Sinns smiled. Boots thumped hard against the earth. And Sinns was gone.

"So maybe... just maybe... Quit brooding like you're some cursed fuck out of a tragedy and get ready."

Garrod peeled a smile out from behind his lips. All teeth and eager as his eye darted over at her. "You read tragedies?" he laughed at that. "Or you prefer watching them?" Felt his hands grip sure about the hilt of his sword. Its weight too familiar.

Right hand twitched. Muscles beneath the scars spasmed. He grit his teeth. Clenched the fist all the tighter. Let leather whisper soft against the calluses of his hand.

Our hand, Oh Bearer Mine. A laugh. No Widow's song. Could see the pale eye gleaming in the forest glow. Could see it smiling even through the mist.

Stomps again. Pulled his eye again to see her all sway and tangled mess. Stop.

An eerie hum pierced through the air. Like unseen lightning, sans thunderclap. Sucked the air out of the lungs from any which hole it could. Ears twitched. Mouth gasped. Nose pushed out breath and buttcheeks clenched. He stared at the fork. Dark enough to pierce all veils.

"When I strike this...So make any last poetic declarations now, swordsman."

His teeth showed bright. A bit of life there in that green eye. "Living them, then," he rumbled.
"One for the ghost,
One for the host," ​

His eye turned out to the field. The gaps in the trees, and where the phantom of his mentor had gone. Hefted the claw guarded blade up unto his shoulder. Its run gleamed full of shroud laden malice.
"With needle dark as ash stained bark,
plunge to then, oh worm so hooked."​

He stepped to it. All the swirl of mist afar from pack,mules, and her.

"Soil rich, with tears so shed,
Feed it then, still biting heart."​

The world tilt. Turned between his marching steps. The wind was dead. The mist still swirled.

Old Sinns stood there, sword drawn. "Still wasting your time with those words, lad?"
Garrod took up his sword in both hands. A sure step forward. A second step running.
 
She let Garrod get ahead. Ten paces. Fifteen. Daniyah watched him disappear into the fog, that silhouette all righteous steel and poetry. She sighed through her nose. Her hand fished into her bracer, drew the tuning fork out again, and she brought the tuning fork down hard. CHHHHIIIINGGG!

The impact wasn’t loud, not in any real way. But the moment metal struck stone, something ancient slithered from the fork. An invisible shimmer that lanced up her arms all the way to her jaw, and when she raised the fork to her ears, it curled into both ears like cold fingers. Tunneled in behind her eyes.

Daniyah reeled, head snapping slightly to one side as the sound detonated in her skull. A shrill, screaming ring filled her ears, flooded her head, drowned her thoughts like molten silver. No wind. No forest. No clink of talismans or beast-snort behind her. The world was gone, smothered beneath that sharp, slicing sound that whined through her and scraped against the inside of her skull. She was cut off. Deaf to the world.

She pressed a hand to her temple, then to her ear, but there was nothing to stop it. Nothing to hear past it. The spell was in her now, like a needle pushed through her mind. Her balance slipped. She took a staggering step forward and caught herself on a trunk slick with moss. Her hands bit into wood. She’d done this before. She knew what came next. But that didn’t stop the nausea, or the hollow ache in her limbs, or the slight, involuntary grind of her teeth. Half her face felt like it was under water, the other like it was pressed against ice.

Daniyah straightened slowly, staggered a step forward. She walked, careful, slow, the way you step into water you know is full of hungry things. Not a whisper reached her. Not her steps on snapping twigs. Not her breath. Not the sound of her own heartbeat. Only the ringing.

She lifted the crossbow, took her first step into the mist, and went to find whatever was weeping in the woods.
 
Leaf litter kicked up behind booted heel. Sword swung, heft behind the lop and turn to second cut overhead and down.

Sinns but bounced on his heels. No sign of the age that marred him. All steel and flint in his eyes as he angled the blow off his guard. "the old monster killer, for me, boy?" he spat. Stepped off the line of the down swing, and thrust sure with his own war messer.

Garrod turned, legs bent, arms twist and raised the greatsword up in fluid eight. Messer's edge caught the runed greatswords edge with hard bite.

"All that power, and you still can't remember," the Old Cazadore growled in his throat. Pressed the edge of his sword against Garrod's guard, kept his student in the bind. "Form, and function will always win," walked him like a dog. All menace in the press as he turned toward the missing eye.

Some part of Garrod's mind knew. As his feet stepped in turn, and his arms kept their pull of stopped cut. This was all a dream. A ghost's song. A memory turned to something he could feel now in the beat of his heart, there at the end of his fingertips. In the strain of his neck. Grit of his teeth, curled to horrible grin.

Some part knew, his master had died, old and withered away in his bed. Didn't matter what he had cooked for him. Didn't matter how many times he had cleaned up the sick the old husk spewed on up on those days he was strong enough to wander about with his swollen legs. Gut rotted with too much drink. He had died. And Garrod had left him there, alone in that old apartment in Cloud's Keep where he had happened upon him.

Bloated and full of discolored rot. How sweet it had smelled under all the sickening twist.

That cold, pitch black, ring. Sharp tinnitus through the fucking marrow. Froze everything about him. Old man's eyes, wide with surprise. Blurred.

Push off of the blade with a gut wrenched growl, burned to white hot scream. Stomped out, weight dropped. Lunged and hip snapped as he stepped. Looped the sword and sliced. Dream shattered like ice split through clean. All one chunk, turned two, fractured and crumbled in a slush as the blade came through.

Garrod pant. Runes of his sword golden aglow. Cold sweat made his white mane stick to the side of his face as he knelt in there amidst the trees.

No sound save his breath. Muffled by thick mists that wrapped around him, slow as a spider's silk about a fly it had caught in its web. Sword point went in the earth, and he leaned against the claw guarded cruciform that was his inheritance. Bowed his head as he wept. Ugly sobs.

The Widow. All kind shadow swirling in upon itself, watched him with eyes so dark they seemed to glow with how they drank the silver mist in. A form that was all gentle whimpers turned horrid wails as it drifted. Curious. It reached its shade mangled hand out to the man who had lived through two songs now. Sounds pouring from its veiled face. Whispers and moans, billowing curtains of sadness and sorrow all about its umbral dress.

Garrod looked up. Eye wide with it once more. As it had in the river. Ice in his veins.
 
Daniyah stepped through the mist like a shade herself, the high keen of the spell still ringing through her skull, that a sharp wire dragged tight behind her eyes. Her boots crunched the pine litter.

The shape that was almost a woman. That moved like sorrow, widowhood itself made flesh, drifting on its own heartbreak. Daniyah knew the veil of mist around it shimmered with voices, pulling, always pulling. The ringing in her skull drowned everything out. Just left the cold, clear burn of her purpose be.

Garrod was down there. She couldn’t hear the sounds, not yet. But she saw the way his hands clutched the sword, white-knuckled. The way his head bowed, hair stuck to his cheek. The way his ribs heaved with something deeper than exhaustion. He looked small. Not weak, but hollow, like something had been scooped out of him and left the shell behind. Something personal. That had grabbed him by the throat and dragged him back through time, through memory.

She could see it. The grief. The wreck of a man gutted from the inside. The kind of cry you only give to the dead. And not just any dead, the ones you couldn’t save. The ones that could haunt you longer than any spirit ever could. She wanted to drop the crossbow, wrap her arms around him, drag his face to her shoulder, and tell him, somehow that it was alright.

But that wasn’t the world they lived in. They didn’t get to have soft moments.

She raised the crossbow. The weight of it settled into her arms like an old grief. Her body shook with exhaustion, poison, the buzz of too much magic scraping at her nerves. Daniyah exhaled slowly. Her body was wrecked, but her aim was true. She took aim at the Widow. That floating sorrow with fingers outstretched toward Garrod like a mother come to cradle a dying child.

The crossbow thunked. A clean, mechanical snap, she felt it rather than heard it.

The bolt punched through the air, a streak of oiled ash and silver filament. It slammed into the Widow’s shadow-flesh. A cracking burst of sulfur and fire, salt and ash. A soundless blast of a blue silver fire and black ash erupted in the ghost’s chest, scattering the fine mist of its form like leaves caught in a gale. Veils shredded in the blast, peeling like wax from flame. Flesh that wasn’t flesh split and sloughed off in ribbons. Shadow ripped apart in a bloom of sulfur and saltpeter. The widow’s moan twisted into a screech that had nothing human left in it.

Burning slags rained down in slow arcs. Embers hissed against the wet moss. Cinders pattered off Garrod's pauldrons, scorching little black pits if it were to land on cloth. The Widow reeled, flailing as its form struggled to stitch itself back together.

“Get up, Cazadore." She said without hearing her own voice. Without knowing if she was heard over the wind or the screaming undead. Daniyah was already loading again, jaw clenched. The ringing still clawed through her skull like a hot nail shoved into her ears. Her pulse pounded behind her eyes. Her thoughts echoed like she was underwater, deep and distant.
 
What beauty he saw there in the ruin of that ghost. A face like that of every love lost. Lover, Mother, Old Drunk, those Thorns he had known so well. The Widow's veil showed all of them, there in the part of that silver mist membrane. Her hand, rippled with all of their hands, reaching and grasping and welcoming him across the surface of her skin.

What song, each ripple of familiar flesh, and fondest skin seemed to ask. What song do you want me to sing?

And how sweet her voice was. A chorus of all of their voices come to one. As dark and warm and holy as a moonless night. She promised him salvation. And was that not what he wanted? Deep down in the pit of his half eaten heart. Though the run of the blade burned across his neck. The skin on his scalp ached, where roots dead to life's color remembered. The pull. The hurt. The tug that had left him so breathless.

For how close it was to sweet hurts he had felt before.

How warm it had been. As he all spilled out. Gurgled and wheezed against cold stone, as shivers ran through his spine and muscles twitched their last.

Don't you DARE. The angry gnash of strange green teeth came to crunch. OH BEARER MINE. A roar from the pit of his mind. Claws dug into the base of his skull. Fangs gripped as that thing thrashed him.

Garrod growled. Gnashed. Gripped up the hilt of his weapon.

The Widow, all her own shadows pulled back into herself. Wailed. Screamed. Betrayed.

A bolt ripped through her. Bloomed to scorching blue and metallic white. Garrod emptied his lungs in a long rageful shout as the ghost killing flower grew. Scorched him. Blast him back unto the ground with hard thump and thud and clatter of armor.

Debris pitter pattered off of his pauldrons, and his armored shell. What sleeves of his doublet were exposed burned. Skin, hissed, and hair stank as it smoked under the slag. Ears set to ring. He coughed. Wheezed. Sucked desperate breath into his lungs. The Widow's otherworldly wail split into his skull. He bolted up, all gnashed teeth and rigid as smoke whipped off of him. Blood hot in his veins. Pulse strong through his core. Fingers splayed through the soft earth.

Up he went. Onto his feet. Legs pumped sure.

Grabbed sword, still standing there in the earth. Pulled it free and cut at the blasted Widow. All flail and maimed as the fires ate at her. He aimed a clean cleave through her heart, his arms all twist and pull through the strong of his rune'd greatsword.

A killing blow, if he landed it clean. But his ears were fucked with her screams, and his mind was bent with her songs. Never mind the blast and the fire that still ate at him.

Just let the damned bitch rest. She deserved that much.
 
Daniyah lowered the crossbow slowly, heavy in her hands. She didn’t move to shoot again. No need. She could only watch Garrod as he straightened, raw and scorched, shoulders shaking, chest heaving. The widow thrashed one final time, a writhing storm of grief and memory. The faintest pulse of pity thrummed in Daniyah's gut.

The Widow’s shadow curled back on itself, pulling all its memories and hands and whispered songs into the void. For a brief, terrible moment, it was beautiful, face flickering with every loved one lost, every voice stolen, but then it was gone. Daniyah kept her eyes on the Widow’s final form, drifting apart into a faint, curling silver mist.

The remnants of the bolt sizzled against the damp earth, hissing like a snake disturbed. Thin curls of blue smoke coiled upward, stinging eyes and throat, carrying the sharp, chemical tang of burning sulfur. Tiny sparks leapt from the scorched wood and powder, glittering briefly like sparks of stars before vanishing. The smell was acid and metallic, it would eat at the lungs if one lingered too long.

The ringing in Daniyah's skull hammered against her temples. She wanted to collapse, wanted to let herself fall flat into the leaves and moss, but she couldn’t. Not here, not now. Her arms shook from holding the crossbow too long, from the tension of waiting, aiming, holding back her own panic as the widow had reached for him. Her lungs burned. Her head spun. Every breath she drew tasted of the sulfur, every pulse in her veins felt slow, viscous, and poisoned.

Fingers stiff and trembling, she worked the crossbow. First the bolt, slowly she pried it free from the groove and let it return to the quiver. Her thumbs eased the tension of the string, letting the drawn bow slacken until it sagged harmlessly, lifeless in her hands.

Step by step, she moved forward. Closer to Garrod. Her pales eyes flicked over Garrod, scanning his figure for injuries. He was alive, breathing, still standing.
 
Wrath cut down through where the collar bone would be, where ribs should cage a heart. All ghost and sunder. Like ash turned kindling to coal, ripped through. Hard in places. Snags felt up the arms, still flesh and bone. Brittle nothing as soon as it gave way.

A face he didn't know, there in the twist of her veil.

Eyes full of him. His eye full of her. There in that last run of the steel's edge. The last give of the ghost flesh. Snag of strings to the fabric that made her. And she was beautiful. Dark hair like raven's feathers. Brown eyes full of whispers and promises kept there in sunkissed earth. With skin like birch bark. Pale enough to glow there in the swirl of mist.

Her hand reached out one last time. Fingers traced the side of his face. Smile on her lips.

He grit his teeth. Pulled through the last bit. Felt the pop. The end.

She turned to ash. Scattered with a gust of newborn wind. A gleaming jewel sparkled down and fell unto the leaf litter with a rustle and a crunch. His eye fixed unto it.

A Weeping Heart. Uncut night. Dark as a black sapphire.

Feed it to me. he heard the whisper in his mind. Oh Bearer Mine.

Garrod's brow furled. Lips pulled to tight line as he watched the leaf paled day's light gleam over the ebon surface. Didn't dare touch it.

Crunch of needles. Rustle of leaves. Snap of twig. His eye turned to find her.

Marching. Step by step. A grin crested over his lip, as he hefted his sword up that had been resting down at his side. Leaned its wicked blade against his shoulder, flat against his chest as he cradled the long two hand grip.

"You still with me, Wraithbinder?" He said.

She had that far off look in her eye. Mind, split by her witchcraft. Poison. No. That damned fork. A needle straight into the pitch between the stars. Sounds no one should hear. Yet she rang the fucking thing.

He turned toward her. Took a half step to her. "Dani," it fell out. Half a pitiful sob itself. Coin glow about her, beneath the pale leaves. Like he could crumble at the site of her. The how or why didn't fucking matter to him. He loosed his hands about his blade. Thought to put it down. "Fucking say something," he growled. Fingers clutched back up his steel.
 
The forest stank of scorched salt and grief. The ringing faded, a crawling ache that slithered back into the corners of her mind and gave way to the forest’s dull, persistent hum. She could hear the drip of water somewhere off in the mist, the faint scrape of Garrod moving his sword, the far off soft snort of a mule. Bit by bit, the world returned around her. The hiss of fire and distant sounds crawled back into her awareness: a leaf skittering across moss, Garrod’s voice... "Fucking say something"

The ringing that had filled her skull bled away, leaving her bone-deep exhaustion and the faint, steady thrum of life. Her hands moved by habit, the crossbow came up, practiced motion, she slung it over her shoulder. The strap caught on her neck once, but she jerked it down, clipped it in place against her shoulder.

Garrod was unburnt.
Unbroken.
Fucking grinning.

That crooked grin that always seemed to mock and admire in the same time. His white hair stuck out in every direction like he’d crawled out of a lightning bolt, ash dusting one shoulder. His sword rested casually against his shoulder, that great slab of rune-bitten steel, and he looked pleased with himself. Alive. Whole. Smug bastard.

And then she reached him. Daniyah didn’t answer, but just reached out with one hand, the one that wasn’t shaking from holding the weight of the crossbow, the one that wasn’t still trembling from nearly letting herself feel something. Fingers to cheek. A flicker of something passed behind her eyes. Maybe too soft for her usual roughness. A gentle touch, for the space of a breath.

... and then she shoved his face aside. Hard enough to make him step back. Hard enough to tell him the moment was over.

“Out of the way.”

She shouldered past him, smoke curling in her wake. And there it was. Nestled in the leaf litter like something dropped from the sky. A Weeping Heart.. Too beautiful for what it was. She crouched, stiff, exhausted, every muscle protesting. Daniyah reached for it with a careful, shaking hand.
 
She didn't say a damn thing. All withered and worn as she was. Arms shaking like she was some wet dog. Gone too long without food.

Drink. Spells. Work. Grit his teeth. Clutched his steel. No. She wasn't a fucking ghost like the rest of them. But there she was. Practically shambling toward him.

It was easier to be angry at her. Blame her. Tell himself how much she was just like that old fucking drunk he had found rotten alone in his fucking bed.

Would Garrod leave her there too? Unburried? Rotting to the point of haunting the fucking bricks that would be her resting place?

Step, after dragged step. She just kept marching. And he just fucking stood there. Frozen again. Her hand reached out, and his breath caught in his throat. Those eyes like shadows off the side of glacial walls. Near white with all their promise of stillness. Hiding there all the blue of summer's lakes.

And she touched him. Soft as she had the night before, with bells in her hands. Sword sagged in his arms. He gave his cheek to her.

She shoved him away. Shoulder checked him aside. Felt the sting of the fire's kiss then. The flash burns singed across the side of his face. The pits where slag had gone through cloth and into skin. He hung there a moment as he herd her steps crunch to stillness.

Turned slow to see her through his lone green eye. "Stop it," he said firm. "Don't touch it!" he shout. Let sword fall to the floor with a wobble and a clang against the earth. Grabbed at her shoulder. Yanked her back. "Not like this," Fingers dug into what trembling muscle she still had.

"You are fucking spent! Shakes running up your hand!" his voice cracked. "Leave it," he begged, too raw, felt too young. "I'll. I'll fucking carry it." growled. "You take it if you want, come morning." Snapped. "But you need to rest first, Daniyah, recover." hoped she would fucking hear him.

Every Cazadore knew. Even after the hunt came finished. The hearts of monsters always took their toll.
 
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Daniyah barely had time to breathe, let alone react. One moment her fingers curled toward the Weeping Heart, and the next... yank.

Her feet slipped. The forest floor pitched sideways, and she landed hard on her hip with a grunt, elbows catching damp earth. She blinked up at him, his face flushed, twisted with too much care. Garrod loomed above her, full of fire and good intentions, fool that he was. Begging like a boy who hadn’t yet learned that pleading never saved anyone. “You think you're doing me a kindness!?” She growled back.

The pressure in her limbs, rage, poison, fatigue, all braided tight, pulsed through her like heat through iron, and she wanted to scream. Or punch him. Or both. Her hands twitched for a weapon, but her crossbow was strapped on her back, and her sword was somewhere she couldn't feel. Maybe that was a blessing. Her breath came shallow. Her limbs felt hollow, but she still turned on him like a snapped snare.

“You think it wouldn’t love to have your soft heart in its claws?” she snapped. “You're an idiot!" she muttered. Daniyah sat where she'd landed, one hand braced against the forest floor, the other shaking like she'd just ripped it free from the mouth of hell. Voice sharp and bitter. “A bleeding-hearted, poetry-mouthed idiot.” She was already ruined. Already owned by things older than sin. Her dreams were not even hers anymore. Let it gnaw on her. It would not find much left.

"Fuck you!"

Her rage wasn’t just exhaustion or stubbornness. Every scowl, every shove, every harsh word was forged from years of loss, from bones she’d watched bleach in the sun. She didn’t trust the world, or herself, to protect anyone. Her hostility was her only language. She did not know how to say, I care, and I’m terrified for you. Every flash of hostility, every push, every bite of cruelty was a measure to keep the living at bay from the horrors she knew, horrors that would devour him without mercy.

Just a girl who had learned that pleading never saved anyone.
 
He saw how she had fallen back. Snapped his teeth shut. "Shit," he hissed.

"You think you're doing me a kindness!?"

Froze him in his tracks. Shook his head. Face screwed up. Twisted as she spat her barbs.

Stayed back. Better to stay back. Kept his eye away. Brows all storm clouds over his dour face.

"That's right," he said. Like she'd said nothing. Like it meant nothing. Like he didn't care about what happened to her come the morning. "Fuck me, and my soft bleeding heart, if that's what it takes," he kept tall. Tried to keep his eye off her. Act like he could give two fucks about her. Like it didn't tear at him seeing her shake. Couldn't shake the want to see her. Keep seeing her. How she was now. Spooning down soup. Resplendent in silver coins, and more haunting than any ghost they had seen on the other side.

Didn't matter that she was angry. Or scowling. Or ready to slug him, or stab him. So he looked at her.

Eye full of that worry he couldn't keep from showing. All the the fear he had for her. Only having glimpsed at the horrors she swam in.

Only heard that fucking needle through the trees. A crossbow's shot away.

Only felt the rattle of the chains, pinging off his skull. Such simple geometry, carried on a mule's back. Still it sank into his mind. As if it could break through his memory.

Turned his eye down to the Widow's Heart. Felt it pull at him. All song and deaths whisper. Bent low and snatched it up with his right hand. Fingers just wrapped around it. Cold as running river water. All ice melt and drag.

One less nightmare for her to worry about.

His demon laughed a low and happy rumble there in the black noise of his mind. Couldn't hear it over the ripple and rush of the whispers. The song. Full of all his loves voices.
 
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Daniyah felt his eye on her like a knife tip pressed against her skin. That look he gave her. That godsdamned look. As if she'd asked for that. That fucking one-eyed gaze. Daniyah flinched, as if he’d drawn steel.

She watched as Garrod’s fingers closed around the Widow’s Heart. Her jaw clenched so tight it ached in her temples. But a small sound slipped from between her teeth. That cold little lump of shade-stone and sorrow now nestled in his palm. The Heart sat pretty in his hand. That little black gem, dark as midnight and oil, slick with the sort of shine that never reflects light, only swallows it. A thing not carved by man or god, but grown in the belly of grief.

Her knees shook as she got to her feet. It wasn’t dramatic, just awful. Her body screamed. Her insides twisted like a sack of wet ropes. The world tilted in that subtle way it does when poison, exhaustion, and ancient, dark magic took turns clawing at your spine. But collapse was for corpses. And Daniyah wasn’t one of those. Not yet.

The ground beneath her boots felt too soft. Like it might swallow her whole if she let her heels sit too long in one place. The ash from the dead widow lingered, a grey smear across the forest floor. The ashes stuck to her boots. Clung to the cuffs of her trousers. Blue and silver sparks still curled in its remnants, faint as dying stars.

She walked.

Not quickly. Not confidently. But with that same resignation that had gotten her through every broken rib, every botched ritual, every demon that tried to split her soul down the middle. She got to the mules, but by then her vision was tunneling. Everything a blur of gray and shadow and soft, creeping wrongness.

One of the mules had chewed clean through the strap on its feed bag. The other just stared at her with big, stupid, black eyes. She hoisted the saddle strap with one arm, began checking tack with the other.

"That’s that, then. Job’s done.”

Didn’t ask if he was alright.
Didn’t tell him to drop it.
Even if she ought to.

If he wanted to carry damnation in his pocket, he could then. She had done her part.
Now she just had to stay standing.
 
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Put the damned thing in one of his belt strapped pockets. Old leather, full of powders and regents. Neutral, when kept in their bundles and cloths. Sealed the little Robin's egg of doom there in with them.

Didn't stop the run of the song. It swirled there against his psyche. Like water run around a stone. His demon, a crab scuttling about the undercurrents. Part cat hiding in the brush. All hungry for it's next meal.

He did hear her footfalls. Crunch and uneven. Clumsy. Could make out her gate, on the verge of collapse, even as he grabbed up his sword. Carried it, with long blade against his chest.

Followed after her. Wobble and limp from the frozen burn of the rock at his hip. The bad mangle and twist of limb from the blast bringing its toll now. But he evened out. Still moved better than she did. And that fucking scared him.

By the mules, he let his sword down with his pack. Bent to it. Undid a pouch where he kept silk spun from the cacoons of eightmoon moth worms. Good for cursed shit, he had found. If only long enough to get rid of it proper. Pulled the pale square of shimmering white, and snapped it loose. Wrapped it about the Heart.

Felt the gauntlet's eye on him. Saw how it gleamed and smiled. It's jagged form, a thing all boneshard and teeth. Too glad to see him. Saw the fingers curl and kick with delight.

His eye wide on it.

Laugh all curling smoke in his head.

"That’s that, then. Job’s done."

Cold wind blew through them. He stashed the jewel, opposite of the gauntlet.

Come now, Oh Bearer Mine, voice all rusted nails against cracked glass. There is no need to play so coy. Garrod cinched the pouch strap tight. She will just ride on off, and you'll come back to me, all full and scared again, Got up.

Wanted to snap. Hiss. Curse and spit. Shook his head. Rubbed at his temples. Took a breath.
To steady against the needles clawing at the back of his missing eye.

"I owe you a gold piece," he said. "Only paid you one," looked over to her. "Your worth three, easy," wasn't just him aching either. Stinging for how she fucking touched him. Shot him and shoved him. Just the cold truth. "You want that last coin, you want that overpriced horse, then we go turn in that stone at the Yellow Aster Den, and collect." Looked about them. "Then jobs proper done," Looked down the hill. "But we camp first,"
 
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She tightened her grip on the reins. And yet… there was a tug at her, a stubborn, want she hated to admit. The thought of sitting by a fire, of eating something warm and real, of tasting food that wasn’t charred. He cooked well. Maybe she could stay awake one more night? One more. Maybe she could push through.

She could even imagine herself drifting off to sleep as he read his poetry. But the night ahead promised only pain. Daniyah swallowed hard against the bile that threatened her throat, forcing her stomach to settle.

This night would not be gentle to her. Daniyah wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her crumble further. Not let him see the way her body betrayed her. She wanted endure it alone, like always.

"One gold piece" she reminded him. “That’s what we agreed on. I am fine with this. I count you generous for that.. and oh! Thank you for the mule." she began untying the leading rope.
 
His eye snapped to her. "What?" voice all crackled with grit. Like too much smoke in the lungs. "You can't be serious," he almost laughed at it. Killed it in his throat, but his lips curled up at the corners, all the same. He frowned, stepped to her, head shaking no. His boot crunched to a halt. Still a stride out.

He had already thrown her to the ground.

He scowled, and ripped his eye off her. "What, the staring is free now?" he did laugh at that. "Well I've been fucking staring, so I owe you one, and then some," was a whole lot easier than saying the truth. Sparked a fear born fire in him. "It's a five coin job," he spat. "You deserve three," he looked back up to her. "Mule aside," that was a good deal, and he would die on that hill. "I fucked you, and you know it."
 
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