"He clearly doesn’t want us to know anything about him."

Ash glanced at her.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Do not play dumb with me." Lissa’s voice was flat and without apology, and was simply stating something that was true. "We all know that the story about the memory loss is a lie. Did you really think we would believe a crappy story like that?"

Ash glanced at Rinna, then at Bowen sitting on the carriage seat.

None of them were disagreeing with her.

The silence that followed had a particular weight to it. Nobody rushed to fill it. Nobody needed to. Rinna’s expression meant that she believed him to be a good person, but the lie about the memory loss itself had not held up under scrutiny and she hadn’t pretended it had.

She had known it was a lie and had simply chosen not to press the matter, and that was its own kind of grace. As for Bowen, his expression only spoke of the fact that he saw many stories with holes in them and knew how to react to them. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

He had the look of a man who had decided long ago that the world would do what it wanted, and the most useful thing a person could do was notice.

"But whoever you are or whatever you are, listen to me." Lissa reached for her sword and drew it out to point the sharp blade at him not as a genuine threat, but as emphasis. Her gaze remained unwavering. "If you try to harm either me or my sister in any way, I will cut that pretty head of yours and remove it from your body. Do I make myself clear?"

Ash looked at the blade.

Then he looked at her face.

’Is she threatening me or complimenting me?’ He understood she meant both, but he was still not sure which one was actually the point.

The sword did not waver. She held it comfortably - the kind of comfort that only came from genuine familiarity. If the threat was meant to unsettle him it did not entirely succeed in that. But it was still a threat, and he recognized it as one.

However, it was meaningless anyway.

"I cannot tell you who I am," he admitted, maintaining the even tone he had used ever since the carriage started moving. "But I can assure you with absolute honesty that I am not here to harm either of you."

He stopped for a beat.

Then he bowed his head.

Barely - just enough to convey sincerity.

"I apologize for lying to you."

Silence filled the area.

It was a specific kind of silence - one that comes not from an absence of things to say but from the presence of something that had just been said. They stood where they were. The trees around them were still. Somewhere behind them the horse waited without complaint.

Then Rinna spoke - in her warm tone of voice that Ash liked.

"Oh - please, stop." She waved one hand with obvious nonchalance. "I already know that you are not a dangerous person. I could feel it. Besides, it is perfectly okay to have secrets you do not share with everyone. That is just how people are."

She smiled.

"So please stop bowing."

Ash raised his head and looked at her.

"Thank you for your understanding," he said. The smile lingered on the spot where it was born. There was something in the way she said things that gave them a kind of completeness.

She did not speak to convince anyone of anything. She spoke because the thing was simply true.

"Anyway." Lissa’s voice sounded decisive as ever. She put her sword back into the sheath. "Let us collect the loot and get moving."

She headed for the nearest kill site without waiting to see if she’d be followed. Rinna, too, headed to another kill site.

Ash remained in place and watched them.

"What are you waiting for?" Lissa turned her head without slowing down to deliver the glance of indifference right at him. "Help us collect."

"Oh - right."

He joined them to pick the loot.

He moved from one kill site to another, collecting the loot that the pack had left behind - the magic stones, wolf fangs.

Lissa was working fast and silently. Rinna was doing the same with some pauses to communicate with Bowen, who leaned from the driver’s seat to watch.

The ground was scattered with what the fight had left behind. The stones caught the light in small and colorless ways. It was methodical work, and it suited the quiet that had settled after everything that had been said.

He gathered the loot in silence and thought about the girl commanding him to do things.

He was older than Lissa by several years in his actual life. However, in this body that was not his actual one, he was just fifteen and Lissa was probably around his age, give or take a year.

The strangeness of that was not something he had stopped noticing. It lived somewhere underneath the surface of every ordinary interaction - the fact that he was standing in an age he had already lived through once, wearing a face and a size that were not the ones he had earned.

Being directed by someone who looked the same age as him and almost certainly was, and who had no way of knowing that the person she was directing had years on her she could not see. He did not resent her for it. She simply did not know.

This body was small, young, and apparently handsome, and that was the version of him that Lissa was looking at.

After some time, they collected everything they could find. The load was packed. They returned to the carriage. Bowen clicked his tongue, flicked the rope, and the horse pulled the carriage again.

The carriage began moving.

Somewhere up front Miren was waiting for them, between the trees, in the direction the road was pointing.