Chapter 96: Little Torin

Azura’s POV

It’s been two days since I remembered that I forgot my journal at the packhouse. Well, not entirely my fault, nobody expected anything whatsoever to happen that day.

Torin came out of the house with two wooden practice swords and the energy of someone who had been waiting to do this for a while.

Torin handed one to me and one to Liona, and then stood in front of us with his arms crossed and looked at us both the way a person looks at something they are trying to assess the full scale of before committing to an opinion.

"Basic stance first," he said. "Feet apart. Sword up. Eyes on whatever you are trying to hit." He demonstrated. His feet shifted into position without effort, the sword came up clean and steady, and he looked like he had been born standing exactly like that. "Simple."

I looked at the sword in my hand. Then at his stance. Then back at my sword.

"That looks easy," I said.

"It is," he said. "Watch."

He swung. One clean motion, the wooden blade cutting through the morning air with a soft sound, perfectly controlled from the start of the movement to the end of it. He made it look like breathing.

Liona stepped forward immediately. She was always like that. Jump in first, assess later.

She planted her feet. Got the sword up. Swung.

The sword wobbled halfway through, twisted sideways in her grip like it had changed its mind about the direction, and nearly left her hand entirely. She grabbed it with both hands at the last second and held on.

Torin watched this.

"That was," he said. Then he stopped. Started again. "That was something."

"My turn," I said.

I planted my feet the way he showed us. Got the sword up. Focused. And I swung with everything I had, because if I was going to do something, I was going to commit to it.

The sword left my hand completely.

It spun once through the air and landed in the bush at the far edge of the yard with a soft defeated thud.

Liona stared at the bush, then at me. "At least mine stayed in my hand."

​"I was putting power into it!" I snapped, crossing my arms.

​Torin rubbed the back of his neck. "Were you trying to kill the bush, Azura. Because it totally did nothing to you."

​I stomped over to retrieve the sword. While I was pulling it out of the thorns, I heard a loud thump and a yelp. I turned around to see Liona flat on her back, her legs tangled in the same bush. She had tried to swing again and completely lost her balance.

​I rushed over to help her up. "Are you okay?"

​Liona spat out a green leaf and glared at the sky. "The bush is fine, but we are clearly not."

​Torin watched us, leaning on his own wooden sword. He looked genuinely baffled. "How did the two of you survive the Wraithfen? Honestly. Tell me the secret."

​"We ran a lot," I said, wiping dirt off my pants.

​"And we hid," Liona added, pulling a twig out of her hair.

​Torin stayed silent for a long time, just looking at us. "I believe you," he said finally. "With my whole heart, I believe you.".

****

Torin decided we weren’t ready for swords. He switched to knives, which made me even more nervous.

​He set up a target against a thick oak tree and pulled a small, silver blade from his belt.

Without even looking like he was aiming, he flicked his wrist. The knife buried itself dead center in the wood.

Thwack.

​"That was luck," I said, squinting at the target.

​Torin raised an eyebrow. "Was it?"

​He pulled another.

Thwack

At the center, and another one.

Thwack.

Right next to the first one. He was definitely showing off now, a little smirk playing on his lips.

​"Okay, fine. Let me try," Liona said.

​She took the knife from him like it was a piece of glass. She took aim, closed one eye, and threw. The knife went completely sideways. It missed the tree entirely and stuck into the dirt about three feet to the left.

​Torin tilted his head. "You threw it with your eyes closed, didn’t you?"

​"I was bracing for the impact!" Liona defended.

​I took the next knife. I felt the weight of it, balanced it in my palm, and flicked my wrist just like Torin had.

​The knife went backward.

​It didn’t just fall; it flew over my shoulder and landed right at Torin’s feet. He stared down at the blade sitting between his boots, then looked up at me.

​"How," he said. It wasn’t even a question. It was a plea for understanding.

​"I do not know," I whispered, feeling my face heat up.

​"That is not even physically possible, Azura. The laws of nature do not allow that."

​"And yet," I said, gesturing to the ground, with an embarrassing grain on my face, "here we are."

​Torin picked up the knife and sighed a long, heavy sigh. "I am going to need more wine. A lot more wine."

****

​By the afternoon, we decided to head into the village. Torin led the way, his hands tucked into his pockets, though his eyes never stopped moving, scanning the rooftops and the crowds.

​Hollowcrown was busy. People were shouting, colorful fabrics were draped over stalls, and the smell of roasting meat filled the air. People looked at Liona and me with curiosity, but they didn’t try to talk to us. It was strange and nice at the same time.

​Suddenly, a very short, very loud old woman spotted us. She let out a gasp and rushed over, moving faster than I thought possible for someone her age.

​"Little Torin!" she shrieked, reaching up and pinching his cheek so hard his head tilted.

"Look at you! Still handsome as ever, you rascal."

​Torin’s face went a shade of red I didn’t know a warrior could achieve. "Auntie, please, not in front of the guests."

​The old woman ignored him and turned to Liona and me, her eyes twinkling. "Are you his women? Finally? Has he finally settled down with two beauties?"

​Liona burst out laughing, clearly enjoying Torin’s misery. "No, Auntie. We are just friends."

​The woman looked genuinely disappointed. "Pity. He’s a good boy, even if he is a bit of a flirt. He needs someone to keep his head straight." She pinched his cheek one last time and wandered off to buy some herbs.

​Liona leaned in and whispered, "Little Torin."

​"Do not," Torin warned, his ears still glowing red.

​"I am never letting this go," I added, grinning. "Never."

​We stopped at a bread vendor who practically gave us the whole stall for half price once he recognized Torin.

Everyone seemed to love him here. It made me realize that outside of the pack drama, Torin was a man with a whole life I knew nothing about.

****

By the time we got back to the house the laughter and the walking and everything from the night before had finally caught up with me all at once. It hit like a wall, sudden and complete, the kind of exhaustion that did not ask permission.

"I am going to rest for a bit," I told Liona after we ate.

She looked at me. "Are you okay? You look a bit pale."

"Just tired," I said.

I went into the room, lay down, and closed my eyes.

****

The mist was there. Thick and grey and cold, sitting heavy in every direction, swallowing everything more than a few feet away. I was back in that place. The same silence, the same weight of it pressing against my ears. I had been here before. I knew this place now.

Then the sound of feet hitting the ground.

She came through the fog the same way she always did. Running hard, her breath coming in ragged bursts, the black cloak moving around her, the baby bundled against her chest and crying that thin desperate cry that cut through everything else.

Usually, I could only stand and watch. My feet never moved. I was always just there, a ghost in someone else’s moment, unable to follow or reach or do anything at all.

But this time something was different.

I felt my legs move.

I ran.

The mist rushed past my face, and the ground was solid under my feet, and I was actually moving, actually gaining, the distance between us closing in a way it never had before.

"Wait!" I shouted.

She stopped.

Just like that. She stopped running and stood completely still with her back to me, her hood still forward over her face, her shoulders rising and falling with her breathing. She did not turn around. But she tilted her head slightly to the side. Just enough. Like she had heard me. Like she was acknowledging that I was there.

My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my throat.

I moved toward her. Reached out. My fingers found the rough fabric of her cloak, the texture of it real and present under my hand in a way that nothing in a dream should feel. I was so close. One pull. Just one, and I would see her face, and I would finally understand what any of this meant.

My fingers tightened on the hood.

Then something hit my shoulder.

My eyes snapped open.

I was sitting upright in the bed with my chest heaving and my hands still reaching toward something that was not there anymore. The room was around me again, familiar and solid and completely wrong after where I had just been. A surge of something hot and frustrated moved through me so fast it almost came out as a sound.

I had been so close.

I turned my head.

Liona was standing beside the bed. Her face was frightened in a way she was not trying to hide.

"Why did you do that?" I said. My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "Why did you wake me up?"

"Azura, you were screaming," she whispered. Her voice was not steady. "I thought something was wrong. You kept shouting for someone to wait."

"It was not a nightmare," I said. The frustration was sitting right behind my eyes now, hot and stinging. "I was almost there. I almost saw her face. I was right there and you..."

"Azura." Her voice cut through everything. Sharp and immediate, the specific tone she used when something was actually urgent. "Shut up and look."

I stopped.

I followed her eyes down.

My pendant.

It was glowing through my shirt. Not the soft warm pulse I had felt before. This was bright. Insistent. A pulsing light bleeds through the fabric in steady beats like something alive inside it.

I reached up with fingers that were not quite steady and pulled it out.

The heat hit my palm immediately. Almost too much. I held on anyway and looked at what was inside the glass.

The last time I had seen a scale inside the pendant it had been in the vision in the Wraithfen. When the fog woman had pointed at it. When the dream had shown it to me for the first time.

But that had been a dream.

I was not asleep now.

I stared at what was sitting inside the pendant. Where there had been only a dark, indistinct shape before, there was now something clear, present, and impossible.

A scale.

Jagged at the edges and deep crimson, catching the light in a way that did not come from anywhere in this room, shimmering with something that had no name I knew and no origin I could explain.

I stared at it.

My heart stopped completely. I could finally see it, and not in dreams.