Chapter 16

Shaken by Raker killing the gentle elk she’d befriended, Aris returns to the waterfall cave, eats her foraged food, and tries to ignore the smell of roasting meat Raker withholds. At dawn a pixie pesters them; Raker casually snatches and flings it away, then resumes their relentless march through the fertile Prism Pass as Aris broods over her sword and Stellan’s lessons.

At a mountain pool, Aris demands privacy to bathe; Raker’s contemptuous refusal escalates into a bitter exchange about worth and weakness. When Aris lunges to unmask him, Raker crushes her wrist and warns her off, then stalks away, leaving her humiliated but defiant.

That night Aris steals Raker’s soap and slips outside to bathe. A demon in dark armor, veined with obsidian, halts at the water’s edge and orders her to come as a “stolen bride.” Trapped by her fear of deep water, Aris chooses to endure the freezing stream until sunrise, when the demon withdraws. She returns shivering; Raker calls her an idiot, and she secretly replaces the soap, then tries in vain to lure her silver dragon back with a coin.

Days pass in tense silence. Aris forages enough to sustain herself while Raker hunts and ignores her. Hearing steel in the woods, she tracks him and discovers not a hunt but a brutal training session: Raker fells trees, calls his blade back from a throw, and slices falling leaves in midair with impossible precision.

Raker detects Aris’s spying and pins her shirt to a tree with his sword, stopping a hair from her flesh. Gasping, Aris asks him to teach her. He tears the blade free, dismisses her as unworthy, and predicts her death, cementing both his terrifying prowess and her isolation as they continue toward the gods.