Charlotte sat on the ground near the fire pit with her legs folded comfortably beneath her, slowly running her fingers through her now-dried curls as if she had all the time in the world. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The firelight caught the dark strands and gave them a soft reddish glow whenever she moved, and though the hollow chamber was still rough, cold, and dim, Charlotte behaved as though she had claimed it as a private room rather than a temporary shelter in one of the most dangerous zones of Nalim.

She tilted her head from side to side, working through the thicker portions of her hair with deliberate care before humming in satisfaction at how much easier it felt now that the dampness had been drawn out.

Then, without looking at Liam at first, she said, "You know, I’m actually surprised. I thought you were going to burn my hair off by accident, but you handled it like some professional hairdresser hiding inside a gloomy little assassin."

Across from her, Liam sat on the ground with his back resting against the cold stone wall of the chamber. He had lowered himself there after realizing that remaining standing was unnecessary and that his body still needed to conserve strength, though he had not dismissed the dagger in his hand immediately.

Now the weapon rested loosely across one knee, his fingers still wrapped around the handle as his eyes remained fixed on Charlotte. He said nothing in response to her comment. He simply watched her care for her hair with the same unreadable expression he usually carried, though there was a faint tiredness in his gaze now that had not been there before.

The fire between them crackled softly, its light moving over the bruises and faint scars along his bare upper body while shadows from the chamber walls shifted around them.

Charlotte glanced at him after a while, noticed the silence, and smiled as though his lack of response was exactly what she expected.

"Nothing? Really? Not even a dry little comment about how you weren’t trying to impress me?" she asked, smoothing both hands over the sides of her curls before letting them fall around her shoulders. "You know, sometimes I wonder if you understand how difficult it is to tease someone who refuses to participate properly."

Liam still did not answer. His gaze remained steady, not because he was ignoring her entirely, but because his mind was still trying to settle into the present.

The chamber was familiar, the fire was real, Charlotte was clearly alive, and his body, though still damaged, was no longer in the state he remembered before losing consciousness.

Those facts should have been enough to make him relax more than he had, yet too many missing pieces still bothered him. The last day and more had been swallowed by blankness and broken fragments, and Liam disliked gaps in his own memory more than he disliked pain.

Charlotte eventually finished working through her hair and released a long, satisfied sigh. She leaned back on her arms, stretching slightly as her shoulders eased, then turned her full attention toward Liam.

Her golden eyes moved over him with absolutely no shame, slowly taking in the bruises across his chest, the healing cuts along his arms, the faint burn marks along his left side, and the lean, hardened build that had been shaped by years of training, fighting, and surviving things no student should have had to endure.

Her lips curved, and then she bit the lower one in a way so obvious it could not be mistaken for anything accidental.

"You know," Charlotte said, her tone returning to its usual velvety ease, "even though I’ve had this view almost entirely to myself for basically two days, I think I deserve some serious praise for my self-control. I had a wounded, shirtless Liam Hunter lying in front of me, completely unconscious and helpless, and I behaved like a proper lady the entire time. Well, mostly. I used my eyes and imagination, obviously, but those don’t count as crimes."

She rested one hand dramatically against her chest, looking far too proud of herself. "Honestly, you should be grateful. Your dignity survived because I am generous, disciplined, and clearly much more noble than people give me credit for."

Liam ignored almost everything that came out of her mouth. His expression did not shift at her teasing, nor did his eyes follow the suggestive way she leaned back. Instead, only one part of her statement lodged itself in his mind.

Almost two days.

His gaze sharpened slightly.

"I was out for the whole of day four and part of day five?" he muttered.

Charlotte paused, her playful expression thinning just a little as she looked at him properly. For the first time since crawling back into the chamber, something close to seriousness settled over her features, though it did not completely erase the natural ease she carried.

She studied him for a moment, perhaps realizing that he had locked onto the one detail she had let slip, then exhaled quietly.

"Yes," she answered. "You were out for all of day four and most of day five. The sun is already setting outside now, in case you’re wondering."

Liam remained silent, and Charlotte seemed to understand that he would ask more questions if she did not explain everything herself.

She shifted slightly, drawing one knee up and resting an arm over it while her gaze moved briefly toward the fire.

"After you told me to run, I did exactly that, because unlike you, I actually enjoy being alive," she began. "But those Advanced Horrors didn’t exactly let me leave peacefully. Smoke held them for a while, but then he vanished. I’m assuming that was your doing, because right after that, those ugly things decided I looked much easier to tear apart than whatever nightmare you were busy fighting."

Liam’s eyes lowered slightly at that, but he did not interrupt.

Charlotte continued, her tone calm, though there was something guarded in the way she spoke now.

"I had to fight them. Properly. I used a part of my magic I really didn’t want to use during this assessment, and before you ask, no, I’m not explaining that part right now. Just know it was annoying, costly, and I hated every second of it."

She flexed her fingers lightly as if remembering the strain.

"I managed to deal with them, but I got wounded badly enough that I had to use one of my potions. After that, I found somewhere to rest for a while because I was not about to drag myself through the eastern forest half-dead just because you had decided to wrestle a Berserker like a lunatic."

Her eyes returned to him.

"When I woke up, I stretched my senses out to check for threats and to see if you were still alive or if the Berserker had finally done what common sense couldn’t. That’s when I saw the explosion in the distance. Huge. Bright. Very dramatic. Honestly, I almost took it as my sign to leave the area entirely and never look back. But then I realized something strange. I couldn’t feel that awful suffocating presence from the Berserker anymore."

Liam’s gaze remained on her, quiet and intent.

Charlotte’s expression tightened faintly.

"I still wanted to run. Don’t get me wrong. Everything in me was telling me to leave before whatever came next found me too. But I headed toward the light anyway, mostly because I thought there was a chance I would find you there." She paused, then added with a faint smirk that did not quite reach her eyes, "And because I apparently make bad decisions when they involve you."

Liam said nothing.

"When I got close, I found the destroyed clearing first," Charlotte continued. "Or what used to be a clearing, I guess. There was nothing left of the Berserker. Nothing. I don’t mean dead body nothing. I mean there was no trace of that thing anywhere. No core. No limbs. No half-regenerated monster waiting to scare me. Just destruction. Then I found you a bit away from it, lying on the ground in the forest like the world’s most stubborn corpse." Her voice lost a bit of its teasing as she looked at the faint marks on his body. "You looked terrible. Worse than terrible. I honestly thought you might already be gone for a second."

Liam’s eyes flickered slightly, though his expression remained mostly unchanged.

"I used my last healing potion on you," Charlotte said. "It wasn’t enough to fix everything, obviously, because you were damaged in a way that made me wonder how you were still breathing at all. But it did enough to keep you from getting worse and helped close some of the injuries. After that, I had to carry you back here."

The chamber grew quiet for a moment apart from the sound of the fire. Liam thought back to those hazy memories of movement through the forest, the unclear sensation of someone’s arms around him, the shifting smell of leaves, sweat, and blood, the occasional jolt of pain whenever his body moved too much. It had been Charlotte. She had been the silhouette. She had carried him.

Charlotte leaned her head back against the stone wall with a tired sigh.

"And let me tell you, that trip was awful. You are surprisingly heavy for someone who looks so lean. I don’t know if it’s muscle, stubbornness, or emotional baggage, but dragging you across that much forest was not fun. The only reason we made it back without too much trouble was because most of the things we ran into were either weak enough for me to handle with a sword and a few clean swings, or smart enough to avoid me after sensing the mess left behind farther east."

She glanced at him with a mild glare, though there was no real anger behind it.

"It took basically the whole of day four and about half of day five to get back here because I couldn’t exactly sprint while carrying you. I had to rest, hide, move around threats, and stop your body from making weird dying noises every so often. Then once I got you inside, I had to make sure the fire stayed going and find something to eat. That’s where the deer came from."

She gestured lazily toward the corpse in the corner.

"Caught it earlier. Haven’t done much with it yet because, as you can probably tell, I was a little busy keeping both of us alive."