Page 42 of Moonless

“Rauk.”

My mouth is open for the next word. I close it.

“Don’t growl at me, Fluffybas—” She stops with her mouth still open on it. “Wait. Rauk? Is that your—” She lets go of the bowl to throw her hand up. “So you’ve had a name this whole time?”

I keep my hand under the bowl. She looks at my mouth, waiting for the rest, and there isn’t any.

She takes the bowl back onto her knees. “Rauk.”

I stay beside her pallet with my empty hand out.

Every vigil I finish with Lumi and wait the length of mine with my hands beside my knees. Nobody’s ever said it there. She’s just said it twice over a bowl of roots, watching me.

“Hm. I like Fluffy Bastard better.” She takes a mouthful and chews it at me.

She doesn’t.

I lower my hand. “Enough.”

I go back to the hearth and sit. My supper’s beside my foot, and I leave it there.

She looks at the fire instead of me. I look at it too. The pot’s stopped steaming, and a piece of wood drops through the coals, and the whole time my ears stay turned toward her pallet.

She puts the spoon down. “Kestria.”

Her eyes stay on the fire, and I look at her face anyway. She isn’t really watching it, though—it’s only where her eyes are pointed while the rest of her is off somewhere else.

Nobody’s said her name in this den either, not since the night I carried her in with the bolt still in her shoulder. That’s my own face she’s got turned to the fire.

Kestria.

She looks up and finds me still looking, and I don’t look away. She swallows and picks the spoon back up. “Try not to growl it.”

The corner of my mouth lifts. I pick up my supper and take a mouthful, and she goes back to hers.

She eats three of the roots and leaves the fourth.

She’d have eaten the fourth if I’d given her two.

When she shifts to get comfortable, I look at her shoulder again. She meets my eyes and holds the empty spoon up between us.

“Don’t.”

I stay on my stone.

Later, I hear the small scrape beside her pallet. She’s turned toward the wall with the stone flake in her right hand, cutting another mark beside the others that are already there.

I wait at the hearth until she’s finished. When she lies down on her right side, I put another piece of wood on the fire and leave her cup within reach.

My cloak covers her to the shoulder. She draws the worn edge beneath her chin, then opens her eyes when I pass on my way to my own furs.

“Goodnight, Rauk.”

I stop beside the hearth.

Kestria’s already closing her eyes. I could cross the room while she does and lie down with my back to the fire.

“Goodnight.”