Chapter 36 — The Line

They stumbled back, faces split with a question I had no right to answer. Then one lunged for his spear. Instinct moved before thought.

"No," I said, not to him but to myself. Don't let Merlin do this.

Merlin snapped at the man anyway, teeth bared, but I shoved him away. He balked, heart pounding, eyes full of something like accusation and pleading. He had saved me more times than I could count. I would not let him cross this line.

The survivor came at me with a hiss. I braced, feet finding purchase the way my body always had. The club met his collarbone and his face in two fast, terrible strikes. He crumpled. He did not move again.

The second reached for a fallen blade. I met him with the sword at my hip—ugly, unpracticed—but the club still felt truer. I hit. Again. The world narrowed to blows and breath and the shocked metallic taste of adrenaline. He toppled sideways and stayed down.

Silence fell like a slab. The forest seemed to hold its breath. Elira swore once and sat down hard, forehead in her hands. Merlin stood over the bodies, panting, every hair raised, but he did not move to bite or shred. He waited for me to tell him what to be.

I knelt, hands unsteady. I didn't check for theatrics. I listened for breath. There was none. My hands shook. The club rolled away, thunking in the grass like a verdict.

I had never killed before. Not properly. Not like this. Not someone who had a name, a laugh, a stupid grin and a coin-bent tooth. I had never wanted to. I had killed things that ate sheep. I had pushed men off balance and watched them fall. But this was different. This was final.

Guilt was immediate and hot. So was a cold clarity: if I hadn't moved, Merlin would have been torn apart. If I hadn't struck, Elira might have bled out beside me. Someone would have come for us within hours. Mercy wasn't a clean thing out here. Survival was.

Elira's hand found my shoulder. Her voice was small. "You did what you had to." She said it as fact, not solace.

I couldn't let her patch me with words. I pushed to my knees and vomited into the grass instead. The world tilted sick and raw. Merlin nosed my shoulder until I stopped, then licked my chin like a child trying to wipe away a bruise. I let him.

When the bile stopped, the rational part of my mind began to list consequences. Scouts missing. Stories told. The Caller informed. The net tightening. We had blood between us and the road now, and blood stains follow a scent.

I wrapped my hands around the sword's cloth and, without thinking about what I was doing, drove the blade point-first into the ground. Not to hide anything. Not to perform a ritual. Just to anchor myself to some fixed thing.

Elira scavenged a blanket and made us sit away from the bodies. She said little. She moved through practical steps without telling me—binding wounds, stoking a small fire. Her eyes met mine once. Not pity. Assessment. We were not done.

Merlin lay down, muzzle on his paws, and finally let out a long, shuddering sigh. I sat cross-legged opposite him, blood on my hands, and felt the line shift under my feet. Nothing would make it un-made. The world would remember this in ways I could not yet see.

I cleaned my hands as best I could in the stream and wrapped a strip of cloth tight around my ribs. Pain would be there in the morning. Worse was already there: the knowledge that I could do what needed doing.

I had crossed a line for Merlin's sake. I would carry that crossing with me. The Caller would learn of it. Men with names would come for us. That, at least, I could predict.

I looked up at the violet sky, and the stars seemed colder. The night had taken something from me. I did not know yet whether I had been made harder or hollowed out.

Either way, we were still alive. And the path forward had narrowed to the width of a blade.

— Fifteenth day, night, crossing the line —