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She turned, looking over her shoulder up at his miserable blue eyes.

Her voice was a whisper, so quiet she could barely hear her own words above the soft, cracking fire in the oven.

“We never—” She swallowed. “I couldn’t be—”

“I know,” he said just as softly, resting his forehead against hers. His mouth was inches from her ear. “I know how desperate you were to help your clan, and I know how my brother manipulated people. I know how he was. Thinking about how he tried to do that to you…” His whole body shuddered against her. “I want to kill him again. Slowly. I want to hold you close and never let you leave my sight. Never let anyone hurt you again.”

Her heart ached for him. “I’m sorry.”

Pyetar shook his head mournfully. “Don’t be sorry, this isn’t on you. Someday I’ll stop wishing he’d survived just so I can kill him again.”

Iryana leaned against him, curling her fingers around the arm that snaked around her chest, holding him close. Pyetar nuzzled his face into her neck. She fell asleep like that, bundled in his arms.

In the morning, they all lingered in the outpost longer than they needed to. Vaneshta reviewed the maps, and Pyetar showed Iryana the reports from the river brigades. It was mostly just a list of dates and times of each observation, and a scant description of what they saw. It didn’t match anything they’d seen with the foxlike creatures in their woods, but the descriptions were so minimal that she couldn’t know for sure.

Iryana started marking the locations on Pyetar’s map, adding notes for the times. A pattern began to emerge.

“What do you think?” Pyetar asked, leaning over her to see the papers she had spread over the table.

Iryana leaned back into him, feeling herself let go of some of the tension in her muscles. It felt like his body was curling around her, safe and comforting.

“If it didn’t seem so unlikely, I would say this is something different,” she admitted, chewing on her lip. “Depending on how long we’re out here, I might be able to roughly predict where we could look for this… whatever it is.”

Vaneshta looked up from the other side of the table.

“Do you think it would be better to start with looking into these river sightings?” Pyetar asked Iryana. “And investigate where we saw the fox creatures later?”

Iryana considered it. They had a better idea where this creature in the rivers would be, but they’d seen the fox and knew it was here. “The river brigade’s soldiers didn’t ever properly see the creatures, so I don’t have much confidence we would have more luck.”

“We’ll continue on here then,” he agreed.

They carefully folded the maps, tucking them into their packs, and removed any traces from the outpost. Shortly after the sun rose late in the morning, they went their separate ways.

It felt like they were meandering endlessly through the snow, hunched against the cold as they looked for signs of anything odd. They grew closer and closer to the location Pyetar’s specialist had reported seeing the strange creature, and spent the night huddled on a platform in the trees, pine boughs nestled around them to keep them warm.

Iryana was exhausted from trekking paths through the deep snow, cold from the biting wind, and growing increasingly anxious that they would find nothing at all.

They’d seen one set of partial tracks that had turned out to be an actual fox, ran into two lone dakii that had growled at them but let them pass, and found two smaller dakii with only nubs for horns all on their own.

It all felt… pointless.

The next day, Iryana and Pyetar finally came across a promising set of tracks. Pyetar stood behind her, waiting as she carefully analyzed the shadowed depressions in the snow. She traced the tracks with her gloved fingers, comparing the size against her hand.

“It looks the same, but it’s probably just another fox,” Iryana mumbled, feeling dejected.

“I’ve never seen fox tracks like that,” Pyetar argued, frowning.

She let out a shaky breath. “What are we even doing? We’re just walking. Endlessly. What do we think we’re going to find?”

“Hey.” Pyetar squeezed her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “We’re going to figure it out. We didn’t survive this summer just to fall apart now.”

Iryana let out a long sigh, but she nodded. “You’re right.”

“Let’s follow the tracks. It’s the best lead we have.”

She nodded, standing to confirm the direction the tracks were headed. “This way.”

“I can’t believe this creature covered this much ground since yesterday,” Iryana pointed out after they’d been following the tracks for a few hours, the sun starting to fall again. The tracks would be more difficult to follow in the dark. “The snow would have covered anything older.”