Francesca stood near the fire, blade in hand, dragging a whetstone along its edge with slow, deliberate strokes.
The steel whispered in rhythm with the crackling wood a quiet song in the hush of night.
Firelight danced across her face golden and sharp casting long shadows over her cheekbones.
But she wasn't watching the blade.
She was watching Alberta.
Alberta sat apart, perched on a worn stone just beyond the fire's reach. Her shoulders were rigid, arms curled tightly around her knees.
Her gaze wasn't on the forest.
It was through it like she was listening to something far beyond the trees.
Something old. Something grieving.
"You've been quiet," Francesca said, her voice low but steady.
"I always am," Alberta replied without turning.
"Not like this."
The whetstone stilled. Francesca slid the blade into its sheath and crossed the distance between them. The firelight caught in her curls as she sat beside her.
"I saw your face earlier. When he fell. When that scar lit up," she said. "You looked like you knew him. Like you remembered something."
Alberta's jaw tightened. Her breath thinned.
"It wasn't what I saw," she whispered, each word sharp as shattered glass.
"It was what I felt."
Francesca looked toward the fire, its sparks curling up into the mist.
"He's hiding something," she murmured.
Alberta nodded faintly. "I don't think he knows he's hiding it.
It's like something's chasing him not from the outside.
From within.
Like he's afraid of remembering who he was."
"You think it's tied to the Wane?"
Alberta didn't speak right away. Her eyes flicked upward, toward the dark sky where stars had vanished behind a veil of mist.
"Maybe," she said at last.
"Or maybe the Wane follows him because something in him never stopped breaking."
Silence settled between them again soft, heavy, aching.
Only the low throb of the warding crystal in camp remained a heartbeat pulsing against the dark.
Then,
Crunch.
Boots over dead leaves.
A younger mercenary wandered near the fire, gnawing on a dry ration and blinking against sleep. The fire caught the shadows under his eyes and the grime along his sleeves.
"You're not from around here, are you?" he asked, his voice casual, cracked from the cold.
Francesca glanced over. "Why?"
He shrugged and sat near the edge of the firelight.
"I grew up near the capital. Heard stories. My old commander served under Duke Aslac Montagne. The Lion of Jesmeurdam."
A pause.
"Ruthless. Cold-eyed. Loyal to the grave."
Alberta's fingers stilled on her knee.
"He had a daughter, or so they say. Vanished when the estate burned during the border wars. Some say she died. Others…"
He leaned in, as if the night itself might listen closer.
"Others say he found her. Smuggled her away. Raised her in secret. Said her hair burned like fire in the sunlight. Rare color. Real rare."
Francesca's eyes slid toward Alberta.
Alberta didn't move. Not even to breathe.
The mercenary chuckled, suddenly uneasy with his own tale.
"Anyway. Just stories. Ghosts and gossip."
He yawned, stretched, and wandered off into the dark, his echo fading behind him.
The fire crackled on, but Francesca said nothing.
The silence between them felt like a wound raw, open, waiting.
Then softly, like touching a bruise
"Do you think it's him?" she asked.
Alberta kept her eyes on the mist.
Her voice, when it came, was hollow.
"I think it's what's left of him."
CHAPTER 6: NAMES IN THE FIRELIGHT TH END