Chapter 2 Her Name Was Rythe

"You still brood like a boy," Rythe said without looking up, sliding a powder flask into her belt. "That little twist in your mouth when you don't get the last word. Hasn't changed."

Caelen leaned against the crate, arms folded. "You used to like that mouth."

"I used to like rats, too. I was nine and hungry."

Silence folded over them again, thick as the smoke. He watched her hands move with precision-checking flints, counting cartridges, wiping soot from metal. Even angry, she was efficient. Especially angry.

"You think I left you," he said.

Rythe snorted. "No. I know you left me. There's a difference."

"I was sent south. It wasn't-"

"Wasn't your choice?" she cut in, snapping a cartridge closed. "Did the sword make you do it? Or the coin? Or that pretty little tower you crawled into while we were bleeding out in trench ditches?"

He stared at the floorboards. One was warped, blackened at the edge from some old fire. He traced it with his boot. "I was told it was over. That the cause had broken."

"It had," she said, loading the musket with a short, angry shove. "Because cowards like you broke it."

He didn't speak. Let her voice sit in the room like smoke, acrid and slow.

She exhaled. "Why are you really here, Caelen?"

The sound of his name in her mouth twisted something in his chest.

He met her eyes. "I dreamt of you."

She laughed once-short and surprised. "Dreams. From the man who doesn't believe in ghosts."

"I never said that."

"No, but you acted it."

She slung the musket over her shoulder, walked to the table where a rough map was pinned beneath stones. Roads, outposts, old fort markers, drawn by hand. She tapped one near the southern edge.

"This is where you crawled off to. Thornhill. Safe enough. Paid enough. Far from the bleeding edge." She turned, pointing at the central valley. "This is where the rest of us stayed. Where we buried friends. Where we starved for your revolution."

"It was never mine."

"No," she said. "You only wore it like a cloak when it made you feel noble."

A long silence.

Then, softly: "You loved me once, didn't you?"

Rythe's fingers stilled on the edge of the map. Her back stayed turned.

"I don't know," she said.

Caelen took a step forward. "Then say you don't love me now. Look me in the eye and say it."

She turned slowly. Her face was blank. Controlled. But her eyes-

"Don't do that," she said, voice low.

"Do what?"

"Use the end of the world to crawl back into my bed."

He flinched. Not visibly, but she saw it.

"You should go," she said. "Before the wrong person sees you here."

"I came to warn you."

"You did."

"There's a trap coming."

"There's always a trap coming."

"Not like this."

She stared at him a long time. And then, quietly:

"If I die here, Caelen... I'll die knowing I stayed."

He nodded once. It was the only answer that fit.

Rythe walked past him, brushing his shoulder. The contact was soft, barely there, but it was all memory. Then she was gone, musket clinking against her back as she vanished behind the curtain.

He stood alone, in the hot silence, watching the map flutter.

Somewhere outside, a horn sounded-low, metallic, not one of theirs.

Caelen turned toward the door.