Chapter 110: This isn’t me

Azura’s POV

My hand was on the knife, and my feet were planted, and I looked at the man standing in front of me with his smile that had nothing behind it, and I gave him the one thing I had left to give before this stopped being a conversation.

"Last chance," I said slowly. "Walk away."

He tilted his head like I had said something genuinely amusing. "Or what? You are going to fight the three of us?"

Behind me, I felt Liona shift closer. Not running. Not freezing. Just moving to stand beside me the way she always moved when things got serious, like her body made that decision before her brain had finished processing the situation.

The second man looked at his companion. "They are not worth the trouble," he said. Something in his voice was less certain than his friend’s.

"I disagree," the first one said. Not looking at him. Looking at me.

He took another step forward.

"Do not," I said with my teeth together.

He kept coming.

Then footsteps came from behind them. Fast and purposeful, moving through the trees without any attempt at being quiet, like whoever was coming had decided that quiet was no longer the point.

All three men looked up at the same time.

I did not look up.

I knew those footsteps. Growing up on the streets, you learn to read people by the way they walk before you ever see their face. That skill never left me. I had spent enough time around Torin to know his pace, the easy rhythm of it, the unhurried confidence.

So I did not look up. I knew who was coming.

"I think you should listen to her."

Torin stepped out from the trees to the right of the path. His face was not the easy version of it. No smile, no warmth, just jaw set and eyes sharp and his hand resting on the dagger at his belt like it was the most natural place for a hand to be.

The first man’s smile faltered. Just slightly. "Who the hell are you?"

Torin looked at all three of them. Then down at his own hand on the dagger. Then back at them. He seemed to consider something. Then he slowly lifted his hand away from the dagger and let it drop to his side.

He never drew it. As if he didn’t need to.

The first man laughed. Short and sharp. "No weapon? You think you are a hero?"

The second one shook his head slowly. "He is going to get himself killed."

The third one cracked his knuckles. "Let us show him what happens to heroes."

They moved toward him.

Torin did not step back. He stood there with a bored face.

Oh, I’m so sorry to their souls.

It was fast. That was the only word for it. I had seen Torin fight before, and I had always known he was good, but knowing it and watching it were different things.

The first man came at him and caught a punch to the jaw that sent him sideways into the ground before he had finished deciding what he was going to do when he got there.

The second man swung and Torin was not where he had been, his foot finding the back of the man’s knee with a precise kick that folded him like something with no structural integrity.

The third man grabbed Torin’s collar and Torin let him get hold of it, turned with it, and used the momentum to put him into the tree at the side of the path with a sound that was loud enough that several birds left the branches above in a hurry.

The first man scrambled up, but Torin put him back down.

The second man, on his knees in the mud, looked at his friends and then at Torin standing in the middle of the path completely unbothered by any of this. Then he looked at the road behind him and ran for his dear life 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

The third man followed. Then the first, his hand pressed against the side of his face, moving faster than I would have expected, given what had just happened to his jaw.

The road was quiet.

Torin straightened his coat. Looked at his hands, back in the direction they had run. Then he turned around.

His face when he looked at me was not the face I was used to seeing from him. The jaw was tight. The eyes were direct and unsmiling and carrying something that had been building since he got here and was now fully arrived.

"What were you thinking?" he said.

I met his eyes. "You were not doing what I asked. So I made my own decision."

"What if something had happened to you out here?" He stopped. His voice dropped from where it had started. "Do you think Rhydor would spare me if you got hurt while I was supposed to be keeping you safe?"

"Do I look like a child? Do I look like I care what Rhydor thinks? You weren’t listening. I needed you to understand that this cannot wait."

He ran a hand through his hair. The frustrated version of it, the one that meant he had too many things to say and was trying to decide which one to start with.

"Azura." He looked at me directly. "This is not a game. You walked out of a house in a place you do not know, on a road you have never seen, with no idea what is out there. You have no wolf. And you are dragging Liona along with you."

"I might not have my wolf, but that does not make me weak." The words came out hot, sharp at the edges, the anger bleeding through no matter how hard I tried to hold it back.

"Then at least stop being selfish." His voice was not angry exactly. Frustrated the way people got frustrated when they were scared about something and did not want to lead with the scared part.

"If you came here to argue with me," I said, "I do not have time for it."

Liona stepped between us.

Both hands up. Not dramatically. Just firmly, the way Liona stepped into things when she had decided it was time for the two people on either side of her to take a breath.

She looked at Torin.

"I loved that," she said.

He blinked. "What?"

"The fighting." She gestured vaguely at the empty road where three men had been standing a minute ago.

"The part where you put them all on the ground without drawing your weapon." She paused. A faint color came up in her cheeks and she turned quickly to look at me.

"But he is not wrong. What if he had not been here?"

She let that sit between us for a moment. The specific weight of a question that did not need to be answered out loud because the answer was already obvious to everyone standing on this road.

"We are in this together," she said. "You do not have to do everything alone."

"I can protect myself," I said.

"I know you can," Liona said. "I am not saying otherwise."

"Then why is nobody listening to me?" My voice came up before I had fully decided to let it.

"Why does nobody understand what I am trying to tell them?"

I looked at Torin. Then at Liona. Both of them were standing there watching me with their careful faces.

"This is not me being impatient. This is not me making a reckless choice for no reason." I could feel my hands shaking.

"Every day that passes, I can feel something happening inside me." My jaw tightened.

"I do not know what it is. I do not have the words for it exactly."

I exhaled hard through my nose.

"But it is moving. And it is not waiting for anyone’s schedule."

My voice was getting sharper.

"And I cannot just sit in a house and eat warm food and wait for the right moment to arrive."

I stopped. Took a breath, and tried to steady myself.

My hands were still shaking. I looked down at them to confirm, and they were definitely shaking.

"Azura," Torin said. He stepped closer. His voice had come down from where it had been. "Calm down."

"I am not calming down." The words came out louder than I expected them to and I did not pull them back.

"I am tired of being calm. Tired of waiting. Tired of sitting still while everyone else decides when my life can start moving again."

I stopped. Pressed my lips together.

Nobody spoke. They stared as if I had two heads.

But I didn’t care, I turned and started walking.

"Azura," Torin called.

My boots hit the dirt hard. I kept moving down the road away from both of them, my bag on my shoulder, my hands still shaking, and something in my chest that was too tight and too hot and had been sitting there for longer than just today.

"Where are you going?" Liona called.

"Away," I said. "From both of you."

I kept walking. The road stretched ahead of me, empty and grey and not going anywhere in particular. I followed it anyway because it was away and away was the only direction that felt like something right now.

Behind me, their voices drifted back.

"Give her a minute." Torin’s voice. Quiet. The frustration was mostly gone from it.

"What if she does not come back?" Liona. Worried in that specific Liona way that tried to sound practical and was actually just scared.

"She will." A pause. "She always does."

Their voices faded. Then they were gone entirely and it was just me and the road and the trees on both sides and the heavy grey sky above everything.

My chest was still tight.

My hands had slowed their shaking but not stopped.

I walked and looked at the ground in front of my feet and thought about what had just come out of my mouth back there.

The volume of it. The way it had arrived before I had checked it or shaped it or decided what I was actually trying to say. Just come out raw and unfinished and louder than I had meant for it to be.

What was that? I thought.

That was not something I did. I argued. I pushed back. I stood my ground in quiet ways and said difficult things in calm voices and kept the volume down because keeping the volume down was something I had learned young and kept ever since.

I did not lose it like that.

Except I just had.

I kept walking and tried to figure out what exactly had cracked open back there and whether it was something that could be closed again or whether it had been waiting to open for a long time and had simply found today to do it.

I walked until the tightness in my chest started to loosen very slightly, and the shaking in my hands stopped completely, and the road ahead began to look less like escape and more like just a road.

Then I stopped.

I stood there in the middle of it and exhaled.

And waited for the sound of footsteps behind me.