Kyra waited three weeks before she tried to run.
Not because she had stopped wanting to.
Wanting was easy. Wanting had lived in her from the first night she woke under mountain hides with smoke in her hair and the smell of strange skins around her. Wanting had sat beside her while she carried water, mended cloaks, learned rough words from Morna, and pretended not to tremble when Savar came too close.
But wanting did not open paths.
For three weeks, she watched.
The camp was not the mad den she had imagined below. That almost made it worse. Monsters should have been simple. Pale Roots had children, old women, rules over food, arguments over tools, men who laughed with full mouths, girls who braided one another's hair, boys who trained until they vomited and then tried to stand again before anyone noticed.
They were people.
That did not make them safe.
Kyra had grown up hearing what mountain clans did to lowlanders. In the last years, everyone had heard more. Villages emptied. Lords vanished. Castles broken. Heads on roads. Men nailed to warnings. The white devil in the mountains, pale as corpse-flesh, red-eyed and smiling while old gods drank noble blood.
Then she had seen him.
Torren did not shout. He did not leer. He did not even speak to her.
That frightened her more.
Savar frightened her differently.
He had killed the knights in the wood. She remembered that in pieces: steel moving through trees, shouts cut short, blood on leaves, Savar's hand pulling one knight backward before the man could turn. She remembered his face afterward, splashed red and calm in the way men were calm only when killing had already been decided.
He had saved her.
He had not freed her.
That truth kept rubbing against itself until her thoughts were raw.
In three weeks, Savar trusted her enough to stop watching every step. Or he seemed to. She could go to the spring with other women. She could carry kindling from the nearer wood line. She could sit with Morna near the weirwoods and repeat mountain words until her tongue ached. She still slept outside Savar's hide, still served his fire, still felt eyes on her when she moved.
But the eyes were fewer now.
That was enough to try.
She chose a moonless night.
The camp had eaten well. Men slept heavier after goat stew and strong drink. Savar had gone late to speak with two King's Host captains and had not returned when Kyra rose from her bedding. She moved slowly, already wearing her cloak, already with the small sack hidden beneath it.
Dried meat. A skin of water. A heel of hard bread. A little knife.
Not enough.
Enough to begin.
She had marked the path in her mind from water walks and kindling walks. Down past the split pine. Left of the stone shaped like a bent knee. Not toward the horn post. Never toward the horn post. Below that, a narrow goat track ran between two black rocks and bent away from the main watch.
If she reached the lower trees before dawn, she might hide.
If she kept moving after that, she might find a village.
If the village did not hand her back.
If the mountain did not kill her first.
Kyra hated how many ifs there were.
She walked anyway.
Every sound became too loud. Her own breath. The scrape of her shoe against stone. Water shifting in the skin. A branch touching her cloak. Twice she stopped because she thought someone had moved behind her. Twice there was nothing.
The camp lights thinned.
Then vanished between the trees.
For the first time in three weeks, no fire stood in front of her.
Kyra gripped the sack tighter and began to move faster.
"Kyra."
The voice came from ahead and above.
Calm.
Not loud.
Her body stopped before her thoughts did.
Slowly, she turned.
A man sat on a rock above the path.
White hair fell loose around his face, pale even in the dark. One knee was raised, one arm resting across it as if he had been sitting there for some time and had grown bored of waiting. His eyes were shadowed, but Kyra knew what color they were. Everyone knew.
Torren.
The white devil.
Her mouth went dry.
For one foolish heartbeat, she thought to speak. To beg. To lie. To say she had lost the path, that she had come to piss, that she had followed a noise. None of the lies reached her tongue.
He smiled faintly.
So she ran.
She dropped the sack and turned hard to her right, away from the path, away from the rock, away from him. Branches tore at her cloak. A root caught her foot and she nearly fell, caught herself, kept going.
A shape stepped out between two trees.
A guard.
Kyra choked and turned before he touched her.
She ran the other way.
Another man appeared there.
No shout. No rush. Just a body in the dark, spear held across the path.
Kyra backed away, then spun toward a gap between stones.
Hands caught her.
She screamed then.
Not words at first. Only sound. She kicked, twisted, struck at one man's wrist with the little knife, lost it at once when someone slapped her hand open. Two men held her arms. Another caught her legs when she tried to drop her weight.
"Let me go!" she screamed in Common. "Let me go!"
They did not understand or did not care.
She fought until her breath broke.
They dragged her back to the rock and threw her down in front of Torren.
Kyra hit the ground hard enough to bite her tongue. Dirt filled one palm. She scrambled backward on hands and heels, cloak twisting around her knees, until her back struck cold stone.
Torren still sat where he had been.
He had not even stood.
"So," he said in Common, "you meant to run."
Kyra stared at him.
The Common sounded strange in his mouth. Rough, but clear. Better than Savar's. Better than she had expected. That frightened her too, because one small wall she had thought stood between them was not there at all.
Torren tilted his head.
"You look like you have already died."
She could not answer.
Her throat had closed.
"Do not worry," he said. "We are only going to talk."
Only.
Kyra pressed herself harder against the stone.
Torren shifted on the rock, folding one leg beneath him as if making himself more comfortable. Then he looked past her to the guards.
"Fifty paces. All of you."
One guard lifted a hand.
The night moved.
Kyra heard it then.
Not two men. Not four.
All around her, leaves brushed cloth. Feet withdrew over dirt and stone. A spear butt tapped once against root. Someone moved behind the rock. Someone else above. The sounds came from every side and faded outward until the dark settled again.
She had not slipped through a gap.
She had walked into a closed hand.
Torren waited until the last sound died.
Then he looked back at her.
"Tell me about your cousins."
Kyra's eyes widened before she could stop them.
Torren saw.
Of course he saw.
"What," he said, "you thought no one knew where you came from?"
Kyra said nothing.
Her heart beat too hard. She could feel it in her throat.
"The mountains see," Torren said. "The mountains know. The mountains listen, girl."
She had heard nearly the same words in village tales. Men said he spoke like that before killing. Men said the mountains told him sins. Men said no hidden thing stayed hidden after his red eyes found it.
Kyra had not believed all of it.
She believed more now.
Torren rested his forearm on his knee.
"Staying silent will not make things easier. Now let us start again. Tell me about your cousins."
Kyra swallowed.
Once.
Twice.
"What do you want to know?"
Torren's smile changed.
There was no warmth in it, but there was satisfaction.
"There. Not so hard." He leaned back slightly. "Basics first. Their names."
Kyra's fingers curled in the dirt.
"Robar," she said. "He is the older one. And Allard."
"Do you like them, Kyra?"
"I do not know."
Torren only looked at her.
The silence pressed.
"I do not know," she said again, sharper this time because fear had nowhere else to go. "They were wards of Lord Arryn. Even after they came back, I did not see them much."
"Heard they do not like each other."
Kyra looked away.
"That is known."
"Say it."
She hated him then.
Not loudly. Not bravely. But enough that it helped her speak.
"Allard did not like the Arryns after what they did to his father. Robar was adamant on supporting them. That is why they do not like each other."
Torren watched her face more than her mouth.
"Robar sits on the regency council."
Kyra went still again.
He knew that too.
"Yes."
"So he has not come to Runestone in years."
"Not often."
"And Allard?"
Kyra hesitated.
Torren waited.
The mountains waited with him.
"All servants and knights obey Allard," she said at last. "The old ones are veterans of the war. The younger ones were recruited by him or by men loyal to him."
"Not Robar."
"No."
"Robar is lord," Torren said, "but Allard rules Runestone all but in name."
Kyra did not answer quickly enough.
Torren lifted his brows slightly.
"I suppose you can say that," she said.
Torren sat with that.
His eyes moved away from her for the first time, toward the dark trees below the path. Kyra could not tell what he saw there. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything.
Then he sighed and stood.
The sudden movement made her flinch.
He noticed, but did not comment.
He stretched one shoulder, then rolled his neck until something cracked softly.
"See? No need to make it so hard. A small talk, that was all." He flexed his arm once. "I have been sitting here too long. My shoulders ache."
Kyra stared at him.
A small talk.
She had thought she was about to die.
Torren stepped down from the rock and came toward her.
Kyra tried to press herself through the stone behind her.
He stopped close enough to offer his hand.
"Up," he said.
She looked at his hand.
Pale. Scarred. Strong.
The hand of the man who knew her blood, her house, her cousins, her road, and had waited in the dark as if catching runaway noble girls were no more troubling than catching goats.
She did not want to touch him.
She also knew refusing might be worse.
Kyra placed her hand in his.
He pulled her up easily and let go at once.
Then he walked to where she had dropped the sack, picked it up, and looked inside.
"Dried meat," he said.
He took a piece.
Kyra stared in disbelief as he bit into it.
"I was hungry."
He handed the sack back to her.
She took it because she did not know what else to do.
The guards returned without being called, though Kyra heard them only when they were already near. Torren began walking back toward camp. After a moment, she followed. The guards followed behind her.
No one spoke.
The path that had felt like escape on the way out now felt shorter. Crueler. She saw the split pine, the bent-knee stone, the dark gap she had believed was unwatched. Every place she had trusted seemed to look back at her with Torren's eyes.
By the time the first camp fires showed between the trees, Kyra's legs were shaking.
Torren did not take her to Savar.
He did not wake anyone.
He walked her to the hide where she slept outside Savar's space and stopped there. The camp was quiet around them. Somewhere within, Savar slept or did not. Kyra could not tell.
Torren turned to her.
"Tonight, nothing happened."
Kyra blinked.
"You did not try to run," he said. "You did not speak with me. You went out to relieve yourself. Do you understand?"
She nodded too quickly.
His eyes stayed on her.
"Say it."
"I understand."
"Good."
For a moment, she thought he might say more.
He did not.
He only stepped aside.
"Go in."
Kyra clutched the sack to her chest and moved past him.
She lay down beneath her hide with her cloak still on and her heart still beating too hard. The dried meat remained in the sack. The water skin pressed cold against her side. Her little knife was gone.
Outside, Torren's footsteps faded.
Kyra did not sleep until dawn.