He woke to pale morning light filtering through the tent canvas.
For a mont, he simply lay there, regaining his bearings. The pain in his side returned first, followed by the mories. The ravine. The archers. The n he had lost.
He rembered Morana dropping into the ravine between him and Remin’s advancing group of ard rebels. He rembered the ride back to camp, physician’s hands pressing against his ribs as he worked to keep him alive, and then very little after that.
He turned his head slightly and found Morana still sitting on the stool near the tent wall.
She had not slept. He could see how tired she was. Dark circles lingered beneath her eyes, and weariness had settled into her features, the look of soone who had stayed awake for hours. She was already looking at him when he turned, and when their eyes t, she straightened on her seat.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
After a mont, she walked towards him and poured water from the pitcher she brought in then held it out to him without a word.
He accepted it and drank.
When he was done, he carefully placed the empty cup on the table beside him, wincing as the movent pulled at his injured ribs. He settled back down and stared up at the ceiling as she returned back to her chair.
Outside the tent, the camp was beginning to co alive. He could hear voices, footsteps and the distant clatter of equipnt. Inside, however, the tent remained quiet.
He was the one who spoke first.
"Thank you," he said. "For what you did out there for my soldiers and for ."
His voice was rough from sleep and from the effects of the dicine the physician gave him yesterday.
Morana rested her hands on her lap.
"Of course, it was no trouble. I did what I had to do." she said softly.
He continued staring at the tent’s roof. "You stayed all night, didn’t you?"
"I did." Morana didn’t even try to deny it. She was glad when he chose not to linger on the matter any longer.
"Your wings," he said, sounding genuinely confused. "Where are they?"
It had been one of the first things he noticed upon waking and seeing her still in his tent. Her wings were gone, and the absence of them puzzled him.
"I conceal them with a magical glamour," she explained. "It’s a spell I acquired from a spell-weaver in Innermost. My wings draw too much attention when I want to remain inconspicuous, and I can’t blend in very easily with them exposed."
He humd in acknowledgnt.
The atmosphere between them felt calr than it ever had before. For the first ti since learning the truth about who she was, there was no tension hanging heavily in the air between them.
Ragnar had always been curious about her. But he had deliberately suppressed that curiosity, refusing to indulge it. It had been easier that way if he never thought or wondered about her.
But hearing her speak about the glamour, hearing her discuss sothing so ordinary and practical about her life, unlocked the curiosity he had spent so long keeping buried.
There was so much he wanted to know. This was simply the first question.
"What is it like in Innermost?" he asked. "I have never been there before and I’ve always wanted to know what it’s really like."
Morana looked mildly surprised by the question. She had not expected it.
For several monts, she considered how to answer.
"It is nothing like here. There is no real sun there. The sky is always sowhere between darkness and light, like the final monts before night falls, and it never changes beyond that. The sa grey dusk stretches overhead every hour of every day."
Her gaze drifted toward the tent wall as she spoke.
"The mountains are black. They run across the horizon as far as the eye can see, rising like enormous shadows against the sky." A faint smile touched her lips as fond mories surfaced. "The rivers glow and at night the currents shine blue from within, like liquid starlight flowing through the valleys. The forests are enormous. So of the trees are so old that their roots connect underground for miles. They respond to sound and movent. Sotis, when you walk through them, you can almost feel them reacting to your presence."
Ragnar listened without interrupting. He found himself trying to picture it all.
"The cities are built into the mountains themselves. Magic is in everything there. The ground, the air, the water. You can feel it constantly. Demons are stronger there than anywhere else. Sharper. More themselves. The realm recognizes what we are, and it responds to us."
"Do you miss it?" he asked.
Morana considered the question carefully before answering.
"Parts of it." A wistful smile appeared on her face. "The sky, mostly. There is nothing quite like the sky in Innermost."
For a mont, she seed lost in the mory of it.Then the smile faded slightly.
"But after what happened to , it stopped feeling like ho. By the ti I left, it felt more like a prison than the place I had grown up loving." She looked down at her hands. "I loved it there when I was a girl. Every part of it and I hope that, with ti, I’ll be able to fall in love with it all over again."
Sothing in the way she said that last part carried a depth of emotion that hung in the space between them.
Ragnar stayed silent for so long that Morana thought he wasn’t going to respond. She assud the conversation had reached its end. But she was mistaken.
"I never felt like I belonged anywhere," he said finally, his voice calm, as though he were recalling a distant mory. "Not for most of my life."
Morana did not respond. She was too stunned by the admission and by the simple fact that he was willingly opening up to her. She did not dare say a word, afraid that any interruption might cause him to retreat behind the walls he had spent years building around himself.
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