Mira Softpaw's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Mira slipped back into camp before dawn. The fire had burned down to coals. She knelt by the ring of stones and fed it kindling, hands steady on the outside, shaking somewhere under her ribs. Two cots sat on either side of the flames. Kira's looked untouched, blanket folded back as if she'd just risen. Mira told herself that meant nothing. She built the fire up until it cracked and threw light across the clearing, and she practiced her face in the warmth. Up the slope, behind the frost-laced rail of the old watchtower, Kira lowered a small spyglass. She had seen Mira leave. She had seen her come back. She did not come down right away. She watched the way Mira's shoulders sat — too square, too careful — and she watched the hand that kept drifting to the inside of her coat. Kira's mouth thinned. She tucked the glass away and started down the ladder without sound. Mira heard the boots and turned with a small, ready smile. "Couldn't sleep," she said. "Thought I'd get the fire going." Kira crouched across from her. The flames moved between them. For a long moment she only looked at Mira, plain and quiet, the way a person looks at a lock they've already half opened. Then she said, "You were gone four hours." Not a question. Mira's smile held, but her breath caught once. The lie she had rehearsed sat behind her teeth, useless. Kira reached across and laid a gloved hand on Mira's wrist — gentle, not stopping her, just there. "Whatever it is," she said, "you don't have to carry it clean." She didn't ask for the contract. She didn't ask for the name. She only waited. Mira did not answer. But she did not pull her hand back either, and the silence between them stopped being a wall and became something thinner — a door Kira had already set her palm against. The secret was still hers. It was no longer only hers to decide.