SBTMK Chapter 2

One year later.

With her eyes closed, everything came through.

The sound of animals moving through undergrowth. Fine grains of sand rolling along the wind. A stream running somewhere nearby. Leaves catching against each other. All of it wove together into something that functioned as harmony. Still. Peaceful.

Funny, that. A world as merciless as this one—that would strip the flesh from your bones without a second thought—could still occasionally produce something that passed for comfort.

How long had she been standing there. Flora's eyelids, pressed shut, began to roll open. A flat gaze moved over the surrounding terrain. Then, in a single clean motion, she raised her bow, drew, and released.

Fuh-duh-duk. A bird still in flight had its wings go slack and dropped. Her gaze tracked to where it fell. No pleasure. No satisfaction. Same as always.

She took two more after that. Only then did the hunting feel finished.

She dragged the animals back—blood trailing freely, her expression unchanged—and lit the pile of firewood she'd stacked nearby. Cooked them until they looked edible.

Extinguished the fire quickly. Chewed through the meat with the foraged greens she'd picked from the mountain, mechanically, as though completing a task. Tough, faintly gamey. Not inedible.

She set a few pieces aside for the evening and went back into the cave.

This was her home. A year of moving had taught her things. Enough to assemble the shape of a dwelling out of whatever was available.

She'd built a bed from scraps of cloth gathered from villages at night—abandoned pieces, discarded and left—stacked until they amounted to something. Bowls in the same fashion. Some cracked, some chipped, but none too broken to use.

Flora undressed. She wore nothing underneath—no inner layers—so when the black robe came off, followed by the white shirt and the close-fitted navy trousers in that cool material, there was nothing between her and the cave air.

The cave held no light worth speaking of. Humid. It should have been cold without clothing, but Flora didn't shiver. She moved to the bed from memory.

She needed whatever sleep she could get now. Tonight she would have to keep her senses sharp. Be ready.

Attacks came at night, as a rule.

'Flora—you have to live. You have to survive and protect our child.'

Rene. Rene——

The expression on Flora's face, deep in the dream, was not at rest.

A promise she could no longer keep.

Crunch.

Without that one out-of-place sound, she might have stayed tangled in the dream much longer.

Flora's eyes opened. The wariness was already in them. Something had stepped on a branch—she was certain of it.

'An animal?'

No. Could be a person.

She couldn't stand not knowing. Flora pulled her robe on over nothing and took her bow—more extension of herself than weapon.

Outside the cave, the light was still good. That wasn't a reason to relax.

Ayden. That particular lunatic would strike in daylight or dark without distinction, if it meant getting what he wanted.

She killed the sound of herself as much as she could. When something close seemed to be moving, her body adjusted without her deciding.

Then she made a mistake and stepped on a branch herself.

"——gh."

An arrow came as though it had been waiting. It grazed her right arm. The smell of blood arrived alongside a bright edge of pain.

Swish. Immediately after—no pause—a short blade followed. Standing here was dying.

She moved behind the largest tree she could see.

'Leeches.'

The attack confirmed it: these were Ayden's knights. She'd been found. Time to move again.

Flora's dark pupils settled. The look in them was resolved.

'I'll finish this before they can report back. Same as always. Ayden—if you want me, you're going to have to work harder than this.'

She had no intention of letting herself be taken. She held the bowstring taut and waited, reading the terrain.

Something was off.

The footsteps getting closer—she'd expected that. But they'd stopped with a single scream and gone quiet.

'What?'

Not her doing. And they wouldn't be fighting each other.

Flora tilted her head slightly to look.

Swish. An arrow crossed directly in front of her face. Another centimeter and her nose would have been gone.

'Damn.'

She stopped being curious. Whatever was happening, they were still aiming at her. Curiosity wasn't worth a life.

She drew one breath, focused, and loosed an arrow toward the presence concealed in the shadows to her right and slightly ahead. Animal or person, she'd never missed. She didn't miss now.

The sound of someone going down into the undergrowth was loud and untidy. Flora reloaded with the quick, familiar motion.

Left flank: three. Right flank: two

She rolled her neck once, briefly. Now it began.

She broke from the tree and ran, hit the ground rolling, and shot toward the positions she'd already mapped. Both arrows, simultaneously. Both landed.

Three remaining.

"You sent a lot of them this time. You must be sure I'm here."

Flora counted her remaining arrows. Enough. She drew again—and then stopped.

"Are you playing at war?"

An unfamiliar voice. Small but clear.

Which meant: a stranger had appeared somewhere near Cenkan's knights.

Not one of them either. The knights who had been waiting to attack her had turned in a different direction.

'Who?'

A few arrows flew somewhere they shouldn't have. She set it aside.

This was the best opportunity she would have. Flora's gaze sharpened.

"Looks like someone missed training days."

Her lips moved.

"The moment you show your back to an enemy——"

Only death waits for you.

Something she'd heard from the commander who ran her training when she was young. The memory was still clear—wings battered, ribs cracked, thighs torn, flesh splitting. Carelessness cost that.

Flora released. The two she'd kept marked went down.

While the knights were thrown off by the stranger's appearance, she'd managed two. The stranger accounted for one, by the absence of any trace.

'Then that's done.'

All obstructions in her sight line were gone. The stranger was nowhere to be seen.

"Dead, then."

Regrettable but unavoidable. The moment he'd spoken near people who were hunting her, he'd shortened his own odds. He should have run; saying anything at all was the decision that cost him.

Still——

If there was a body, she'd make a grave.

Someone dying for nothing on her account. It didn't sit right.

Flora stood. There were living people to tend to. This was no time to linger. Retrieve the arrows, leave.

"One is——"

She was counting the arrows when something came from directly behind her.

"Looking for this?"

Flora threw a short blade at whoever was behind her without turning first. Honestly, she was a little surprised he'd gotten that close without her sensing him. That particular jolt—she hadn't had reason for it in a while.

"——gh."

The blade found his thigh exactly. He was young from the look of him. He drove the sword in his other hand into the ground and went down on the injured leg with a sound between a groan and a complaint.

"Wow. Rough."

"Give me the arrow."

Flora looked at him.

Young. Handsome. Not Cenkan's knights—that was clear from a ten-second look. She'd seen enough eyes hunting her to recognize the kind. This one had neither hostility nor killing intent.

She gave it ten seconds and concluded: no reason to kill him.

"You're not asking who I am? Can I ask first?"

He'd taken a blade through the thigh and was looking at her with no hostility in it. A strange person, whatever else he was. No killing intent didn't mean not suspicious.

"No."

"Why?"

"I have no interest in who you are, and you have no need to know who I am."

His face suggested he'd never had occasion to worry about how the world worked. Skin like something kept carefully away from weather. The jewels worked into his clothing. The weapon that read expensive from a distance. Suspicion confirmed.

She thought, briefly, of the stranger who'd appeared while the knights had her flanked.

……This one?

She'd assumed he was dead. He'd survived somehow. That was fortunate.

"What were you doing here?"

"That's what I want to ask you."

Why hadn't she sensed him approaching. If he'd trained with a blade since childhood—the way noble families sent their sons to train—that would account for it. Even if he showed no obvious ability with a weapon. But that was an outward reading, and outward readings weren't always right.

She regarded him steadily. Suspicion layering on itself.

"I came hunting. Saw some people chasing you. Thought you were a woman in danger. Got that completely wrong."

There'd been no one else who came this far to hunt in all the months she'd been here—but there was no denying wildlife was thick in these parts, so it wasn't an impossible story. That wasn't what bothered her.

"……You were trying to help me?"

"Yeah."

He tossed her arrow to the ground in front of her and pulled the short blade out of his thigh with one hand. A single sharp sound escaped him.

"Hurts like hell. Huh? Repaying kindness with injury."

He glared at her. Flora didn't apologize. She was, honestly, a little sorry, but she kept that to herself.

"It was wasted effort. If you value the one life you have, stop putting yourself in the middle of other people's business."

Something immature and clumsy chafed at her chest, like a spring wind rasping along the surface.

"I'll take that as thank you."

He wasn't fazed.

"So what were all those? That wasn't a war game."

He tilted his chin toward the bodies—arrows through necks, hearts, foreheads. He looked at the dead the way someone who had seen plenty of them looked at them. Even.

"I have nothing to tell you."

"Then at least give me your name. I'm not letting you go until you do."

"With what? You can barely stand."

Flora let the corner of her mouth rise slightly.

"Next time it might be through your chest. Everyone who knows who I am has to die. Still want to know?"

The threat didn't land.

He met her expression with one of his own—a smile, unhurried, something almost delighted in it. Bold, considering his leg.