As night began to settle over the road, we made camp. Leaving at dusk for a journey that would take a full day on foot was admittedly silly, but we hadn’t been given much choice.

  The road—little more than a dirt track—meandered through sparse forest. We found a sheltered spot between the trees and set up quickly. I gathered firewood while Illara foraged for food.

  I dragged a fallen branch into the clearing and broke it into dry lengths. The wood was old and half-rotted, so it snapped easily. Once I had an armful, I knelt by the stones and coaxed a fire to life. It was the first time I had ever used flint and steel, but Drisnil’s memories lived in my hands. The sparks came without hesitation.

  Illara returned not long after.

  “I found us some mushrooms,” she said, dropping a small pile between us. “If we toast them, it should be alright.”

  She skewered one on a stick and held it over the flames. I did the same, grateful for anything warm.

  “I’m… unsure what we should do next,” Illara admitted after a while. “How we’ll sustain ourselves.”

  “We can pick up work in Ravencrest,” I said. “With our skills, we should earn enough to get by.”

  “As long as you’re there, I’m sure the work will be easy.”

  I gave her shoulder a light shove. “Don’t get comfortable. I’ll expect a certain amount of effort from you too.”

  She smiled, the first real one I’d seen since the vote.

  “So,” she said after a pause, voice carefully casual, “Drisnil… have you ever had a romantic relationship with anyone?”

  I hesitated. Drisnil had never kept a lover without advantage. But Geoff…

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “Once. A long time ago. I was serious with a girl. I thought we shared everything, but she kept secrets. I found out she’d been cheating, so I ended it.” I stared into the fire. “Since then I’ve had trouble trusting people. Never let anything get serious again.”

  Illara went quiet, turning my words over.

  “I haven’t had a relationship yet,” she said at last. “I’ve had crushes, but… the town was too small. No chance to meet anyone new.” Her eyes softened with something wistful. “I always imagined I’d leave someday. Meet some dashing young man who’d sweep me off my feet.”

  The way she said it tugged at a memory of Ilza. She’d wanted the same thing. To leave. To find more than the village could offer. Instead she’d stayed, gotten pregnant, and died before she ever reached the road.

  I wondered, briefly, whether she’d been happy with Theo anyway—however short that happiness was.

  “You look lost in thought,” Illara said gently. “Want to share?”

  “I was just thinking how much you remind me of your mother.”

  Illara’s mouth curled into a small smile.

  “Did you know my mum well?”

  Her eyes fixed on me, hopeful.

  “No. Not really. I only knew her for about nine months.”

  The admission sat like a stone in my throat. I wanted to tell her the truth—how I might have caused Ilza’s death—but fear of what that would do to Illara kept my mouth shut.

  “That’s a shame,” she said softly. “From what Dad’s told me, she was an amazing woman.”

  I tried not to wonder what Illara would be like if Ilza had lived. The thought went nowhere good, and I pushed it down.

  By the time we finished eating, our stomachs were nearly full. We sat watching the fire crackle and sink. After a while Illara scooted closer and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “You know,” she said quietly, “I think you’re the only friend I have left. So… please don’t leave me.”

  I slipped an arm around her.

  “I won’t,” I said. Never. Even in death, I would keep watch over her.

  The next morning brought light rain and cold air; the sparse forest offered barely any shelter from the wet. Illara was shivering slightly, her cloak darkened and heavy with damp.

  “I think we should get moving,” I suggested. “Warm up and get to town quickly.”

  We continued along the track, the chill biting into us, soaking through our clothing. The only mercy was the dimness — the sun didn’t claw at my eyes.

  After a while we saw what looked to be a man lying on the ground in the middle of the road, not moving.

  Illara started forward at once. I caught her arm.

  “Stay here,” I whispered. “I’ll check on him myself. If anything happens, cast Light — blind anyone looking at you — then assess from there.”

  The sight hit an old memory — one of those traps I used to lay for heroes in another life. A body in the road. A plea to decency. People always ran to help. People always died for it.

  I approached slowly, eyes on the hedges. Too thick to see through. The rain made everything smell sharp and green, and the road was slick beneath my boots.

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  Up close I saw the man was breathing steadily, with no sign of injury. With one hand on my short sword, I knelt beside him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  In a blink he rolled, a dagger flashing up to my stomach.

  “One wrong move and you die slow, elf,” he snarled.

  He dragged me upright by the front of my armour. From either side of the road, two more men stepped out of the brush. They’d flanked the track — one to my left, one to my right — both with crossbows leveled past me at Illara.

  Illara’s face went tight and pale — not just fear of the bandits. Fear of me.

  Her eyes flicked to my hands like she expected them to turn into claws.

  “Now,” the knife wielder said, breath hot against my cheek, “how about you give us everything, and we don’t have to kill you.”

  His eyes flicked to my hand. He noticed the rings — both of them — and greed sparked bright and stupid across his face.

  I used that moment.

  I clamped his knife wrist hard, twisting it away from my belly. My other hand cleared my short sword in one smooth motion, and I drove it into his leg.

  He screamed. The sound tore out of him like he hadn’t expected pain to be real.

  His grip slackened almost at once. The scream turned ragged, eyelids fluttering.

  I forced Drisnil down. Not now.

  Behind me, Illara snapped a Light spell onto the rain-slicked stone at my feet. The world detonated white.

  I heard the thunks of bolts loosed blindly into the glare.

  Half-blind, I spun toward the bandit on the left. His eyes were wide, his crossbow already discarded as he fumbled for a sword. Too slow.

  I was on him before the blade cleared leather. I pressed my sword-tip to his throat.

  “Surrender if you want to live.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Illara charge the other bandit. For a heartbeat she’d stood frozen — blade up, eyes wide like a cornered deer. Then her jaw set, and she moved.

  She slashed at his arm, knocking his weapon free. Her voice cracked through the rain, raw and fierce.

  “I will not be the victim today!”

  The man in front of me dropped to his knees, hands raised. So did the one Illara had disarmed.

  The knife-wielder was swaying now, struggling to stay upright. The poison was doing its work. He took one step, then folded, hitting the wet earth with a dull thump.

  I exhaled, thankful the sleeping toxin had taken.

  The remaining two bandits stared at us, trembling.

  “You will not kill me, will you?” one sobbed. “I needed the money to feed my family.”

  “No,” I said. My voice sounded colder than I meant it to. “I won’t kill you. But you’re coming with us.”

  We disarmed them, then bound their hands tight and linked them together like pack animals. Illara knelt beside the knife-bandit and muttered a healing prayer over his leg — just enough to keep him walking. Her face was pale, but steady.

  When she stood, she looked at me with a complicated kind of frustration.

  “We could let them go,” she said quietly. “They’re only trying to feed their family.”

  I shook my head.

  “Even if that were true, there are better ways to do it. And think — if we hadn’t won that fight, would they have shown us mercy?”

  Illara’s shoulders dipped. She didn’t argue. She just nodded, eyes downcast.

  “Besides,” I added, softer, “we needed cash, right? Consider this our first job.”

  I had money in my purse, of course, but most of it was coin from another world — not something I wanted to flash around freely. Not yet.

  We started back down the road with the bandits stumbling ahead of us, rain still falling light and cold, and Ravencrest waiting somewhere beyond the trees. The light was still the colourless wash of midday, the sort that cast no real shadows.

  The rain began to ease, thinning to a faint drizzle that made the rest of the trek bearable.

  As we drew nearer to Ravencrest, our narrow dirt road merged into other tracks, becoming a wider, well-worn route scored deep with ruts from years of wagons and boots. There were more travellers now — merchants with pack animals, farmers in creaking carts, a few armed riders moving with the easy confidence of people who knew the roads. Hardly anyone spared us a second glance. If anything, the sight of bound captives being marched toward the city seemed… ordinary. Common enough to fade into background noise.

  By the time the walls came into view, the day had already gone thin and dark, as if dusk were impatient.

  High stone walls rose out of the grey evening ahead of us. A large gate cut through them like a dark mouth, iron-banded and flanked by watchtowers. A weathered sign stood beside the road, painted in bold black letters:

  RAVENCREST

  Two guards waited at the gate, spears resting against their shoulders. We approached, the captives stumbling in front of us.

  “Evening,” I said, forcing my tone into something neutral. “We caught some bandits who tried to ambush us on the road from Holver.. We’d like to claim the bounties.”

  One guard gave the prisoners a quick once-over, unimpressed.

  “Sure. You have a pass?”

  “No,” I said. “Do I need one?”

  “Not if you’re paying entry.” He jerked his chin toward a small toll box beside the gate. “Five copper each without a pass.”

  I dug into my purse and pulled out one of the silver coins I’d taken as payment after rescuing Illara. I handed it over.

  The guard glanced at the coin, weighed it in his palm, then nodded and waved us through. “For the bounties, take them to the guardhouse there.”

  He pointed to a squat stone building built into the inner wall, its narrow windows barred and dark.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We marched the captives across the threshold into the city’s shadow, then over to the guardhouse. The door was thick oak, reinforced with iron strips, the kind made to hold against desperate people. I knocked.

  From inside came the scrape of bolts. The door opened a handspan.

  A thin man with weary eyes looked us up and down, then at the bandits, and sighed like this was the hundredth time he’d done it this week.

  “Outlaw delivery?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Picked them up in the woods on the way from Holver.”

  He grunted and disappeared inside, returning a moment later with a heavy ledger stamped BOUNTIES across the cover. He flipped through it slowly, lips moving as he read descriptions, then compared them to the three bound men.

  After a stretch of silence he said, “Not in the book. Standard rate, then — one silver per bandit.”

  No room for haggling. I passed the rope to him. He opened a small lockbox set into the wall and counted out three silver coins into my hand. Then he wrote a receipt, slid it toward me, and pointed.

  “Sign there.”

  I did. He tucked the paper away, already turning back toward the prisoners.

  “We’re done here. Thanks for your service.”

  Illara’s face had gone tight and dark, the kind of expression she wore when she was trying not to let something spill out.

  We walked away down the stone lane toward the inner streets. After a few steps she spoke, quiet but blunt.

  “I don’t like the idea of selling people.”

  “We’re not selling them,” I said automatically — and even to my own ears it sounded like an excuse. “We’re being paid for capturing them. There’s a difference.”

  It didn’t quite ease the guilt in my chest. I didn’t say that part out loud.

  I cleared my throat and gestured ahead as the city opened around us — a sprawl of slate roofs and chimneys, damp cobbles shining under the overcast sky.

  “Anyway. How about we find an inn? I’d rather like a bath and a soft bed tonight.”

  Illara brightened immediately at that, like the suggestion had reached a part of her that was still able to want simple comforts.

  “Yes,” she said, with a small, tired spark of enthusiasm. “Please.”

  The streets swallowed us quickly — wet stone, woodsmoke, the press of strangers, and a hundred voices I couldn’t place. Ravencrest felt nothing like Holver. Here, no one knew our names, and no one cared what we’d done to earn the coin in my purse.

  Illara stayed close at my side anyway.

  “Let’s find that inn,” I said, and steered us into the crowd before either of us could change our minds.