And Dar stood waiting for them.
Elara crouched low, not making a sound.
Four Hunters stepped into the clearing, their movements sure and quiet, the firelight gleaming faintly off their dark cloaks. They spread out, closing in around Dar like wolves circling prey.
He didn’t move, didn’t even reach for his weapon. He simply waited, hands open, posture easy, as though their unexpected presence meant naught to him.
Their voices came low at first, too soft for her to make out the words. She caught fragments—alone, tracks, south road—then one of the men gave a short, humorless laugh.
Dar said something in reply, and whatever it was, it earned a round of chuckles. The sharpness in the air began to dull.
Elara strained to listen, catching more as their voices rose slightly.
“… wanderer, are you?” one asked.
“Unless you’ve a better name for a man with tired boots.”
His tone was mild, almost amused.
Another Hunter snorted. “Foolish place to stop. You’re not the only one on the road tonight.”
Dar’s brow lifted. “Aye? Trouble ahead?”
The Hunter shrugged, resting a hand on the hilt of his blade. “Not for us. We’ve business farther on. Orders from the king.”
Elara’s stomach knotted. She barely breathed.
The man beside him spat into the dirt. “Rathmor, by dawn. Healers there, too many for their own good. The king’s patience wears thin.”
The tall one grinned, showing teeth. “We’ll have them sorted soon enough.”
Laughter followed, low, cruel, and careless. It grated against the quiet night.
Elara’s hands clenched in her cloak. Her pulse thudded in her throat as she watched Dar, waiting for some sign, some mistake that might give him away. But he only laughed with them, shaking his head as though at some shared jest.
“You’ll not find me near Rathmor then,” he said easily. “I’ve no wish to cross paths with your kind of work.”
“That’s wisdom, wanderer,” one of them said, swinging into his saddle. “Mind your business and you’ll keep breathing.”
They rode out a moment later, the sound of hooves muffled by moss, their laughter fading into the trees until only the crackle of the dying fire remained.
Dar stood watching the woods.
Elara shifted slightly in her hiding place, meaning to rise—and froze.
A voice rang through her head. This ruse better work or there will be hell to pay.
The words struck so clear and sudden that she almost gasped. They hadn’t been spoken aloud. No echo, no whisper through the trees, just the clean, hard edge of sound that didn’t belong in her mind.
Her pulse thudded in her throat. The night pressed close, alive with silence, yet the words lingered, thick with menace and threaded with impatience. She couldn’t tell if it came from the Hunters who had just ridden off or something else entirely.
Another premonition? A warning?
She swallowed hard, glancing toward the fire. Dar still stood there, motionless, the wind tugging faintly at his cloak. He gave no sign that he’d heard anything, no sense of unease.
Elara pressed a trembling hand to her chest, trying to steady the rush of her heart. The Hunters’ laughter still echoed faintly in her memory, harsh and misplaced in the stillness of the woods.
She didn’t know what it was she had heard. She only knew that she had heard something she sensed. Something she wasn’t meant to know, and it had the feel of truth to it, wrapped in danger.