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His eyes held hers. “That is the oath. You know that.”
“The oath doesn’t bind you to men who would rather see you fall.”
“It binds me, Maia,” he said.
“It shouldn’t. Not to them.”
“Especially to them.”
The answer was simple. She searched his expression for resentment, but found none.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “The hamlet. Julen. Even after—”
“It is easier,” he said quietly, “to blame what stands apart.”
“Yes, but they were too busy hating you to see what was actually happening.”
He smiled very slightly. “But you were not.”
She looked down at the fire, suddenly aware of how closely she had been watching him all day.
“I’m a scribe. It’s my work to notice,” she said.
“Do you?”
She glanced back up. He was studying her now, silver ripples catching firelight. After a moment, he inclined his head, the smallest acknowledgment.
“Then notice this,” he said. “The ground spoke before it broke.”
A chill traced her spine. “You heard it?”
“I did.”
“What did it sound like? The warning?”
He considered the question longer than she expected. “Not sound, exactly. More like a held note going flat. Something true, going slightly wrong.”
“That sounds very poetic, for someone who’s supposed to bring nothing but death to all of humankind…”
The corner of his mouth moved, almost a smile. “Do not tell the Elders. It would ruin the reputation.”
She laughed - soft, surprised at herself - and for a moment the fire, the cliffs, the dead weight of the day fell away, and there was only this: his eyes on hers, something easy passing between them that she hadn’t earned and didn’t want to question.
“Will it happen again?” she asked, when she trusted her voice again.
He looked toward the dark, beyond the firelight, and whatever had been easy in his face closed over once more.
“Yes.”
Deyar’s sharpening stone rasped once more through the silence. The sound broke whatever had formed between them. Maia settled back in her place by the fire. But when she lay down, she did not pull her cloak as tightly around herself as she had the night before.
Sleep came unevenly at first. At some point during the night, she woke to the soft shift of metal, but the sound no longer startled her.
Across the dying fire, Caelith sat upright, unmoving, watching the dark as if he could see through it. Maia wondered whether the world feared him because of what he was, or because of what he saw coming before anyone else did.
The embers dimmed and the night held, and eventually, she fell soundly asleep.
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