Ethan Skydor's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The pounding started before dawn. Three heavy strikes against wood, then a pause, then three more. Ethan sat up from the chair where he'd spent the night watching the woman breathe. Her chest still rose and fell, shallow but steady. The blood had stopped spreading across the bandages he'd wrapped around her side. The knocking came again, louder this time. Ethan crossed to the door and stopped with his hand on the latch. Through the narrow window, he could see Ivor's broad silhouette against the gray morning light. A bird perched on the roof beam above — orange and blue feathers bright against the weathered wood, a message cylinder strapped to its leg. Ivor must have seen the blood on the doorstep. Opening the door meant answering questions Ethan didn't have answers to. But leaving his captain standing outside while a bleeding stranger lay in his bed wasn't an option either. He opened the door. Ivor's eyes went past him immediately, fixing on the woman in the bed. The dagger lay on the table beside her, its engravings shifting in the early light — words forming and dissolving like smoke. One phrase held longer than the rest: a compass rose with cardinal points, and beneath it, script that read "Blood do defend." Ivor's jaw tightened. He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, closing the door behind him with deliberate care. "I need to know who sent the bird," Ivor said. His voice was quiet, controlled in a way that made Ethan's chest tighten. "And I need to know if you're the one who called them here." Ethan looked at the dagger, at the woman, at the captain who'd trusted him enough to come alone at dawn. He could lie. He could close off, pull back, give Ivor a reason to walk away and take this problem with him. But the woman had collapsed on his doorstep with his name in her hand, and someone had sent that bird to find Ivor at exactly the right time. Whatever was happening, it had already pulled him in. "I don't know who she is," Ethan said. The words felt like stepping off solid ground. "But she came here for me. And I'm not sending her away." Ivor studied him for a long moment, then nodded once. The tension in his shoulders eased just slightly — not trust, not yet, but the beginning of it. Something had shifted. Ethan had chosen to stay in the room instead of closing the door, and Ivor had chosen to believe him. It wasn't much. But it was more than Ethan had let anyone have in a long time.