The mountains weren't so much tall as they were old. Moss and trees carpeted their low, rolling peaks and cliffsides. Maybe everything she knew about Glaedward just scared her, but Cade thought she could sense the ancient power lurking behind them. Either way, as she looked up at the mountaintops touching the big blue sky, she felt dread coil in her stomach like a snake ready to lunge.
If the mountains acted as the border separating Glaedward from Bellosca, then Lairdell Outpost was a last respite for travelers preparing to cross the threshold. The outpost began as a campsite, but at some point, it grew into a community. Cade liked to believe people needed each other before the forest. They needed a place to sing and dance and eat and lay their heads before they faced the roads of Glaedward. And so Lairdell, with its makeshift shacks and worn-down charm, thrived across centuries.
She waited outside the cartographer's shop with her hands around the reins of her client's horse, an enormous snow-white beast with a long mane named Coulby. She put Cade in mind of the draft workhorses used to plough the fields back home. Stretching her head and neck down to Cade's level, Coulby mouthed the fringe on Cade's shawl. Cade couldn't help but giggle, a welcome relief from the anticipation of their impending journey.
"Excuse me, ma'am," she said, rubbing Coulby's velvet-soft snout. "That's mine."
"Got it," called a voice behind her.
Cade turned to see her client, a well-built blue tiefling named Nico, waving a cylindrical map case. When she'd walked into the adventurer's guild the previous morning and spotted him talking to her guildmaster, he caught her eye immediately. For a tiefling, he was tall and broad-shouldered. His horns curled back from his hairline over shaggy dark blue hair, and his handsome face was defined by thick brows and a strong, straight nose.
Cade wasn't inclined to sully a professional relationship, but that didn't mean she couldn't look.
With a mischievous glint in her eye, she said, "How much did they ask for it?"
He barked a strained laugh. "I don't even wanna talk about it."
There was no way through Glaedward except on the roads. No one knew where they came from. The roads had been there as long as anyone could remember, crafted from some unrecognizable stone that defied the wear and tear of time. Since leaving the road was more or less considered a death wish, travelers needed a map. The cartographers in Lairdell took advantage of this by charging a hefty sum for their wares. Who was gonna argue with them?
"Let's head back to camp so we can plan our route," Cade said.
The sunny and mild early-autumn weather gave Cade and Nico a chance to avoid spending coin at the nearest inn. They set up in the campsite just outside of town, and while Cade draped canvas over tentpoles and hammered stakes into the earth, Nico pored over their new map.
"We'll end up going through Calterador," he mused.
"The capitol?" Cade had never been to Calterador, but she'd seen paintings and heard stories. The royal palace was the stuff of legend — white spires rising tall between ancient trees and heroic knights donning fanciful armor.
"Going any further north than that will spit us out in the Hexlands rather than Ownsyn." Nico held up the map to show her the route. "If we want to get where we're going as fast as possible, we need to cut south."
Cade brushed dirt off her hands. "Sounds fine to me. What do our options look like as far as inns?"
Kneeling next to him, Cade glanced over the map. No one liked to get caught out in the forest in the dark, so innkeepers made a more-than-comfortable living in Glaedward. She traced their possible route and noted the spacing between inns.
"That's not too bad."
"It isn't," Nico said. "Thankfully, we're taking a pretty common route."
"Strength in numbers," Cade remarked.
The sun darkened from yellow-white to gold as it dipped towards the horizon. A brisk early-autumn chill scraped Cade's cheeks. She wrinkled her nose.
In the hills around Lairdell, the world had begun to change. The dog days of summer were long gone, but the sparse trees weren't yet awash in their full fiery display. The seed heads waving atop each stalk of tall grass had set loose their cargo on the wind. A breeze rippled the fields like water.
Nico spoke suddenly, thoughtful. "We may want to tell each other personal details."
"Is this your slick way of trying to get to know me?" In the middle of rolling out her bedroll, Cade turned her head to heckle him with a grin.
"I'm not—" He flushed deep and looked away, frowning. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be inappropriate."
"Shit, Nico—" A laugh escaped Cade's mouth. She gave him a light slap on the arm. "I wasn't being serious."
His suggestion had some sense. Glaedward had its ways of messing with travelers. Nothing from the trees could set foot onto the road, but that meant some creatures did their best to lure travelers into the forest. Pretending to be someone else, showing someone their worst fear, sleepwalking — anyone who stepped into Glaedward readied themselves for the possibilities.
"Okay, I'll start," Cade began. "I'm a dhampir."
"You're fucking with me."
She looped one pinky into her mouth and pulled her lips back from her canine teeth on one side.
Nico gave an incredulous, but accepting, shrug. "Sure, why not. Starting strong. Hmm…" He glanced around as if the environment would give him an idea. "I was raised by a single mother."
"Hey, me too! Until I was eight or so. Ma got married." After a moment's thought, Cade added, "To a human."
"Thanks for the clarification, or else I would have thought your mother only liked vampires."
The uncharacteristic dry humor gave her a thrill. "Sarcasm! So you can be funny."
"Hey!" Nico laughed even as he reacted to her insult.
They lapsed into silence for a moment. Cade said, finally, "It's your turn."
He struggled to reply. The look on his face sobered her; the playful air over their interaction fell away. All out of jokes, Cade gave him a moment to gather himself.
"I've been missing for months," he said.
She paused. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Job went wrong," Nico told her. "Couldn't go home for awhile. Ended up hopping around the islands in the Maelstrom for awhile. This will be my first trip back."
Cade fell quiet. She eyed him. There was something he wasn't telling her, but she wasn't about to overextend herself coaxing Nico's personal business out of him. That's not what he was paying her for.
"I guess it's my turn again." Cade seized at the chance to move the focus off of Nico. "I was married."
Judging from the way his eyebrows reached for his hairline, Nico was properly distracted by this new revelation.
"My childhood sweetheart and I renounced our relationship a little over a year ago," she continued. "So I said, 'Fuck it,' and started doing this."
Nico coughed a bewildered laugh. "Yeah, sure, why not. New beginnings."
"Damn straight."
Their game turned to more mundane things — favorite colors, childhood memories, the names of their hometowns. The sky turned from gold to pink to blue. Soon, their campfire cast more light than the sliver of sun threatening to vanish below the hills. Then, the world was awash in darkness save for the newly arriving stars.
Nico began to falter, his eyes lidded, shoulders slumped. Cade watched him for a moment, hands tucked under her chin.
"It's getting late," she continued, softer this time. "We got a big day ahead of us."
Her words were like a balm to him. With a half-hearted "that's true," Nico rose from his seat and moved towards the tent, rubbing his face with both hands. Cade smiled to herself as she rolled the map, replaced it within the case, and leaned forward to snuff out the fire.
She grew thoughtful as the flames flickered and died under the upturned bucket of water. Her guildmaster Rellger had a hell of a time wrangling her for this job. He'd dropped hints at first: "Nico's passing through on his way to Glaedward," and "He needs somebody with good survival skills to keep him on track." Cade pointedly ignored the hints until Rellger cornered her and mentioned the unusual sum of gold Nico was willing to cough up. And if Cade didn't want to keep taking turns bunking at the guild and sleeping at her parents' house, she needed gold.
She still wasn't sure it was worth it.
The air was fraught with tension the next morning. Maybe Cade imagined it. A small, drizzling cloud had moved through Lairdell overnight, ushering with it a wave of cool air and clear skies. The stark daylight tricked the body. Cade kept expecting it to be warmer than it was, and then a gust of cool air would sting her face. Cade and Nico wrapped themselves in layers, anticipating a shadowed journey under an ancient, leafy canopy.
"Get on," Nico told her, gesturing to Coulby.
"I already told you I'm fine to walk."
"We're both riding," he said. "You in front."
Cade gave him a look.
"I'm serious. We're not getting separated."
She relented. Placing one foot in the stirrup, Cade threw her leg over Coulby's back and situated herself at the front of the saddle. Nico slid in behind her. His broad chest was warm against her back, and Cade couldn't help a coy, self-satisfied giggle.
"Get your jokes out now," he said, a flirtatious lilt in his voice.
She cracked a wayward smile. "I wasn't even going to say anything."
Their good humour lasted until they reached the limits of the outpost. The road emerged from the earth, as if some early remnant was still buried beneath Bellosca's dirt paths. A small statue, almost gnome-like, crouched beside the opening to the forest. Cade dropped a gold coin at its feet. She felt Coulby hesitate beneath her, but at Nico's patient insistence, the mare stepped forward.
The trees swallowed them. The path tilted upwards. The mountains weren't particularly tall, and Cade hoped the effort of the climb wouldn't take too much time off their journey. Once they'd cleared the mountain range, Glaedward extended westward, and the road through the forest would become much flatter.
By mid-morning, they had passed the time in uneventful silence. Only the rhythmic cadence of Coulby's hooves on stone and the melodic ring of birdsong accompanied them. Cade hesitated to let her guard down long enough to speak.
"Did you say something?" Nico murmured.
"No."
They held their breath and listened. But it was only the wind in the leaves high above them making a sound like whispering.
"We are scaring our own damn selves." Cade laughed, an airy sound borne from relief rather than humor.
The day passed without incident. By late afternoon, the two of them realized they wouldn't be making it to their first inn by nightfall. Cade slipped off Coulby's back seeking a nearby cave marked on the map, and after some time spent poking her nose down narrow offshoots of the main road, she found it.
The cavern's mouth opened wide before them. The opening was spacious enough for them to build a fire just inside. One of the stone guardians stood beside it. The statue held its blocky arms at its sides, head seemingly tilted in curiosity.
"Hope you don't mind us crashing here for the night," Cade told the guardian. "We're trusting you to keep an eye out."
Nico and Cade built and stoked the fire. As the daylight faded, Coulby found a roomy corner to slump to the floor, fatigued from a long day's climb.
Stretching back and propping himself up on his elbows, Nico tossed a curious glance in Coulby's direction. "She must really like you. Doesn't usually get this comfortable with new people."
"I've got experience with animals," Cade replied. She pulled a loaf of bread out of her pack and drizzled it with honey. "Part of the whole tracker-hunter thing."
She stood and walked to the entrance of the cave, leaving a torn piece of her bread next to the guardian.
"You've been through here before?" Nico asked.
"Once or twice. My jobs usually take me north."
Nico chuckled to himself. "I have to travel through here all the time. You'd think I'd be used to it by now. No idea how people can stand living here."
"Why not move?" Cade joined him by the fire, tossing in a stray twig.
"My mom, mostly," he said. "She's well enough to take care of herself, and everybody in Ownsyn helps each other, so I know our town has her back. But I don't want her to hurt herself doing something when I could've been there."
Cade thought of those first years of her life, the memory of her young mother run ragged with her head in her hands at the dinner table. When she was a kid, Cade didn't understand why things had to change when Bex showed up. But now, she couldn't imagine raising a child alone without knowing if anyone else would ever accept them for who or what they were. Bex treated Cade like she was his own. She could remember the look of relief and appreciation on her mother's face like it was yesterday.
She told Nico, "I know what you mean."
Cade didn't notice when she dozed off. Sometime after their meal, in the midst of hushed conversations in the darkening cave as the fire burned low, sleep must have claimed her.
She awoke with a start at some unknown hour of the night. Embers blinked in the firepit. Somewhere else in the cavern, Coulby had also woken from her rest. Cade could hear the sound of her hooves thumping slow on the ground.
"How ya doin', girl?" Cade whispered.
Coulby snorted. At first Cade thought she had blown air through her lips, but when she heard the sound again, she sat up in her bedroll. Coulby stood alert in the corner, head and tail raised, ears alert towards the mouth of the cave. Then, Cade heard the scuttling, like stone scraped against stone.
Turning, Cade saw a silhouette standing at the entrance. Her heart stopped; she pushed the breath out of her lungs and ceased breathing. She crept noiselessly out of her bedroll, shifting from person to predator. Even her boots made no noise over loose debris. The cave floor was cold under her hands.
After a moment, Cade realized it was the statue. She recognized the curious tilt to its head and its small, childlike stature. It had left its post next to the entrance to stand in front of it.
"Hello?" she ventured.
Nothing. Then, from the treeline behind the statue: "Hello?"
Coulby squealed.
"Mm?" Nico grunted, surprised.
"Shh."
The mimicking voice from the treeline came again. "Hello? Hello? Hello?"
Shaking off the fog of sleep, Nico asked, "What the hell is that?"
"Do you know what 'shh' means?" Cade snapped in a harsh whisper. "Something is out there."
Even with her reflective eyes, Cade couldn't quite make out the creature in the treeline. A dark shape moved and shifted awkwardly behind the branches. A pair of flat-white eyes opened in the shadows. They cast a beam of light onto the road like a lantern.
The creature paced back and forth, chanting its rhythmic refrain — "Hello? Hello?"
After several breathless moments of watching it tire itself out, Cade inhaled a slow, deep, quiet breath when the creature turned its eyes from the road. It retreated back into the forest, bored.
The guardian did not move.
"Are we good?" Nico asked.
"I think so. How's Coulby?"
"A little freaked out, but she's been trained not to bolt."
For the rest of the night, they opted to take watches in shifts; Nico wanted to stay up with Coulby the first few hours, anyway. Though the creature's appearance frayed their nerves, the rest of the night passed quietly.
The moment light peered over the trees, they packed, saddled Coulby, and headed out. Cade ate her cold rations on the road.
By the time something spoke to her, Cade thought she imagined it. She had just unrolled her map mid-day to check the location of the inn. Her thoughts were interrupted when a distant voice called, "Cade!"
She hesitated. Behind her, Nico said, quietly, "Keep looking at the map. Where's the inn?"
"…Just a ways up the road," she replied, ignoring the tightness in her throat. "We should get there soon enough."
"Perfect."
"Cade! Where are you?" The voice sounded closer now. She checked her peripheral vision but saw nothing. She'd almost mistaken it for her mother's voice, but something was wrong, the cadence off.
"What are you going to order when we get to the inn?" Nico asked in an obvious attempt to draw her attention back. His warm arms holding the reins around her grounded her. "On a day like today, I could really go for a nice, hot meal."
"Stew," Cade said.
"Stew and fresh-baked bread and melted butter."
She tried to imagine the smell of bread fresh from the oven and inhaled. "And then you can dip it in the stew."
"Now you're talkin'."
The voice seemed to come from right next to her, angry this time. "Cade!"
Both of them jumped, startled. Coulby reared her head back. She backed up a few steps; Cade feared she might make a run for it. But Coulby stood to attention, her head held high, and finally uttered one cautious snort. Nico nudged her forward.
"Well-behaved horse you got here," Cade said, strained.
Whatever had taken notice of them in the woods appeared to lose interest. Cade heard no further cries for her attention the rest of the ride, and the inn appeared in the distance before long. It was a modest accommodation with only a few rooms, but the groundskeeper was delighted to house them and put Coulby up in a warded stable. She hadn't gotten much business lately, she told them.
Only after they retired to their room, Cade noticed Nico looked tired. Or, perhaps, "ill" was a better word for it. His powder-blue skin had taken on a wan pallor. Sunken bags hung under his eyes.
"You feelin' okay?" she asked, hands on her hips.
He shrugged, a gesture that seemed to take more effort than usual. "Had trouble sleeping after our visitor last night."
They left as soon as the sun's first rays reached through the branches the following morning. Their breath came out in ghostlike wisps. They ate rations for breakfast on the road, not daring to stop, but still set aside a handful of dried fruits to spare for the next shrine.
Shortly after they'd left their offering, a full coin-purse was tossed into the center of the road. They paused. Nico leaned to the side to exchange looks with Cade. He steered Coulby around the purse and continued onward.
From a different direction, a rotten apple flew through the air and splattered across the cobblestone. Then a torn sourdough loaf. Then what appeared to be an antique music box; the teeth of its steel comb rattled with a discordant clang. Nico and Cade kept their heads down and maneuvered around the objects.
The temptations from the forest grew more elaborate: fine metals, precious stones, jewelry. Some offerings looked suspiciously like individual personal items. Cade hesitated to wonder where the forest had gotten them, perhaps from past travelers lost to the trees. Another coin-purse was eventually thrown at Coulby's feet and tore open, a pool of glittering gold spilling out before them.
They pressed on.
Cade only realized something was wrong when the sun touched toward the tree tops. The spires of Castle Calterador were nowhere in sight.
"Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?" she asked Nico.
"I didn't see any major forks in the road," she replied. "This is the widest road."
"That's what I thought. But we ought to be in the city by now."
Nico tightened his grip on the reins and pressed his legs tight against Coulby's sides, easing her into a halt. He and Cade glanced around. The forest was quiet.
"Well, something tricked us down a side road or something," Cade sighed. "If you give me a bit, I can figure out where we are and map a new route."
She didn't like the idea of stopping, to put it mildly, and a lot of her usual skills were useless here. Climbing trees was easy for her, but Cade wouldn't dare step off the road — not when they were already lost. The canopy was too tall and full for her to rely on moss to grow on the south side of the trees. And she did not trust her compass in here for one damned hell of a moment.
With a sharp breath, Cade said in a strained voice, "I think we have to travel at night. I need the stars to navigate out of here."
She paused and waited for a response.
"Nico?"
Cade turned. Coulby stood in place without a rider, though her head was down and she appeared to be dozing. In a panic, Cade looked around. Further down the road, Nico moved as if in a daze. He drew close to the edge.
"Nico!" Cade shouted. She ran after him. "Whatever they're saying don't listen—"
He turned to the treeline. From the side, Cade could see the vacant look in his drawn, pale face. When had he begun to look so unwell?
Then, a figure appeared in the trees where no one had stood a moment ago. A hand that did not move like a hand reached for Nico's face between the branches. It stretched and distorted like a shadow around corners.
Cade grabbed him, but Nico was taller and stronger than her, and he stood solid even as she yanked at his arm.
In a fit of desperation, she bit him.
"Fuck!" he yelled.
Reality snapped back into view. He shoved her back and clapped one hand to the open wound on his bicep. A shadow of dark red bloomed across the fabric of his shirt sleeve. Cade hit the ground. Looking around, she noticed the strange figure was gone.
She and Nico stared at one another. Somewhere, an animal rustled through the treetops.
"I have to tell you something," Nico said.
They took some time to track down another road guardian somewhere out-of-the-way before setting up an afternoon camp. Cade still wanted to travel by starlight, but to do so, they needed to get some rest ahead of time. She left the guardian its plate of food and sat beside Nico with their rations. There would be no fire tonight; that would require wood, and neither of them had any interest in stepping off the road to gather some.
The two of them sat in stunned silence. Even Coulby stood alert. She refused to lay down and cast searching glances through the trees.
"About six months ago, I took a job," Nico said. "I'd been through Glaedward a hundred times before, so I got cocky. Didn't bother with any precautions, went by myself, you know."
Cade shaved a piece off a block of hard cheese. "Is this the job that went bad?"
"It— yeah, I guess. I never got to the job."
"So, you lied." There was no anger or accusation in her voice, just a statement of fact.
Chewing the inside of his cheek, Nico gave a heavy sigh. "Something got into me. Something else took over my mind and used me like a puppet."
"Like… possession?"
He hesitated, rubbing his neck in discomfort. "Yeah. I guess so."
Cade turned so she could look at him, incredulous. Nico avoided her eyes.
She said, "…I'm assuming it's gone?"
"Oh! Oh, yeah, long gone." He shook his hand as if to dismiss the idea that the entity had stuck around. "I regained control one day feeling beat to hell and found out I'd been in a fight. I guess the other guys beat it out of me."
A laugh tore from Cade's mouth. "I'm sorry," she gasped, "I don't mean to laugh but I just love the idea that you could just…"
"Get exorcised by ass-kicking?" Relief softened the edges of Nico's tone. A tinge of friendly sarcasm had come back into his voice. "I mean, it was more complicated than that, but yeah."
They sat in silence for a moment.
Cade said, "I'm pissed at you."
"Yeah, well, I expected that—"
"It's not just that you put me in danger," she told him. "If I had known you were vulnerable to this shit, I would've helped you."
Nico looked surprised. "You don't have to do that."
"It's my job!" She nearly dropped her food, voice raising to a breathy high pitch.
They had nothing else to discuss. Cade refused to let Nico take any kind of watch, so she propped herself up outside the tent and rested her eyes while he took a proper nap. The shadows of the trees stretched out long before her on the road. More than once, she thought she saw something watching them from the trees.
Day turned to evening at last. Cade could see the first few bright stars even as the sun's rays still stained the sky a blue-violet. She rolled out the map across the stone, angling it to capture the last bit of light.
Nico rustled in the tent, emerging to see her craning her neck to look at the stars and staring hard at the routes on the map. "Have you found us, then?"
"Pretty sure," she said. "I think we skewed a little north. I was worried I wouldn't be able to find which road we ended up on, but not many side-roads would be this wide."
"So…?"
"So, I think right now we're heading for Gnymirah. And if that's true, there's a fork where we can make our way back around just a bit further ahead."
Cade began to roll the map and replace it in the case. When she glanced back towards Nico, she paused. He was looking past her into the trees, unnerved.
He said, "Cade. Do not look behind you. Come back here, please."
Something moved out of the corner of Cade's eye. A vaguely humanoid shadow stood at the edge of the road, only a few steps from her.
Without looking up from the map case, she shuffled across the stone until she sat near the tent.
"We still need to break down camp," she said with a tight smile.
Nico grimaced.
As they worked, the creature from the forest loomed, unmoving. Cade could feel the weight of its stare on her back. They tidied up after themselves and went on their way as swiftly as possible.
A crunching of leaves underfoot told Cade the creature was moving alongside them.
"Ignore it," Nico whispered.
"Where are you going?"
The voice was so tinny and strange and unexpected Cade hissed a sharp inhale.
"I like to go for walks in the forest, too," it said. The words came out disjointed, like a child reading a sentence aloud without understanding the words. "Would you like to walk with me in the forest?"
They ignored it.
"So cruel! Ignoring me! You are being so cruel!"
After this, it began to weep. Nico and Cade rode for what felt like an eternity with the creature's stilted mockery of weeping. The sound seemed to come from all angles. Then, all at once, it stopped. Cade noticed she couldn't see the shape in the corner of her eye anymore.
"I hope it's gone," she murmured low.
They rode for awhile until they came upon Cade's fork in the road. She sighed in relief. Now, she knew where they were for certain. Nico took Coulby around the corner, and they headed down the path towards freedom.
"Where have you been, Nico?"
The creature reappeared on the other side of the road. Cade stifled a gasp.
"You will go home to nothing," it said. "Your mother is dead. Died in a fire! House burned down!"
Cade reached up and placed one reassuring hand on Nico's arm. His hands white-knuckled around the reins.
"You shouldn't have taken that job. The job took you! Ha ha!"
The laugh was worse than the speech.
"Your father is out there, Cade."
She wanted to say, "Oh, fuck you," but stilled her tongue.
"He'll find you someday. He's looking right now." It paused, then added, "Maybe he'll find your mother first."
Cade thought she heard the sound of screaming — her half-siblings' screams — in the trees. Blinking hard, she willed the thought away.
The creature's harassment continued through the night. Sometimes it walked along them in silence, or disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the road. Other times it would heckle them, or cry, or try to make friendly conversation. The crying was the worst, Cade decided in the fog of exhaustion. At least when it was friendly she could pretend they'd picked up an annoyingly personable traveler.
"Dark," it said. The trees pressed in on them. Even with Cade and Nico's nocturnal eyes, the darkness made it difficult to see. The creature chanted, "Dark, dark, dark."
"How much longer?" Nico asked.
The thing said, "Forever."
Cade slipped the map from its case and rolled it out in front of them. For all the creature had done its best to deter them, they'd made good time.
"Wrong! The map is wrong."
"We should be out by morning if we don't stop," Cade said.
"The road changes at night," the creature said. "It will never be morning again."
The idea sent a pang of terror through Cade, but she kept her mouth closed and her gaze between Coulby's ears. The worst thing she could do right now was let it get to her.
Time passed with agonizing slowness. After spending a length of time mocking them, the creature began to cry again. In her peripheral vision, Cade could see its body shaking as it wept. It escalated to the kind of desperate, throaty sobs she had only ever heard from the grieving. But there was always that element of the uncanny to it. The creature never quite cried right.
Nico nudged her with his arm. "Look."
She raised her head. Above the treeline, a blot of dark greenish-blue had begun to color the sky. Cade slumped back against Nico in relief, lolling her head against his shoulder.
"I really started to think…" she said, letting her words drift off into implication.
"I know."
Some time later, the sky brightened, and light filtered through the trees. Nico pointed ahead of them, and Cade could see the end of the treeline. She realized she could no longer hear crying or the crunching of leaves. Turning her attention to the forest, Cade caught the backside of something person-shaped retreating deeper into the woods.
When Coulby passed through the trees into open air, a great tension lifted off of them. The light across Ownsyn's open plains felt warm on Cade's skin. Nico laughed, something between a release of nervous energy and a celebration of what they'd done.
They found their way to the nearest traveler's inn. It was a surprisingly popular spot, but after a moment's consideration, Cade realized this was the only road connecting Ownsyn to the rest of the world. A few other horses waited outside as Nico tethered Coulby to the front railing.
Cade secured two ceramic mugs of some strong-smelling drink from the bar and held them aloft. "To us! Getting through those fuckass woods!"
Nico couldn't help but smile and laugh as she handed him his drink. A sense of ease settled over him. They sat back in their creaking chairs, allowing the irreverent chatter of a backwoods roadhouse sweep over them.
Taking a bag of coin out of his pack, Nico tossed it into the center of their table. "There. Everything I owe you."
"Thus concludes our business," Cade said. She swept the coins into her own bag and pulled the cords tight. "From here on out, we're friends."
"I'll drink to that."
Somewhere behind them, a trapper began loudly arguing with another adventurer about the size of dire wolves.
"What's the first thing you're doing when you get home?" she asked, making eye contact with Nico over the rim of her mug.
"Oh, you know," he said. "Letting Mama give me an earful."
Cade pressed one hand to her heart. "You know she does it out of love."
A smile, the shake of his head. "I'm sure I've got her worried sick."
"Not for long," she reassured him.
Nico ran his thumb over an imperfect hitch in his mug's handle.
"What about you?" he asked. "You're not planning on turning around and going right back through there tomorrow, are you?"
Raising her eyebrows, Cade shrugged and flashed a nervous smile.
He grew serious. "Don't. Take a couple days off here. Or at least find a group of people to travel with."
Cade met his eyes. She leaned back and slung one arm over the back of her chair, tossing her hair from her face. With the tension of the forest gone and the promise of at least one night's respite, she remembered how handsome Nico looked that first day he walked into the guild.
"Worried about me?" A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she brought the mug back to her mouth.
Nico swept a skeptical look over her. "Of course. I'd be worried about anyone going through those damn woods alone."
"Okay, fine. I promise I'll at least ask around." She leaned forward and whispered, cupping one hand over her mouth, "Maybe the trapper will go with me."
After a moment's careful consideration, Nico's expression shifted into something more playful. He leaned forward to meet her.
"Are you trying to make me jealous?" He asked.
Victory. "Of me or the trapper?"
The trapper's conversation partner had long given up on the argument. He repeated "okay, sure, yeah," as the trapper continued to rant at him. Their conversation had somehow widened to include the size difference between all animals and their dire counterparts.
"I don't know," he said. "Trapper's lookin' pretty good tonight."
"You should buy him a drink."
"You say that like the barkeep isn't cutting him off after this one," Nico laughed.
"Then," Cade flirted, "you should buy me one."
"You've already got my money. I just paid you."
"Then consider it a favor for the money I'm saving you on the room tonight."
He gave her a questioning look as he took another drink.
"Since you only need to pay for one bed," Cade said with a smile.
Two drinks later, they stumbled up the stairs to their room, snickering at their own unfunny jokes. Cade slipped her arms around Nico's waist from behind as he fat-fingered the key into the lock.
"What are you doing?" She giggled, resting her chin against his shoulder.
"Yeah, I'd like to see you try it—"
With a decisive click, the lock relented. Swinging the door open, Nico grabbed her by the arm and dragged her inside with an insistent "c'mere." Cade squealed, and the door closed behind them.
—
The next morning, Nico hitched his pack to Coulby's saddle and ran one affectionate hand over her side.
"It'll just be us from here on, girl," he said.
Coulby tossed her mane in displeasure. Cupping the horse's snout in her hands, Cade kissed her on the nose. "I know, I know. I'll miss you too."
"Remember your promise," Nico warned with a stern look.
"Pinky swear," Cade replied with a sideways grin. "I'll start looking for a group the second you're gone."
Seeming satisfied with her answer, he hoisted himself onto Coulby's back and took the reins in one hand.
"I guess this is it," he said. His eyes softened as he smiled down at her. "If you're ever on this side of the woods…"
"Likewise. You know where to find me." Cade gave him a wry look.
She leaned against the front railing and watched them vanish down an open, flat path under the white light of late morning.
Surely some other poor sonofabitch was on his way into that damned forest, Cade thought to herself, and she turned to go back inside.