Corren took her hand and pressed a theatrical kiss to the back of it before she could pull away, playing the chivalrous knight with an exaggeration that made her cheeks color instantly. "Milady," he said, "you've saved us from certain starvation."
She yanked her hand back, flustered, while Baris muttered a quieter, genuinely grateful "thank you" before tearing into the bag with the enthusiasm of a boy who had clearly forgotten his manners the moment hunger set in. Crumbs scattered across his shirt. He didn't notice, or didn't care.
"I'm Wrenna," the girl offered once the worst of the eating had subsided into something closer to civilized. "Of the Hart Clan." Her voice, when she spoke again, carried a shyness that sat oddly alongside how openly kind she'd just been to two total strangers. "Where are you two headed?"
"The Fyre Academy," Baris answered around a mouthful of bread. "Going to become knights."
"I'm going to finish top of the class," Corren added, "and make my whole family proud of me."
Wrenna's expression opened up at that, a flicker of longing she didn't quite manage to hide. "I have a dream too," she admitted. "I want to become a mage. But I'm terrified of what happens to my parents' shop if I leave them to chase it. They have no one else to help them run it."
"I have some talent with our family's healing chant," she added, quieter, almost apologetic about it, as if the gift embarrassed her more than it pleased her.
Corren recognized the opening immediately and took her hands before she could second-guess offering that much of herself to strangers. "If you have a gift," he said, "wasting it is its own kind of tragedy. Come with us. You can heal us when we're hurt, and we'll protect you when you're not safe. We'll be a team. A family, even. You as the mother, me as the father, and Baris here as our exhausting, oversized son."
"Why can't I be the father?" Baris protested through another mouthful.
Wrenna laughed despite herself, then pulled her hands free and paced a few steps away, visibly wrestling with something bigger than the joke. "I don't know what to do," she said, more to herself than to either of them, before turning and half-running back toward the town she'd just come from.
They waited. It didn't take long. She returned a short while later with a pack over her shoulders, jaw set with the determination of someone who has just made a decision she's terrified of and is refusing to let herself take it back.
Corren swept her up in a delighted embrace that spun her half off her feet, and she yelped, startled, before the fear dissolved into laughter she hadn't planned on. Baris watched the whole exchange in silence, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face before he schooled it back into his usual grin.
They made camp that night in a clearing off the road, the fire between them throwing warm light against the dark. Baris and Corren fell into an argument about what to call their new little group, an argument that mattered a great deal to both of them and not at all to the wider world. Corren pushed for something with weight to it, "The Guardians" or "The Sentinels," names built to inspire respect and, more honestly, to impress girls. Baris countered with "The Three Amigos," an argument he made with genuine sincerity about friendship and shared adventure that Corren found harder to mock than he expected.
Wrenna, listening quietly from her spot by the fire, finally offered her own suggestion. "What about the Three Hungry Knights?"
The silence that followed was not the good kind. "That's not funny," Baris said. "That's embarrassing."
"Exactly," Corren agreed. "We're trying to sound intimidating, Wrenna. Not like we skipped lunch."
She looked down at her hands, cheeks going pink with something that read less like simple embarrassment and more like the sting of feeling she'd already, on her very first night with them, made herself a burden rather than an asset. "I'm sorry," she said, quiet enough that the fire nearly swallowed it.
Her apology landed heavier than either of them had intended their teasing to be, and both boys softened at once. "It's fine," Corren said, gentler now. "No harm done. Truly."
The debate dissolved unresolved into the comfortable rhythm of three strangers slowly becoming something else, and eventually the conversation drifted toward magic. Baris, always hungry for a demonstration, asked Wrenna to show off her healing chant, and Corren, mischief getting the better of him, plucked a burning stick from the fire and jabbed it lightly against Baris's shin before either of them could object.
Baris yelped, a fresh burn blooming red across his skin, and glared at Corren with an offense that lasted right up until Wrenna knelt beside him and began to chant.
Her accent, Corren noted immediately, carried the same structural bones as his mother's Duskveil chant, the same underlying grammar worn soft by generations of imperfect transmission, though her particular drift ran differently than his mother's had, closer in some places, further in others. Her words meant, roughly, let my hands be vessels of healing and grace, bringing comfort and peace to every weary embrace. Imperfect as it was, the magic worked anyway, slow but steady, closing the burn over several long minutes while Baris gritted his teeth against the last of the sting.
They had barely caught their breath from that when a low growl rolled out of the dark treeline, and a moment later, four pairs of eyes caught the firelight, followed swiftly by three more.
Wolves.
Corren and Baris were on their feet instantly, flanking Wrenna between them without needing to discuss it first. "Pick a direction and run," Corren said, low and level, every ounce of panic he felt buried somewhere underneath a calm he'd learned to fake a long time before this life ever started.