His voice was low, careful, as if he feared his own words might wound her.
Liv only nodded.
She didn't answer aloud not because she hadn't heard him, but because she knew that if she spoke now, what would emerge might not be courage, but the fear she had been holding tightly in check.
The horses kept moving.
No guards. No carriage. No fortress standing between them and the outside world.
Just the two of them.
The wind sent Liv's cloak fluttering, the cold seeping through the gaps in her gloves. On either side, the northern land stretched out in silence too silent. The snow that should have blanketed this region lay in broken patches, replaced in places by dry, cracked earth, as if nature itself were uncertain whether it still belonged to winter.
Liv lowered her gaze, watching the horses' hoofprints in the ground.
Each step felt like it was carrying them farther away from certainty.
