Chương 72: Chapter 71 - Andy Part Three

"Fine," Ant said, and the word came out wrong — too tight, too much weight behind one syllable to hold it steady.

"Fine. Let's talk about your prize." He didn't move toward Andy so much as toward the idea of him, Mahkir's ragged breathing still audible behind them where Rowan had already dropped to his knees in the mud.

"He could have died. You understand that? Five HP. Five." He held up a hand, fingers spread, like the number needed a shape to be real.

"That's not a fight. That's a coin flip you didn't tell us we were playing." Andy took a step back. Not far. Just enough to put a little more lake between them.

"Calm down," he said, "before you give yourself a heart attack." No heat in it. If anything the opposite — a man talking to a spooked horse, voice pitched low and even on purpose.

"I would've stopped her before you ever stepped in. Hand was already halfway up." He nodded toward Hexa's absence, the flat unbroken water where six heads had been a minute ago.

"I wanted to see what you'd do. Whether you'd think first or move first." A pause, considering.

"You moved first. Good answer, for what it's worth."

"That's not — " Ant started, and stopped, because there wasn't a clean end to that sentence that didn't sound like something he'd regret saying to a stranger on a lakeshore. The anger didn't leave so much as lose its footing, sliding into plain exhaustion instead. Still there. Just further down, quieter about it.

"Let's go somewhere and talk," Andy said, already turning, already pointing past the willows to a stand of trees dark against the grey sky.

"Properly. Not in front of an audience."

"Don't worry." Rowan didn't look up from Mahkir's side, both hands already working, sleeves shoved past his elbows.

"He'll be fine. Bit of rest, bit of poultice on that flank, he'll be up and complaining before you're back." A low, unimpressed grunt from Mahkir confirmed at least the complaining part. Ant looked at Mahkir a moment longer than the walk required. Ash-dulled fur, one ear notched fresh, ribs rising too fast and too shallow for his liking. Go, Mahkir said through the bond, faint, more breath than words. I'm not dying on a riverbank over a job interview. Go find out what he wants. Ant went.

The path to the trees ran along the shoreline first, mud giving way to packed dirt, the smell of wet reed and lakewater fading slowly into pine and old bark as the ground rose. Andy walked without hurry, hands loose at his sides, the same unbothered rhythm he'd carried since the pier.

"You know," he said, a few strides in, like he was picking up a conversation rather than starting one, "when I bonded with Hexa, her aura was already strong." He said it plainly, no weight thrown behind it.

"I knew she had somewhere to go. Knew it the first hour." A glance sideways, gauging whether Ant was actually listening.

"Aura's only ever potential, though. Not a promise. Training, environment, who you're bonded to — all of that decides what a Kithren actually becomes. Plenty of strong auras end up going nowhere. Plenty of weak ones surprise you."

"Why tell me that."

"Because today I met a Kithren whose aura reads stronger than hers did, at that stage." Andy said it flat, no more weight to it than reporting the weather.

"Considerably stronger." Ant felt the words land somewhere behind his ribs and take a moment to settle. The anger had gone quiet enough now that another feeling had room to surface — not pride exactly. Closer to a held breath he hadn't noticed himself holding, finally let go.

"How can you tell," he asked.

"The aura. What does that actually mean, sensing it?"

"Hard to describe." Andy considered the question properly, unhurried, like it deserved better than a quick answer.

"It's not a number. Not a grading, not something I could write down and hand you. Some Kithren just feel more dangerous than others, standing near them. That's the whole of it. Aura's just the word I've put on the feeling, because it needed one." They reached the trees a few minutes later — a loose ring of old growth, thick-trunked, branches low enough to fold together overhead into a rough kind of roof. A marble bench sat at the center of it, weathered pale, moss creeping up one leg.

It didn't belong out here, not really, too fine for a lakeside stand of trees nobody tended. Andy dropped onto it like he'd sat there a hundred times before. The air underneath smelled of damp bark and old rain, cooler than the open shore, the lake itself reduced to a smell rather than a sound this far back. Ant sat. The branches settled low enough over both of them to block out most of the grey sky. Andy didn't start with the question he'd clearly come here to ask.

He looked out through the gap in the branches at the lake instead, quiet for a moment.

"Your Kithren's strong," he said eventually.

"Won't dispute that twice in one day. But you made a mistake as his partner out there, and I don't think you've clocked it yet." Whatever calm Ant had built up on the walk over started slipping straight back out of him.

"Which mistake."

"You let me choose the time. And the place. Both." Andy said it plainly, no edge to it — flat observation, not an accusation.

"Didn't even ask. I could've said 'fight in an hour, in the forest,' and you'd have agreed to that too, because you didn't know yet what you were agreeing to fight. Pull Hexa out of open water into dry trees an hour from now, and that's a very different match. Take away the one thing she actually needs to be dangerous, and it stops being a fair contest. It just gets easier. For your side." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Ant opened his mouth, found nothing useful sitting in it, and closed it again.

"Level's not the only thing that decides a fight," Andy went on, not unkindly.

"Terrain. Timing. What a Kithren needs around it to actually be what it is. Forget that part, and one day you'll walk him into a fight that looks winnable on paper and isn't anywhere close." Andy folded his hands, elbows on his knees.

"So — I assume not many people know what your Kithren actually is. Though a few of your lot didn't look half as surprised as they should have." He tipped his head, unbothered curiosity rather than suspicion.

"What can you tell me?" Ant thought about how to start, and found there wasn't a version of this that got easier by circling it.

"Not a lot, if I'm honest." He looked at his own hands rather than at Andy.

"I didn't bond with him until I was twenty-two. Before that — nothing. No Kithren would even look at me, let alone try to bond. Found him in a cave, out in the wasteland. Egg, or shell, or whatever you'd call it. I don't know if it was me knocking into it that made him hatch or if the timing was just right. Either way he was in my head before I'd even worked out what was happening."

"No chip," Andy said. Not a question.

"Not then. I could still see his name, somehow — Mahkir. Or what I assumed was his name. Lately I've started wondering if it's actually his species instead." Ant let that sit, watching it land.

"Without a chip, that raises questions nobody wants asked. A friend of mine got one put in, for both of us, eventually. We settled on Flaming Lynx to fill the gap. Held up fine." He exhaled through his nose, something almost like a laugh in it, gone before it finished.

"Until today." Andy didn't answer right away. His gaze had gone somewhere past Ant's shoulder, mouth moving faintly around a word before it found air.

"Mahkir," he said, slow, turning it over like a stone he was checking for a sharp edge.

"Mahkyros." He said the second word quieter, almost to himself, testing how it sat against a memory only he could half-reach.

"Hm."

"Mean something to you?"

"Not yet." Andy shook his head, but the stillness hadn't left his face.

"Half a memory. Might be nothing." He straightened, and whatever had pulled him inward a moment ago let go all at once, his whole posture resetting like a man closing a drawer he wasn't ready to open in front of company.

"Well. Seems if I actually want my answers, I'm out of choices." A dry note crept into it, close to amusement.

"I'm joining you." Ant hadn't expected the relief that came with it. Hadn't expected it to matter this much, either.

"Thank you," Andy added, "for being honest. You could've walked off after the fight and left me standing there. Deal only holds as tight as the man keeping it."

"Wouldn't have been proper." Ant stood, testing the ache settling into his own shoulders now that the adrenaline had finally drained out of them.

"A deal's a deal. End of the day." They walked back through the trees, the smell of pine giving way again to lake water and, further on, woodsmoke — someone had gotten a fire going while they'd been gone. Mahkir was already on his feet by the time they cleared the willows, favoring one side but upright, working through a strip of dried meat Hazel had clearly handed him against Rowan's better judgment. Took your time, Mahkir said, not looking up from the meat. Had a lot to talk about. Better have been worth it.

A pause, the faintest edge of warmth under the complaint. Glad you're not dead, by the way. Would've been annoying, breaking in a new bondmate this late in the season. Ant crouched next to him anyway, checking the wrap Rowan had put across his flank, and Mahkir let him look without complaint, which told him more than any answer would have. You're actually hurt. I'm actually fine. Just letting you fuss because it makes you feel useful. The tail flicked once, unbothered. Don't get used to it.

Kalsar caught Ant's eye first, arms still crossed, one eyebrow doing the asking his mouth didn't bother with. Hazel's look came a half-second behind, sharper, more openly curious. Ant answered both with a single nod.

"Standard rotation," Kalsar said to Andy, without so much as unfolding his arms.

"Same drills as everyone else. I don't care how many heads that Kithren of yours has got."

"Wouldn't expect anything less," Andy said, entirely unbothered.

"Well," Andy said, hands in his pockets, surveying the group like a man taking inventory of a purchase he hadn't fully priced out yet.

"Let's get this show on the road, then, shall we?"

"A downright prophetic turn of events, if you ask me." Ray clapped Andy on the shoulder hard enough to make him rock forward a step, grinning like the whole thing had gone exactly his way.

"Flagged him as a prospect the moment we walked into that tavern. Told you lot, didn't I." Kalsar glanced over at Rowan.

"Not going to correct him?" Rowan just shook his head, not looking up from packing his kit.

"Not today. Let him have this one." Duncan let out a low whistle, looking Andy over with something closer to respect than surprise.

"Man's got a six-headed lake monster for a Kithren and he still wants in with the rest of us. I like him already."

"Brave or stupid," Sam said, shouldering his lance.

"Haven't decided which."

"Bit of both, most days," Andy said, entirely unbothered, and that seemed to settle it. They started back toward town in loose formation, the fire behind them left to burn down on its own, Mahkir limping along at Ant's side with the particular dignity of a creature determined not to look as tired as he felt.

"Now for the hard one," Ray said, falling into step beside Ant, rubbing his hands together like a man warming up for a job he wasn't sure he wanted.

"Rebekah."

"That's supposed to be harder than this?" Ant looked back once at the lake, at the flat grey water where Hexa had surfaced and gone under again, and found he already knew the answer before Ray gave it.

"Different kind of hard," Ray said.

"No idea what passed between you two out there, but Mahkir's got him curious about something, and that was enough. Rebekah won't let you close enough to even try that." The road into town narrowed as the trees thickened again, the smell of woodsmoke and lakewater giving way slowly to dust and hay as the first fences and rooftops came into view ahead.

Ray led them off the main track toward a stretch of open ground at the edge of the settlement — bare, trampled flat by repetition, a single post standing at the far end scarred with the marks of a thousand arrows that had all landed in more or less the same place. Nobody was there. Just the post, the trampled ground, and a stillness that felt less like empty and more like waited-for.

Four shafts hit the ground in front of them at once, so close together they sounded like a single strike, buried to the fletching in a tight line across the path an arm's length from Ant's boots. No whistle of air first. No warning at all. Just the arrows, standing there like they'd always been part of the ground, and then the silence that followed them, thick enough that even Duncan didn't fill it. Every head in the group turned at once toward the treeline, where nothing moved and nothing needed to.

They'd found Rebekah.