Stone.

That was all we seemed to come across on our march to Ord. We walked on stone, we looked at stone, and we slept on stone as well. Or, I supposed with my bedroll right underneath me, that wasn’t entirely true. But it was only a thin layer that separated me from more rock below.

A sigh slipped between my lips as I curled my knees up. I leaned forward and rested my head on them as I let my thoughts spin. Sitting a dozen paces removed from the small fire that the rest of my party was chatting around, it was almost the only thing I coulddo.

After dealing with injuries that the cult’s ambush had left us with, we’d simply continued to walk. We’d continued on the wide mountain pass until the sun’s light had refused to reach over the mountains anymore. At that point, we’d only walked a little bit further toward a covered, cavern-like shelf with enough space to house the entire legion rather generously.

It was fine, I told myself. From a distance away, the crackling fire barely struck me with any warmth, but the nighttime wind wasn’t too cold anyway. It wasn’t sharp and howling like it was in the forests I’d left behind. The mountains provided a neat shield against winter’s indecisive mood.

And there certainly was enough room. The shelf extended for hundreds of paces as almost a cut-out of the mountain’s slope. It was enough for each of the legion’s separate groups to make their own fires and continue bonding with the people they’d been marching with.

A couple dozen more paces after the backing party that I was sitting removed from, the legion’s main group sat around a much larger fire and chatted far more boisterously. Without Fyn, I mused silently, I didn’t know if our measly group could’ve even held a candle to the clamor the rest of the knights threw up.

But that was fine too. There was enough space for their chatter and their laughter to be little more than a background. Even as the sounds echoed off stone walls, I could tune them out. I could continue to think like I’d been doing for the entire back-half of the day.

I still couldn’t get over the fight. Too much had happened for it to process quickly. Walking in silence had helped, but the information still spiraled. It still refused to stop and make rational sense. There were too many questions left.

The ambush. The woman—Petra, she’d called herself. The magic-lined message she’d whispered into a flame and then thrown right before her death. Right before the white flame had killed her.

My teeth locked together as it played over again. I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it no matter how much I thought. Each question I answered—giving a half-baked reason to why Petra had been interested in Sarin at all—came with a flurry of new ones in its place.

On top of it all, I still didn’t know why the cult had attacked in the first place. They’d been painfully outnumbered by the legion—and most of the individual cultists weren’t all that powerful. Lionel and I had been better fighters than all of them except the woman wearing metal gloves.

Yet, the robed acolytes hadn’t seemed all that concerned with their well-being anyway. They’d blindly thrown themselves at us with as many blades and as much fire as they could muster as though just to do damage. Except they hadn’t even accomplished that.

Fyn and Lionel had been the most injured out of the bunch with a gash over the arm and seared flesh on the leg respectively. Both of them had been in severe pain that we’d really only treated with bandages and the magical herbs we’d brought along. But they’d live. And as for the rest of the legion, the worst any of them retained were a few cuts and some minor burns.

I’d been lucky myself that I’d returned at the end with only some scrapes, a harsh burn on my arm, and some soul drain to boot. Though, after the white flame had taken control, none of my wounds had given me all that much trouble.

I was thankful that Kye hadn’t asked about that, either.

After telling her that Petra was dead, she’d respected my frustration and left the silence. Silence that had persisted when we’d started marching again. Not even the white flame had interrupted my thoughts then. It had only flickered quietly while I’d gone over the events.

I knew that Kye was forcefully holding her tongue, though. I’d been able to see it in her stiff posture. And even now as she walked over to where she’d placed her bedroll beside mine, I could still see the suspicion on her face. I knew her too well to miss it, and it wasn’t as though she was putting much effort into hiding it.

We’d survived, though. So I’d been happy to be left with some kind of peace.

If only peace wasn’t so world’s damned boring.

My shoulders slumped as I leaned back, letting a sigh of relief into the brisk air. The wind billowed over my uniform and ruffled my hair. It brushed against the burn still exposed on my skin where the red fire had made a hole in my uniform.

“Tired?” Kye asked as she walked up with what looked to be a stale cracker in her hand. Eyeing me still, she took another bite and sat down beside me.

With another sigh, I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah.” The remnants of soul drain showed with pangs of pain at the back of my head. “I’m fucking exhausted. Are you not?”

She threw the last of the cracker into her mouth before rolling her wrist. “Of course not. I have experience with traveling long distances. A little bit of a headache, but I didn’t even really get burned back there.”

I let out a dry chuckle. “You’re lucky, then. There was more than enough fire to go around. Those cultists were… something else.”

The huntress nodded, straightening out her bedroll and crossing her legs. “I can attest to that, at least. If I hadn’t responded, they would’ve gutted Laney where she stood.”

My blood ran cold. “Oh. Really?”

Kye’s smirk dropped off. “Yeah. Even after almost freezing the guy’s face off, she was that close to getting a burning knife in her neck.” My companion squared her shoulders. “If my arrow hadn’t come, we might’ve had a casualty back there.”

“We really were lucky, then,” I muttered.

“We certainly were,” Kye shot back, casual amusement seeping back into her voice. “But it wasn’t like we were going to get overwhelmed. Even with the surprise they had on us, they would’ve gotten crushed in time.”

Despite myself, I grinned. “What surprise?”

Kye turned to me, raising an eyebrow. Then the realization fell on her and she scoffed. “Right. I’m still surprised you noticed before I did, you know. The whole ‘running off without any warning’ thing caught me a bit perplexed.”

I laughed, the sounds coming out only halfway mirthless. The moment streamed back to me through memory as a point of pride. The white flame freezing in fear had been my first sign, truthfully. And once it had kicked me back to reality, the entire scene had been a whirlwind of subtle sensory clues. Clues that had just screamed something was wrong.

My grin widened as the images played back. The thin haze of smoke. Lionel and Laney whispering to each other without being sure about what was happening. My calls and the ensuing fight afterward.

The grin completely vanished as I remembered Laney casting. Swiping her hand through the air and stilting the flames that tried to pass near her.

“Hey…” I eventually said. Kye turned, her eyebrows rising. “Laney seemed to deal with the fire pretty well, even if she’s not great at hand-to-hand combat. And… I guess I’m just realizing this now, but what magical abilities is she best at anyway?”

Kye scrunched her face and stared curiously for a moment. “I—It’s a little hard to explain, I guess.” A sharp breath fled her nose. “I didn’t know what she was doing for the longest time after she got recruited, either. But I guess before arriving in Sarin, she had to defend herself a lot. So she became good at combating pyromancy.”

“Combating pyromancy? How does she do that?”

Kye tilted her head. “I’m, uh. I’m not entirely sure—but she’s some kind of reverse pyromancer.” Kye raised her hand and gestured through the air, creating a tiny spark over her finger. “So instead of shaping the world’s energy into heat, she shapes it in the opposite direction. It’s cold-magic, almost, but it has an even stronger effect on magical flames.”

My eyebrows dropped. The information slipped through my mind at a torturously slow rate until I simply accepted it and moved on. “That’s… interesting.”

Kye shrugged. “It is, but she has more usefulness than you might expect.” She chuckled. “You never know how much you need someone who can manipulate cold until you run out of ice.”

I smiled thinly at that and relaxed backward further, cradling my head in my hands. As I talked, my thoughts became more organized. They stopped spinning as fast and tormenting me with confusion. Maybe the silence hadn’t been my best idea, I ventured.

Shaking my head, I turned back to Kye. “I’m glad we had her there, too, then. Without her magic, I’m sure Lionel would’ve ended up with a lot more burns than he already has.”

Kye nodded briskly. “I’m sure. If she specialized in something else, he would’ve thrown himself into becoming a charred mess before she could get hurt.”

In a morbid sense, the image Kye’s words conjured made me snort. Then shaking my head and letting guilt do its job to calm me, I nodded along. “Maybe. It’s good that none of the cultists were that powerful, at least. Well, none except—” I stopped myself, the woman’s name at the tip of my tongue. Instead of letting it out, I discarded the word. She was dead now anyway. “Except the woman.”

Kye sneered. “The bitch of a pyromancer,” she said. “Another one of the cult members cocky enough not to wear armor and still have the audacity to smirk at us.” My companion ground her teeth.

Yet, even watching her frustration, I couldn’t help an idea. My eyes flicked up and down over Kye’s form. “We don’t wear any armor, and you still smirk at our enemies.”

Her sneer morphed into a full-on scowl as she directed it at me. She shot her eyes wide and gestured to her metal boots and hide plating that was stitched onto the chest of our uniforms. “We wear more armor than she did!” I stifled a chuckle only for Kye to roll her eyes. “And regardless, we’re hunters. She’s a cult member that ambushes people in the mountains—you’d think maybe she would protect herself better.”

“Not that she needed it much,” I said without thinking.

Kye’s lips snapped shut at that. She gritted her teeth and glared at the ground. “Yeah. That’s the most frustrating part, too. All she needs are those impenetrable metal gauntlets and the endless world’s damned flames to protect her.”

I stiffened up. Keris’ relentless, whispered cackling echoed like a phantom in my ears.

I shook my head. “Yeah. But she didn’t appear to have any regard for her life, either. They all just… ran at us while trying to cause as much destruction as possible.”

Kye straightened up. “Maybe it makes sense if you realize who they’re worshipping in the first place.” Her cold words sent a shudder through my body. “But…” She tilted her head. “You did kill that woman, right?”

I licked my suddenly-dry lips. “Uh, yeah.”

The huntress slowly turned toward me, raising an eyebrow. She eyed me for multiple seconds before letting out a single word.

“How?”

My hands twitched, only kept in place by the weight of my head. Thinking back to my fight with the woman—Petra, my mind forced me to remember—one thing in particular stuck out.

A dry chuckle slid out. “I knocked her off a cliff.”

Kye widened her eyes. The orange firelight from paces away danced to create a contrast in light that split her face in two. As she leaned forward, the light relegated itself to only gleaming off her hair. “You…” She shook her head. “That’s how you two got down there?”

I nodded as my fingers tensed, wishing they could grip the hilt of a blade. “Yeah. She was ready to scorch the rest of our backing party alive, but she was also a little too close to an edge.” My lips tugged upward. “It would’ve been over sooner had there not been a convenient ledge for her to fall on.”

“She was alive after she fell?”

“Yeah,” I said, bobbing my head and trying to work through what I was going to say. “But I didn’t let her stay alive to cause trouble. She’d already weakened herself with soul drain, so it…” My mind flashed to the spell she’d woven with the message. The blood she’d spat on the ground. I didn’t even want to consider how taxing such a magical manifestation could be. “It was an uphill battle for her by then.”

Kye didn’t believe me. She glared, showing her doubt crystal-clear even in the dim light. Then, however, she took a deep breath. “After I saved Laney’s ass and then helped Fyn from getting burned again, I walked over to the ledge you fell off.”

My fingers twitched. “And?”

She clenched her jaw. “And I saw flashes of white fire.” My next swallow only added to the lump in my throat. Kye took another deep breath. “Which reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”

One of her eyebrows shot up, and she didn’t even need to elaborate. I barely fought back the redness overtaking my face. “I… uh.”

“The white flames,” she said resolutely. “That’s magic.”

I cringed, my lips freezing in place. Movement in the back of my head signaled the white flame’s return as my thoughts included it. It crackles softly as I tried to come up with a reasonable explanation that didn’t make me sound like an idiot.

“Yeah…” I eventually got out. Kye’s gaze softened until she only looked wholly unimpressed. I offered a weak smile. “It’s new, as I said before. But, ah.” Gritting my teeth, I tried to keep my face from flushing red. “It’s complicated.”

Kye furrowed her brow. “Complicated how? You suddenly gained magical abilities just recently?”

I scrunched my face. “Well, yeah. Magical abilities I didn’t have access to before. There was some kind of… mental block, I suppose. It only went away back when I was in Farhar.”

Kye blinked, her eyebrows arching. “Wait. You—you’ve had magic since then? Because you made it very clear that you didn’t have magic before.”

“It’s been a slow process,” I said, averting my eyes. “It has developed in a strange way, and I really wasn’t a mage before. So I… don’t know how to control it very well.”

The huntress curled her lip and stared at me for a second. She studied my face, flicking her eyes back and forth as though trying to find evidence of a lie. But I wasn’t lying. Even if what I was saying didn’t do the truth justice, it wasn’t wrong. And she seemed to figure that out.

“Oh,” she finally said. Her shoulders slumped and she turned away, brushing chestnut hair from in front of her eyes. “You really have just been a mage whose powers manifested late in life?”

The term late in life stung deep in my core for some reason. It went against a fundamental truth that some part of me advertised as though it was all I’d ever known. But the voice of it was soft—it was insignificant compared to the pressing tension of the moment. I tuned it out.

“You could say that,” I said and forced myself back into a sitting position. Glancing sidelong at Kye, I angled my eyebrows and tried to convey as much sincerity as I could. Then, however, I stopped myself. “Wait. No—I mean…” Kye turned, her eyes narrowing again. As the thought came to me, I released a breath. “Do you remember our walk to Sarin? Months and months ago before I even became a ranger?”

Kye’s face lit up, her features gleaming against the distant firelight. “Yeah. After we escaped the mercenary camp.”

I was already bobbing my head. “Yeah. You remember the conversation we had? How I got out of their little ‘test’ in the first place?”

“White flames engulfed your fists as you were about to die,” Kye said as if relaying from memory. She leaned backward and propped herself up with one arm. “I remember that. And I remember that you didn’t understand it.”

“I still don’t,” I added. Her smile only widened.

“Oh man, I really remember that.” Kye laughed. “It’s all crystal clear now. You’re not a mage, but something inside you is.”

I laughed back, the sound not nearly as amused as Kye was. “Something like that, I guess.” The white flame surged toward the forefront of my mind and watched the dim world through my eyes.

Kye continued to laugh softly for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. And when she finally did calm herself to turn back to me, her smile almost stretched from ear-to-ear. “Well, whatever it is—give it a thanks from me. For breaking me out of that cell when it did.”

The white flame flickered in remembrance. The images flashed in front of my eyes, and I felt a phantom sensation of tight hands wrapping around my neck. Of the hopelessness I’d felt when I’d thought the beast would come for me again. But it hadn’t—the white flame rebelled furiously even at the thought.

“I-I will,” I said, cracking a smile myself. As the seconds ticked on, it was becoming more and more genuine. “I did almost die but…” I flicked my eyes back to the huntress. “It was worth it.”

Kye’s smile morphed into a smirk in short time. “Yeah. I mean, I would’ve gotten out of that cell on my own, but you did speed up the process.” She raised her eyebrows hyperbolically. “Besides the fact that I was the only reason we got out alive anyway.”

I rolled my eyes, unable to keep the smile off my lips. As the memories streamed back—lined both with fear and a warm fondness—I couldn’t help but feel happy. Or, as happy as was possible at the moment. Because I’d truly been lucky that Kye had been my cellmate. That whatever body the beast had put me in had a soul like the white flame.

Without either of them, my second chance wouldn’t have lasted very long. No matter how much determination or will I’d taken with me. I would’ve fallen right back to the reaper’s doorstep without a little bit of luck.

I had to be happy about that.

“Thanks, by the way,” I said. My hand drifted up to rub the back of my neck.

Kye turned to me and dropped the arrogant expression. Her head tilted and she eyed me curiously instead. “What do you—”

“For everything, I guess,” I said. Each word came to me the moment I opened my mouth. For some reason, my rational mind didn’t push them forward like normal. They were driven by something deep within me. Some kind of debt—some emotion I’d been fostering for months. “For helping me get out of that camp. For not ditching me as soon as you had the chance.” I chuckled softly. “For basically allowing me to become a ranger in the first place.” A moment of silence. “Thank you for all of that, I guess.”

Kye froze, her eyes fixed on me. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips, but it didn’t make much progress. What I saw on my companion’s face was something she rarely ever displayed at all.

Surprise.

“Uh. N-No problem,” she said, stuttering for possibly the first time since I’d met her. Rosy red flooded her cheeks, only barely noticeable in the fleeting light.

I scrunched my nose. My smile didn’t fade. “Yeah. I just… without you, I’d probably be dead right now. So I felt like some sort of sincere thanks was in order.”

Kye nodded slowly, awareness returning to her as the wind rolled through her hair. “That makes sense.” She blinked and shook her head. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting that, I guess. But…” She leaned toward me a little, her lips curling back into a smirk. “All things considered, saving your ass wasn’t particularly a bad move.”

“Good to hear that my life was worth it,” I said, chuckling as the memories flowed back. “Though, if you hadn’t saved me, you wouldn’t have had to put up with my incompetence during the first hunting competition I went on.”

Kye blinked. Then her eyes widened at the memory and she started laughing. “Oh, you are so right about that. But… without you corralling such interesting game with your ineptitude, I also might not have won.”

I smiled, remembering the fear I’d felt as the pyre wolf had chased me. I’d been sure the reaper would come to take me back then, too. Because I hadn’t ever seen a pyre wolf before that—I’d never been chased by creatures normally delegated to myths and stories on my home continent.

“I suppose that’s true too,” I said. “But if I hadn’t become a ranger, we never would’ve gone to Norn that first time. You wouldn’t have almost been scorched alive by a pyromancer far too powerful to be playing with mortals.”

Kye stiffened up at that, her smile fading a hair. “Ah. I guess that’s true. But if you weren’t around, Arathorn would’ve still wanted that package. He would’ve still been a… a kanir.” She shuddered. “Except he might still be alive for Sarin to have to face that head-on.”

My smile dropped as well, inch by inch. “Yeah. Probably. I wasn’t entirely useless, then.”

“Nope,” Kye shot back as she leaned forward again. Her eyes flashed confidently. “But I never would’ve gone to retrieve that package if you hadn’t convinced me to go with you. We did almost become ash on that trip.” She chuckled and gestured around. “And look where we are again!”

In the corner of my eye, I saw a few of the knights in our backing party turn. They furrowed their brow and fixed us with a confused stare as Kye’s words echoed off the stone.

I offered my best neutralizing smile and waved them off. They turned back around to continue their animated conversation a second later.

“Well that,” I said, hushing my voice, “is most definitely my fault. I’m the one who convinced you to go yet again. And now we’re walking into even more danger.” I tilted my head. “Willingly, too.”

Kye made no motion to refute my claim. “The stakes are higher, though.” She scrunched her nose. “Plus, I did say that I would come along this time. I… I didn’t have to agree.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well. I’m glad you did. If I’d come on this alone, or even just with Lionel and his group”—I flicked my eyes over to where the other rangers were making jokes around our party’s fire—“I would probably still be right here. At least now I have good company.”

A blush rose in her cheeks again, but Kye didn’t let go of her smirk. She doubled down on it if anything. She upped the smugness until it pervaded her entire face. And brushing hair out of her face to make sure her fierce eyes can meet mine, she bared her teeth.

One single laugh bubbled out of my throat. Kye hummed her hilarity as well, keeping her face close to mine and our eyes as locked as possible. It was like she was studying me. The light brown forms of her irises probed the depths of my soul.

Inside my head, the white flame flared. It swirled and blazed with emotion I hadn’t felt from it before. Emotion that fell oddly in line with the fluttering of my heart at the same time.

As an instinct, the image of my wife came up. Lynn, I remembered through faded memories. But the details were even further out of reach now. They escaped me as if I was simply grasping at a ghost. And as the white flame latched onto it, the grating feeling returned. It came back to register some sort of incompatibility, almost like the memories of her I held onto were irreconcilable with my current life.

So I didn’t let that hold me back. My eyes scanned over Kye’s beautiful face only one more time before I took the plunge.

Before I knew it, my lips were pressed against hers. Blood pounded in my ears and the rational part of me screamed. I tuned both of the sounds out and focused on breathing instead. On falling into the rhythm as her gentle lips pressed against mine.

As my eyes refocused, I saw the rare expression. Only this time, it was even closer to my face.

Surprise.

Kye’s eyes shot wide and her eyelids flitted, red rising over her face even faster than before. At once, my blood ran cold and I tore away, lip quivering. Her eyebrows dropped as I ended the brief kiss and berated myself for stupidity. My rational thoughts yelled at me for—

“What are you doing?” she asked. I cringed, looking up only to see an expectant gaze. “I thought we were…” Kye didn’t care to finish her sentence. I knew what she meant, anyway. And I was sure she knew that I knew.

Leaning forward again, she brushed her hand against my cheek and pulled me closer. Her mouth met mine another time. Our lips parted. The rhythm returned.

And that was all I focused on as the moments bled together. As time ceased having much meaning while passion flared in my chest. We simply moved in natural movements that, admittedly, weren’t always so natural. But I didn’t complain, and I didn’t hear her piping up either.

The rhythm continued, each breath feeling sweeter and sweeter as we—

“Oh what the hell is this?” a voice yelled. Lionel, I recognized in a single frozen moment.

Before I could so much as form a rational thought, Kye and I had torn apart. I whipped my head around, flustered. In the corner of my eye, Kye did the same thing. Except she wasn’t unnerved. Her face fell into natural focus, and the air even lightened as she started casting on instinct.

It was pointless, though. No matter what I’d feared, Lionel wasn’t looking at us.

The bandaged-up ranger was standing, but he was staring at someone else entirely. Another knight, I noted lazily as my pulse stopped thundering. As the fire in my blood burned away, exhaustion’s roots grabbed hold of me again.

Lionel kept yelling, and the knight he was yelling at rose to retort. I didn’t listen to either of them; there was no reason to. I turned back to Kye instead.

She was shaking her head and chuckling softly. It took her far too many moments to realize I was staring at her, and she only raised her eyebrows when she did.

“What?” she asked.

My eyebrows dropped and I ran a hand through my hair.

Her expression dropped. “Oh. Yeah. Maybe…” She lowered her voice. “Another time, right? One where we’re not surrounded by knights on all sides.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. “One where we’re not technically in grave danger.”

“Right,” Kye answered. “Even though neither of us are on watch we still…”

I threw up a hand. “Yeah. Can’t take chances.” A single sniffle as my lips grew back into a smile. “Another time.”

Kye nodded. Then smiled at me and slowly turned back around to watch Lionel’s apparent argument. I let her do it and just sighed to myself before slumping back onto my bedroll.

The fatigue didn’t make it hard to find comfort. I was starting to doze within minutes.

And despite the bland stone filling my vision from above, I couldn’t quite keep the smile off my face.