Frostvale whispered louder than the wind.
Mira heard it every time she walked across the green, every time she fetched water from the well or passed the forge. It wasn't the usual chatter about goats escaping or whether the smokehouse would last the winter. It was about Kaden.
The boy she'd grown up with. The boy who should have been dead.
She didn't like the way people said his name now—half in fear, half in awe.
Three days had passed since Kaden had staggered from the infirmary, whole and breathing. Mira still remembered the sight of him at the gates: blood pooling beneath him, chest torn open, pale as death. She had thought she would never hear his laugh again.
Now, she watched him split wood outside his family's longhouse, swinging the axe with more force than he should have after lying broken. His hair glinted gold in the thin winter light, his grin quick and reckless when Astrid scolded him for moving too fast.
Villagers didn't say much to his face anymore. But doors closed faster when he passed. Mothers drew children close. That silence cut sharper than any curse.
Mira clenched her jaw until her teeth hurt. Frostvale was a village of kin, but fear made kin cruel.
She forced herself back to her own tasks: mending a fence rail, hauling feed for the goats. But her eyes kept drifting toward Kaden. He joked with his mother, teased his father, carried buckets as though nothing had changed.
Except something had.
Not in him—at least, not that she could see—but in everyone else. They treated him like a fire that might burn too hot if you stood too close.
Mira refused to flinch. If he was fire, she would warm her hands.
She found him later by the range. He leaned against the target stump, spinning an arrow idly between his fingers.
"You're supposed to shoot those, not polish them," she said.
He looked up, grinning. "I was waiting for my instructor. Heard she's the best in Frostvale."
"She's tired of your excuses," Mira replied, drawing her bow.
They practiced until the sun dipped lower. Mira's arrows flew clean, splitting frost and bark. Kaden's wavered, but more often than not they found the rings. He laughed at his misses, bragged at his near-hits, and Mira let him—because she knew laughter kept his fear at bay.
Still, she noticed something strange. He was sharper. Faster. He angled away from her shots before she even loosed them, like he could sense her draw. His arrows, though sloppy, sometimes cut straighter than before.
Mira chalked it up to luck. Nothing more.
But when she felt the wind stir at her release, carrying her arrow smoother than it should, she wondered whose luck it really was.
That night, after chores, Mira lay on her pallet staring at the rafters. She couldn't stop seeing him at the gates, chest torn open, blood soaking the frost. The healer's hands red, the villagers crying out.
She had thought she'd lost him.
And then she hadn't.
Her chest tightened. The gods didn't hand back what they took without reason. If Kaden was still here, still laughing, still swinging axes and carrying buckets, then something bigger was moving. Something she couldn't see yet.
She turned over, pulled the furs tight, and whispered to the empty dark: "Don't do anything foolish, Kaden."
But she knew he would. He always did.
And she would follow, bow in hand, because someone had to watch his back.