HELLO, DARLINGS.

They all needed tending to. Truthfully, we all did.

Lae'zel's arm had been broken badly enough that even she struggled to conceal the pain. Karlach had borne the worst of the fighting as usual, her body battered and bruised to an extent that frightened me more than I cared to admit. Gale looked as though he had not slept in days, thankfully he had only suffered superficial injuries. Wyll was lightly wounded and stubborn as ever. Shadowheart exhausted. Halsin wore the particular expression healers often do when they are running on determination alone.

To this day, I am not entirely certain how we survived.

I remember looking around our miserable little makeshift camp and feeling a strange, detached gratitude simply because everyone was still breathing.

It felt miraculous enough.

So I told them to care for themselves first.

I was injured, certainly, but not as badly as the others. At least, that was what I claimed.

Whether anyone believed me is another matter entirely.

Shadowheart and Halsin worked together to do what they could. Wyll and Gale fetched water, tore cloth into bandages, emptied the last of our dwindling potion supply, and assisted wherever extra hands were needed. Between them they managed to stabilize Lae'zel and Karlach and patched wounds well enough that we would survive the night.

At the time, survival until morning felt like a sufficiently ambitious goal.

When they put me down by the fire, I practically collapsed onto my bedroll with a sigh.

After all those months on the road, it no longer smelled like strangers. This realization remains oddly vivid in my memory.

There had been a time when every blanket, every bartered tent, every bedroll had carried traces of other people—sweat, smoke, damp earth, old leather and unfamiliar dreams, fears and hopes. Yet somewhere along the way this old bedroll had become mine. The blanket smelled faintly of woodsmoke and soap.

Small things. The sort of things one notices when they are exhausted enough to mistake them for treasures.

The fire crackled softly nearby.

Lae'zel, Karlach, and Gale had been settled farther away behind hastily erected tent flaps to afford them a measure of privacy. Under other circumstances I might have accepted the same arrangement.

Instead, I insisted on remaining beside the fire.

I wanted the warmth. Or perhaps I simply wanted the company.

Looking back, I am not sure which.

The fever had already begun settling into my bones.

I remember shivering so violently my teeth hurt while sweat soaked my clothes and blankets. Every inch of me seemed caught between extremes. Too hot. Too cold. Burning. Freezing.

The wounds in my leg throbbed relentlessly. Sleep came only in fragments. I drifted between consciousness and fever dreams, between reality and whatever strange places the mind wanders when the body is struggling to mend itself.

Most of it is blurred now. Sensations more than memories.

The weight of blankets.

The smell of smoke.

The distant murmur of hushed voices.

The crackle of burning wood.

And through all of it, Halsin.

I remember his voice before I remember seeing him. Deep and steady and impossibly calm.

He was speaking Elvish. I noticed that even through the haze of fever.

There was something different about the way he spoke the language when he thought nobody was truly listening. Softer somehow. Older. Like water moving over smooth stone. The cadence wrapped around me more than the words themselves, becoming something soothing and familiar even when I could not entirely follow what he was saying.

Perhaps he was speaking to me.

Perhaps he was praying.

I didn't ask. I only remember finding comfort in the sound.

Then his hand.

Gods.

Even now, after everything, that memory remains achingly clear.

Halsin's hands are enormous. Capable of splitting wood, shaping stone, shifting into claws large enough to tear through armor.

Yet I had never felt gentleness like his. A cool cloth brushed across my forehead. His fingers moved through damp strands of hair, carefully pushing them away from my face. The blankets shifted as he tucked them closer around my shoulders.

Every touch was deliberate, as though I were something precious.

As though he had all the time in the world.

I drifted in and out of sleep while he remained beside me.

Each time I surfaced from fever dreams, I found him there again.

Speaking softly.

Adjusting the blankets.

Replacing the cloth.

Checking my temperature.

Watching.

Waiting.

And though I could scarcely keep my eyes open, though pain and fever and exhaustion dragged me under again and again, I remember the certainty that settled somewhere deep within me.

I was safe.

Not because the danger had passed.

Not because my wounds were healing.

But because Halsin was there.