Chapter 105: The Hidden Trail to the Safe House

"Kaela?"

Kōya shifted his grip beneath her knees as the weight in his arms stirred.

Pine needles and damp leaf mold crunched under his boots. Against his ribs, the lacquered wood of Stormfront’s scabbard rolled half an inch as Kaela’s fingers tightened around the rayskin hilt, her chin scraping the dried blood on the shoulder of his coat.

For six paces down the dark deer trail, her movement could have been sleep shifting through her limbs. Then her silver eyelashes fluttered open.

She stared past his collarbone into the black wall of spruce trunks.

"Master? Can you hear me?"

Her dry lips parted. A raspy breath rattled in her windpipe and died without a sound.

Kōya shortened his stride, easing the bounce out of his step to spare his bruised ribs and her battered spine. "Take your time. We’re clear of the inn."

Kaela turned her head a fraction of an inch. Her silver ears twitched, pivoting toward the wind coming off the ridge, and her unfocused stare sharpened as she tracked the configuration of twisted roots and granite outcrops to their left. Her breathing quickened into short, shallow pulls through her nose.

"Kōya?" Lyra stepped up beside his left elbow, holding her wooden wand low so its dim white sphere illuminated only the dirt around their boots. "Is she awake?"

"I think so."

Kaela shifted again. Lifting her right hand from Stormfront’s crossguard, she hooked her stiff, calloused fingers into the torn wool lapel of Kōya’s coat.

"Easy, Master. I’m right here."

She yanked downward on the cloth, once, then twice, using the dead weight of her arm to drag against his forward momentum.

Kōya planted his boots and halted on the narrow trail.

Kaela turned her chin toward a cramped cleft between two ancient yew trees where the brambles grew waist-high, then lifted her face to his jaw.

"That way?"

She answered with silence. Her knuckles whitened as she tugged his lapel toward the brush.

Kōya measured the dark opening. Thick briars and low, deadfall branches choked the gap, offering zero visibility beyond ten paces and no clear avenue of retreat if Zarth’s hounds caught their scent. "We don’t know what’s back there."

Kaela’s fingernails dug through the wool into his chest muscle.

Her pale, scarred face filled his vision. A raw urgency burned behind the dull film over her eyes, trapped behind a throat that refused to form syllables.

"Do you recognize this part of the woods?" Lyra asked, stepping closer to the edge of the briars.

Kaela’s eyes pivoted toward the younger girl. Her lower lip quivered, and she turned back into the dark tangle of yew branches.

Lyra raised her wand an inch, tracing the blackness between the trunks. "Is someone waiting in there?"

Kaela gave a tiny, stiff shake of her head.

Over Kaela’s shoulder, Kōya faced Lyra. "She isn’t warning us about an ambush."

"Then what is she looking for?"

"I don’t know." Kōya adjusted Kaela’s slipping weight against his chest, the heat of her bruised skin radiating through his coat, the tremor in her thighs traveling up his forearms. "We need to find dry cover and camp first. You’ve barely recovered enough strength to lift your head, Master. Forcing our way through blind undergrowth in the dark won’t help you heal."

Kaela yanked harder at his coat.

Kōya held her fast against his sternum. "Please. Rest for an hour."

Her fingers slipped off the blood-stiffened wool. For two heartbeats she lay limp against his chest, her cheek pressed to his collarbone, before she drove her bruised forearm against his sternum and twisted her hips to throw herself out of his hold.

"Master, wait—"

Her thrashing swung Stormfront’s iron chape straight toward an oak trunk. Kōya pivoted his hips to take the brunt of the scrape across his own knuckles, clamping his arms tighter around her waist as she kicked weakly at the air.

"Kaela!" Lyra rushed in, catching the beastwoman’s elbow before she could roll out of Kōya’s cradle onto the exposed roots. "Stop, you’re going to tear your wounds open!"

Kaela refused to still, shoving at Kōya’s ribs with her free palm and craning her neck toward the leaf litter below.

He had the leverage to pin her against his chest and keep walking down the main trail. The panicked flatten of her ears—the exact posture she had taken when the auction handlers prodded her toward the stage—bent his knees instead. He lowered her gently until her ragged boots touched the earth.

Her legs folded on contact.

Kōya caught her under both arms before her knees hit the stones. "Careful."

Kaela sagged against his hip, gasping for air that tasted of pine pitch and cold moss, while her left hand kept Stormfront’s scabbard clamped tight against her thigh. She stared at the narrow gap between the yew trees and dragged her right foot six inches forward.

Her ankle rolled on a loose stone. She caught herself on Kōya’s forearm, teeth gritted, and tried to drag her left leg up to meet it.

Sweat broke out along her hairline. "Master, you don’t have to prove anything to me."

Kaela froze with her boot half-lifted. Dropping her chin, she fixed her eyes on the Lightning Sword pinned to her hip, then reached across to pinch the cuff of Kōya’s torn sleeve between two trembling fingers.

She raised her arm and pointed a shaking finger into the choked gap between the yews.

Kōya faced the dark thicket. Tangled blackberry canes and pine needles filled the gap. "Is there a shelter back there?"

Kaela’s dry lips parted, throat working around a dry click of air, before she pointed a second time.

Lyra dropped to a crouch in the dirt beside Kaela’s knee, dimming the light sphere on her wand so it wouldn’t glare in the beastwoman’s eyes. "Kaela, listen to me. We aren’t leaving you behind, and we aren’t ignoring you. If there’s somewhere down that trail you need to go, we will take you there."

Kaela’s eyes dropped to her.

"But you have to let us carry your weight," Lyra said, keeping her voice low and even. "Your legs aren’t ready to hold you."

Kaela’s silver eyes dropped to the dirt between her boots. Her thumb hooked tighter over Stormfront’s guard.

Kōya studied the white-knuckled grip she kept on Yuna’s old blade, then faced the overgrown cleft in the timber. Since the moment the auctioneer’s hammer fell, she had only fought him on two things: keeping that sword against her heart, and turning down this hidden track.

Whether the trail led to an old stash house or a grave, it belonged to her.

Kōya dropped to one knee beside her hip. "All right, Master."

Kaela lifted her chin.

"You navigate," Kōya said. "I’ll be the legs."

He slid his left arm behind her shoulder blades and his right under her knees, lifting her smoothly off the roots. Her right hand came back up to rest against his lapel, her fingers curling lightly into the fabric without pulling.

"Which way?" he asked.

She pointed straight between the yew trunks. Kōya ducked his head under a low bough and carried her into the brush.

Thorny canes and dead pine twigs clawed at Kōya’s sleeves as the deer trace narrowed to a foot-wide groove in the loamy earth. Knotted surface roots crisscrossed the slope under a carpet of rotting leaves, forcing him to test his footing with every heel-strike so he wouldn’t pitch forward with Kaela in his arms.

Whenever the deadfall thickened, Lyra slipped two paces ahead, using her free hand and the shaft of her wand to hold back whipping cedar boughs until Kōya and Kaela cleared the gap.

"Nobody has cut this brush back in months," Lyra murmured, stepping over a rotting birch trunk slick with shelf fungus.

"Then why does she know the turns in the dark?"

Lyra turned her head toward the silver-haired woman resting against Kōya’s chest. "Maybe she walked it before the slavers took her."

Kōya’s attention dropped to his master. Kaela’s eyes remained wide and fixed on the dark tree trunks ahead, tracking every forked oak and mossy boulder that passed through the pale halo of Lyra’s light spell. Questions pressed against the back of his teeth—whether this trail had belonged to her old dojo, whether her dead students had trained in these hills, whether Yuna had ever walked this ridge—and he swallowed every one of them down. She was awake and pointing the way; demanding history could wait until she had a roof over her head.

Five minutes deeper into the hollow, Kaela lifted two fingers from his coat.

Kōya halted on the slope.

She pointed toward a dense stand of silver birch on their right.

"Through the birches?"

She gave a tiny shake of her head, extending her index finger ten yards past the white bark toward a dip in the ravine.

Kōya shifted her weight higher against his collarbone and angled down the grade.

Through the rustle of wind in the high needles came a second, steadier sound: cold water tumbling over gravel.

Lyra paused at the lip of the bank, tilting her ear toward the dark hollow. "There’s a creek at the bottom."

Kaela’s chin lifted toward the rushing sound. The rigid iron tension in her shoulders eased by a fraction against Kōya’s arm.

"Is the stream what you’re looking for?" he asked quietly.

She gave a single, distinct nod.

Kōya picked his way down the steep earth bank until the brush parted around a fifteen-foot mountain brook. Clear, snow-fed water foamed white over smooth granite cobbles, smelling sharply of cold stone and bruised watercress.

Lyra scrambled down the gravel shelf first, tapping a broad, flat slab of slate near the waterline with her boot toe to make sure it wouldn’t rock. "Cross here. The stones are level."

Kōya stepped down onto the slate. Ice-cold spray splashed across his ankles and soaked through the seams of his leather boots as he moved from boulder to boulder, lifting Kaela high against his chest so her trailing hem stayed clear of the current.

The moment his boots crunched onto the dry shingle of the far bank, Kaela raised her hand and pointed upstream toward the steeper rise of the mountain.

The dark, rock-strewn gorge rose ahead. "Higher up?"

She nodded once.