow up Luvatha?”

For a moment, Pait thought his silence meant he was listening for something. But no, he was just not going to answer her question.

“What…” Anxiety squirmed in her belly, a worry she’d had all day finally bubbling to the surface. But she didn’t know how to ask it. What did he expect from her? What would a life in his community cost her? “What will I do?”

“Help out,” he said. “Everyone has a job.”

“Like?”

“Farming. Guarding. Repairs around camp. Like that.”

They lapsed once again into silence. Pait settled her chin on her knees, wrapped her cloak all the way around her, thinking. An enormous, profound grief still weighed on her—she’d been losing people since before she was born. She’d never known her father, her mother was shit, and all the caretakers, all the people she’d taken care of had come and gone more times than she could count over the years. But never all in one go like this, all in a single night. And, though Pait had never really felt free before, the mark on her arm made her feel … irreparably altered.

Quiet, she asked, “Do they all wear marks?”

The way he straightened suddenly first made Pait think he’d heard something out in the forest, but then he just shook his hair out of his eyes and she was pretty sure the question had just startled him back awake.

“Most of ‘em.” His voice was deep and sleepy. He swiped a hand over his face again.

“Not all?”

“Some came with me when I left the army. Some followed other members. But that only names a handful.”

“What about Monster Girl and Hammer Lady?”

Pait watched his reaction carefully, but in the dark she couldn’t read anything on his face. Still, back in that inn when the two women had shown up, his whole demeanor had changed. And the way he paused now…

“Sh—They found me.”

“Who are they?”

Another pause. “Long story.”

“The one thing I’ve got aside from some stolen clothes is time, so you might as well tell it.”

But just then the Wolf came tramping back with some dark, dripping creature clamped in her jaws. While she settled a few yards away from them, Daivad settled back on his cloak-pillow and grumbled a very pointed, “Good night.”

And Pait was left to try to fall asleep to the sounds of tearing flesh and snapping bone.