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Silas’s grin widened. “You know, I told her I understand you.” His eyes glinted. “You can’t help it. Some men are born broken.”

Orzen glared across at him. “Funny. It almost sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

Silas’s smirk faltered. Something tightened around his eyes.

Good. Orzen had waited days to see it.

“Guess we’ll see which of us cracks first,” Orzen finished, flashing a smile so cold it made Silas’s lips stiffen.

Silence thinned between them, stretched to its breaking point. Embers collapsed in the fire, sending sparks into the darkness. Then Silas rose, brushing his palms on his trousers as though shaking off the moment.

“I’ll be back,” Silas said. “Try not to set the forest ablaze while I’m gone.” His voice carried the rhythm of a joke, but the edge beneath it was pointed enough to bite.

The words slid off Orzen’s back. Simple jabs wouldn’t be enough to distract him. Not this time.

Silas strode into the dark, calm as ever. A moment later, when the camp had settled into empty silence again, Orzen stood to follow. Every muscle coiled beneath his armor. His heartbeat fell into step with the hush of the trees. Pell’s insoles covered the sound of his steps in shadow.

Ahead, Silas pushed through the brush—steady and unhurried—a man with nothing to fear. His pale hair caught in the dim light as he knelt before a tree beside the river.

Its bark was slick with shelf-mushrooms. Their pale caps shone in the sliver of moonlight. Silas cut a line across his palm with the flash of a blade. Dark drops slid down the side of his hand. He smeared it across the bark. Then he waited.

Whatever he was doing out here, it was nothing good. Most people didn’t go about bleeding on trees for fun. Orzen crouched, stomach clenching as he watched.

The mushrooms shivered, their caps expanding as though breathing. A faint glow pulsed through their flesh, sickly green and alive. Then, Silas bowed low, pressing his face to the dirt. He stayed that way for what seemed like hours, lips moving but no sound coming out. When Silas straightened, his expression looked lighter.

Ease unwound his shoulders, his breath softening in a way Orzen had never once seen from him on the road. It wasn’t the performed calm he typically carried, hoping to convince them he was safe. No, this was devotion. Orzen shuddered and backed away toward camp. He couldn’t let Silas catch him out here alone.

And then—

A sound. Rhythmic. Subtle.

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

It threaded through the dark, striking Orzen’s memory like a song half-remembered.

The hair on his arms rose. He strained to listen, heart thudding in time with its rhythm. It was familiar. The beads. Silas’s beads—the cord he used to count distance. But this time the sound scraped deeper, an itch beneath thought, tugging at something buried beneath the fear and long nights that had followed the festival.

Hearthroot? No—Wren. A warning. Frinna. She’d been telling him about the figure she’d seen with Theordrin. Her voice came back to him—an echo, fierce as flint.

Weird clacking sound…like stones hitting each other.

He hadn’t understood then. It had been another thread lost in a night full of chaos. He’d let it fall away, because Wren was alive. She hadn’t been taken. He’d believed Frinna might’ve been wrong about the plan. But now, with that sound scraping through the stillness, it snapped together like the last piece of a puzzle he hadn’t even known he’d been putting together.

Silas’s lies. His sudden interest in Wren. The way he never tired or hungered. Never fully human in the ways that mattered.

Always watching.

Orzen’s blood went cold.

Silas hadn’t only betrayed their safety. He’d been there before all of this. Before the festival. Before the attack. He hadn’t stumbled onto their path. He hadn’t saved Wren in the forest that night by chance. He’d wormed his way closer every day.

He was the one Frinna overheard bargaining for Wren’s life.

Theordrin’s ally. The enemy they should’ve seen all along.