Chapter Text
The storm announces itself long before it arrives.
A low tremor in the air.
Wind that keeps changing its mind.
Snow that falls in sharp, impatient bursts, as if warning them off the mountainside.
Caleb feels the wrongness minutes before the others do. Maybe it's because he is always coiled, primed for danger. Maybe it's because he isn't busy arguing about which direction they should be going, like Fjord and Nott. (They're going the correct direction, he'd advised them of that an hour ago, and then again 33 minutes ago, and then again 9 minutes ago. The pair don't seem to care. He thinks maybe they find comfort in fighting like this.)
Caleb keeps glancing up toward the peak, toward the slate-colored sky pulling tighter and tighter like a fist. His breath forms thin ribbons in the cold air.
A change in the wind pulls the curtain of snow aside for a brief moment, revealing the vague shape of several shallow cave mouths carved into the mountainside not far ahead of the upper path.
Shelter. Safety. A chance.
They can wait the storm out there. And maybe reevaluate if this ridiculous retrieval mission for The Gentleman is worth it.
They are going as fast as they can manage with their ankles buried in snow. Caleb is pulling up the rear, Nott on his shoulders slowing his already unsteady pace. He doesn't complain.
Jester slows to walk beside Caleb, bumping her shoulder into his.
“Do you think it’ll get worse?” she asks, voice bright but a little thin around the edges.
Caleb looks up at the bruised sky. “Ja. I think it might.”
She hums, thoughtful. “Then we’ll just stick close together until it doesn’t.”
Her arm threads easily through his, their elbows hooking. His instinct is to pull away. Maybe mutter some excuse and apology. But the snow is thick, and she is pulling him now, and Nott is balancing precariously on his shoulders, leaning farther over to poke an accusatory finger at Fjord as they bicker.
“Oi,” Molly calls as he leaves the front of their troupe to stride up beside them. He doesn't turn to walk with them, instead opting to sort of jog backwards while facing them - still somehow matching their pace with irritating grace. "If the storm wants a fight, I’ll give it one. I’ve talked down worse tempers.”
Jester perks up. “You’ve talked down weather before?”
“Sweetheart, I’ve sweet-talked a volcano. Snow is nothing.”
(It’s impossible to tell whether he’s lying.)
“Do you think the storm will behave if we ask nicely?” she whispers conspiratorially.
Caleb snorts. “Nature does not bargain.”
"And how do you know, huh?" She huffs. "Do you talk to it? Caleb! Do you talk to grass?"
Sometimes, he doesn't know if Jester's outlandish questions are sincere or carefully crafted just to make him squirm or laugh.
He opens his mouth but doesn't get the opportunity to reply.
Because the mountain answers first.
A crack like the world splitting open.
A roar of displaced snow.
A shockwave that turns the ground into a wave beneath them.
Fjord spins. “Move!”
- too late.
The avalanche roars down the mountainside, not directly toward them, thank the gods, but close enough that the shockwave punches through the ridge like a fist of air.
The ground bucks violently.
Caleb stumbles.
Jester grabs his arm.
Molly grabs Jester.
“Ah, shit,” Molly says, with a rare edge of real fear.
Caleb does the math in the time it takes to exhale. He understands what is about to happen. He isn't fast enough himself, isn't strong enough to push Mollymauk or Jester to safety.
But he can at least spare his best friend.
With his free hand, Caleb reaches up, grabbing Nott by the scruff like a cat, and tosses her toward Beauregard.
The ridge fractures as the monk catches her.
Not all at once. Just enough to shift the world under their feet. Fjord, Beau, and now Nott, are on the higher side. Caleb, Jester, and Molly on the lower.
The lower half collapses.
For a heartbeat - one impossible, suspended second - Caleb sees the others clearly, framed in swirling snow:
Fjord lunging for Beau, anchoring them both.
Beau digging her staff into the snow, teeth bared.
Nott clinging to the woman's hip, eyes huge.
All three screaming their names.
They’re safe. They’re safe. They’re safe.
The relief is so sharp it nearly buckles Caleb’s knees.
Then the world drops out from beneath him.
Jester screams.
Molly swears creatively.
Caleb reacts on instinct.
It's difficult to rummage through a bag of components while hurdling down a mountainside. His fingers tear instead at the inner seam of his sleeve, where he keeps a single feather tucked for emergencies.
It flutters free into his palm.
The spell explodes outward, catching all three of them. Instead of plummeting, they drift - too fast for comfort but far too slow for death.
Snow pours around them like a collapsing sky.
The ridge above seals off under fresh white.
The others vanish from view.
The world tilts and ebbs beneath them - but the spell holds, slowing their descent into something dreamlike and wrong.
Jester’s grip on Caleb’s arm tightens reflexively. Molly still has an arm around Jester's waist, fingers fisting in her coat.
Then the wind hits them.
The force sends Caleb skidding in the air, ripping free from Jester's grasp. Molly’s coat snaps like a banner, the storm trying to scatter them across the mountainside. They won't die from the fall, but they can still be tossed into treetops, blown apart from each other, scattered to the snow and cold with nothing and no one -
Caleb reaches without thinking -
Jester’s grip clamps around Caleb’s left hand, desperate and instinctive.
Molly lunges at the same moment, seizing Caleb’s right hand before the wind can tear him away again.
Molly’s fingers lock around his with surprising strength.
A crooked, trembling triangle of hands.
“Easy, magic man. Don’t think - just breathe.”
Breathing. Right. Breathing is good.
Especially considering he had apparently stopped doing so for a few seconds there.
Caleb drags air into his lungs, though the storm seems determined to rip it out again.
The wind tears between them, threatening to peel the three of them apart like loose pages. Their bodies splay awkwardly in the whiteout, boots swinging in empty air, cloaks and coats whipping violently.
Molly gives a breathless, shaky laugh - too thin to be called confident.
"Thank you kindly for the save up there."
Caleb's chest heaves, heavy and wild, far too frantic for the leisurely pace of their fall.
"Ja, well. Thank you for returning the favor."
Suspended in the white roar of the storm, they drift downward in a long, sickening glide.
Caleb knows exactly how long - sixteen seconds now, seventeen - and exactly how far they’ve moved from the ridge - one hundred and seventy feet, maybe a little more with the wind’s push.
His brain counts even as his breath refuses to steady.
Twenty seconds.
Two hundred feet.
Too far to see the ridge. Too far to climb in this storm.
The instinct to calculate is automatic.
The fear is not.
Caleb’s stomach twists. “We cannot get back up.”
“Not with these dainty legs, no,” Molly agrees, trying for humor but not finding the usual flourish.
Jester clings to them both, shaking. “They’re okay, right? They have to be okay.”
“They were on stable ground,” Caleb says, voice thin but steady. “They are safer than we are.”
The wind tears the words away.
They ease down to a lower slope, landing in a drift that swallows them nearly to the waist. The storm rages harder now - needles of ice in the air, the scent of cold that burns the lungs. Working together, they manage to dig each other out of the snow.
Caleb looks up the way they came.
There is no path.
Only white.
“We need shelter,” he says quietly. “Now.”
Caleb digs around in his component pouch with stiff fingers until he finds the small bundle of feathers. The familiar, fragile softness against his thumb should be comforting.
It isn’t.
“But we need to find a way back up!” Jester throws an arm toward the ridge, her voice pitching high with rising panic. “They’re up there, Caleb. We have to go after them!”
“The storm is only going to get worse.” Caleb shakes his head, pulling a single white feather out between his fingers. “We would be more likely to get lost, or fall again.”
He turns slightly, half shielding the feather from the wind, and moves to slip it into the small hidden opening in his sleeve, the same place he’d retrieved the emergency one before.
They’ve landed in a wooded ravine. The ground seems stable enough. But they’re still high in the mountains, still vulnerable. He needs the feather accessible. He needs to be ready.
He finds the seam - and swears low in Zemnian.
The thread is ripped clean. Torn open by the wind and his grip and the raw, panicked force he’d used during the fall.
His chest tightens. He presses his thumb to the torn seam, trying to hold it in place. Trying to make it behave. Trying to reclaim even one small piece of control.
“So we just give up?” Jester’s breath hitches. “Just like that?”
“It is not giving up.”
“It feels like it!”
Her frustration crackles in the air, sharp as the cold. Snow collects in her lashes. The wind shoves at her as if trying to knock the argument loose.
Caleb lowers his head back down, still wrestling with the feather and the ruined seam. His hands shake not just from cold, but from fear, and from how badly he wants the stitch to hold so he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes right now.
“We are safer down here,” Caleb insists, too quickly, too firmly. “They are - they were on higher ground. The caves were not far ahead. They likely found shelter already.”
“You don’t know that!” Jester’s voice cracks. “Aren’t you worried about them? Even - even about Nott?”
That lands like a blow.
Caleb’s expression tightens - not with anger, exactly, but with something raw, fragile, immediate.
His thumb slips on the torn seam.
“Of course I am worried!” The words burst out harsher than he means them to. “Do not tell me I am not worried!”
Jester recoils a half step, eyes wide, lips parting in startled guilt.
Caleb exhales a shuddering breath, looking away, jaw clenched against everything threatening to show. His hands tremble around the feather - useless, exposed.
The silence that follows is jagged.
“I didn’t mean -" Jester’s voice comes smaller, gentler, losing its shape around the edges. “Caleb, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just - I’m scared. I didn't even know you could do... you know, whatever it is you did to save us. I thought we were going to fall and die. I’m so scared, and you’re being all - all calm, and it feels like you’re not - but I know you are, I know you care, I just - I’m sorry.”
Her eyes shine in a way that has nothing to do with snow.
Caleb swallows hard. His anger dissolves as quickly as it flared, leaving exhaustion and fear in its place. “Jester… I am frightened too. I am trying not to show it.”
Molly, who has been quiet - unusually so - finally steps forward.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Both of you. Nobody’s giving up on anyone. The storm doesn’t care if we love them or not. We get warm, we get our bearings, and then we find them when the mountain isn’t trying to kill us. All right?”
Jester wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve, nodding shakily.
"Besides," he continues, placing a hand on either of their shoulders, "we are the ones that took the little tumble down the mountain. They should be looking for us."
A faint, rueful noise escapes Jester - half laugh, half sniff.
Caleb drops his gaze again, to the scrap of feather and the torn seam at his wrist - frayed, gaping, beyond his ability to repair out here. The cold has made his hands clumsy. He can’t even fix a simple stitch.
He doesn’t notice Jester step closer until her boots crunch softly in the snow beside him.
“Caleb?” she says, voice small but steady now. “Can I…?”
She doesn’t finish the question.
She just reaches out, gentle, hesitant, and touches the torn edge of his coat sleeve.
Warmth pulses under her fingertips.
A soft glow spills across the jagged thread.
Mending.
The tear knits itself whole in the space of a breath.
Clean. Straight. Restored.
He stares at the perfect seam, at the feather now tucked securely into the small hidden fold of fabric - exactly where it’s supposed to be.
Jester’s hand lingers a moment longer than the spell requires.
“There,” she murmurs. “You know, that is very smart, Caleb."
Caleb swallows, something tight and unsteady working its way up his throat.
“Danke,” he says quietly.
Finally, he lifts his head and meets Jester's gaze - hers searching, his apologetic. At least he can blame his flushed cheeks on the cold.
“Shelter first,” he murmurs. “Then we look.”
She nods, smiling up at him like dawn breaking over fresh snow.
The warmth hits him harder than the fall did.
Molly claps both their backs. “Good. Now move. If Caleb loses any more body heat, I’m going to have to carry him, and nobody wants to see how that ends.”
Caleb manages a weak, startled huff - which is exactly what Molly wanted.
He turns then, lifts one shaking hand toward the sky, and murmurs the arcane word under his breath. A spark ignites at his fingertips, small at first, then hungry, before he snaps it upward in a clean, practiced gesture. A bolt of fire streaks into the storm, carving a brief line of gold against the whiteout. It fizzles out far below the ridge, nowhere near high enough to truly reach them.
But maybe - maybe - it’s enough for someone looking.
A signal.
A promise.
A we’re alive.
The light fades. The storm swallows it whole.
Caleb lowers his hand.
They turn toward the trees.
The storm hounds their heels, but they walk together.
They trudge downward, searching for any hint of shelter, any path that doesn’t disappear under fresh white. Caleb forces himself forward - legs numb, hands aching, head still full of the image of the three silhouettes on the ridge.
Jester suddenly gasps. “Watch your - Caleb!”
Too late.
Again.
The snow gives way beneath his right foot with a muted crack.
Before he can react, his leg plunges through the surface crust into frigid water - an unseen creek half-frozen beneath the snowpack. The shock of it tears a cry from his throat. Ice water soaks his boot, his pant leg, biting instantly into skin.
He tries to wrench himself backward -
- and the ground under his other foot shears open, dropping him hip-deep into the water in one brutal lurch.
Cold clamps around him like a set of jaws, locking his muscles.
“Scheiße -” Caleb staggers, pain shooting up his legs.
Molly lunges and grabs him under the arms. Jester takes his coat sleeve and braces. Together they haul him backward, out of the hole, onto solid ground.
Caleb collapses into the snow, gasping. The wet fabric clings to him, already stiffening in the wind.
He fumbles for flame.
It takes several tries - his hands shaking too hard to shape the somatic motion cleanly, his breath coming sharp and uneven - but eventually a spark catches at his fingertips. Then another. A trembling ember blooms into a small, flickering flame.
He cups it in both palms, curling around it like it’s sacred.
The heat licks weakly at his frozen skin. Not enough. But it’s something he can hold, something he can make, something he can still do.
The wind tries to steal it. His fingers try to fail him. But he holds on anyway, hunched over the tiny fire as if his life depends on it.
Because part of him believes it does.
“Oh gods, Caleb - Caleb, are you okay?” Jester’s voice pitches high with panic.
“I am -” His voice cracks. “It is fine. Just…cold.”
“It is not fine,” Molly snaps, kneeling beside him. “You’re about three minutes from becoming a very handsome wizard-popsicle, and that won’t do at all.”
Caleb tries to stand. His leg buckles.
Molly catches him again, steady but gentle. “Easy. Can you walk?”
“J-Ja,” Caleb lies, teeth chattering so hard the tiny word nearly splits.
Jester drops to the snow beside him. “We have to move. He can’t stay wet out here. He’ll freeze. Caleb - please - lean on me, okay?”
He wants to argue. Out of pride, out of habit. But the cold bites deep, hollowing him out from ankle to knee to navel. He relents, letting Jester take one side, Molly the other.
They support him, half-carrying him, down the slope as the storm tightens around them.
Caleb’s thoughts begin drifting as they go, fuzzing around the edges. He forces himself to count steps in Zemnian, then breaths, then heartbeats. Anything to stay present.
The storm claws around them, stealing heat and hope with equal efficiency. They push downward into the trees, where the wind breaks just enough to breathe.
Then - miraculously - Jester gasps and points.
“There! A cabin!”
A hunched, crooked thing barely visible through the white.
Caleb’s whole body sags with relief.
By the time they reach the door, his body feels numb, his legs trembling from cold and the fading rush of fear. Molly shoves the door open. Dusty air spills out.
“Home sweet home,” Molly declares, practically lifting Caleb across the threshold.
Jester pushes the door shut against the screaming wind and whirls around, pale blue with worry.
“Caleb, your clothes - Molly, get the fire! Caleb, sit - no, no, not on the floor, you’ll get colder - here -"
Caleb barely registers being guided to a chair as Jester pulls off his coat and Molly strips off his soaked boots with a patience Caleb does not deserve.
“Stay with us,” Molly says, tone light but eyes sharp. “No passing out unless it’s for something glamorous.”
He tells Jester to take over for him and heads for the hearth.
Mollymauk - wait-
He should warn him.
He should tell him to check the chimney first.
If the place has been abandoned, there could be soot buildup, or embers could climb the flue and catch the roof, or it could flash downward if the draft is wrong, or -
His breath stutters.
His fingers twitch uselessly in his lap.
Fire is dangerous. Fire is unpredictable. Fire is his, and still -
He opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
The irony hits like a punch to the gut. The memory hits harder.
His vision goes soft at the corners. Fire climbs the walls in his mind, not in the hearth.
He may not be the one starting the blaze this time, but it's still going to be his fault. It's still going to -
“Chimney’s clear!” Molly’s voice rings through the cabin, bright and triumphant.
Caleb jolts, blinking.
Molly stands by the hearth with a smug twist to his lips, a bit of soot smeared across his cheek. “Nothing nesting, nothing clogged. Just cold as a hag’s tit.” He pats the stone. "Lovely bit of craftsmanship, really.”
Caleb stares at him.
Had he… said any of that aloud?
Or was Molly smart enough to know to check for those things?
"I'm incredibly intelligent," Molly winks. "Honestly, it wounds me you would doubt that."
Jester snorts despite her obvious worry.
Caleb blinks, unsure whether to laugh or cry or simply exhale the breath trapped in his chest.
He feels the layers of his clothes being quickly, but carefully, peeled off by Jester. She hesitates at the bandages on his arms, but leaves them in place. They are damp from the cold and snow, but not soaked like so much of the rest of him. He is grateful. Even more so when she doesn't say anything.
A blanket is draped over his body, then another.
Jester kneels in front of Caleb, wide-eyed and earnest. “We’re getting you warm. We’re right here, okay? Caleb, look at me.”
He does.
Because it is easier than thinking about how close he came to freezing.
Or how desperately he wants the warmth they offer.
Or how terrifyingly good it feels not to be alone in this moment.
His head lolls to the side, and his blurry vision settles on Mollymauk, bent over the fireplace and cursing an impressive string of Infernal. His hands work the flint and steel, again and again.
"It's too bloody wet," he grumbles.
Caleb lifts a half-limp hand, a streak of fire leaping from his fingers and past Molly into the waiting pile of kindling. The flames lurch to life.
Molly almost glares at him - almost. But there's a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Well, look at that. Even half-frozen, he still has to show off.” Mollymauk brushes soot from his coat. "Couldn’t let me have the dramatic rescue, could you?"
The fire flickers weakly, throwing dancing lines of gold across the cabin walls.
Caleb sits hunched in the chair, blankets piled over his bare legs, his fingers curled stiff around the edges. The heat stings as it reaches him.
He should be shivering.
He remembers shivering only moments ago - hard, violent shakes that rattled his teeth. But now?
Now he only feels… slow.
Heavy.
Suspended, as if wrapped in cotton.
A crawling dread moves up his spine.
Jester doesn’t notice at first. She’s too busy stripping the last of the wet fabric from him, her hands moving with frantic purpose. “We’ll get you warm, Caleb. Just hold on, okay?”
He tries to nod. His head barely moves.
“Don’t you dare fall asleep,” Jester warns, her voice too bright, too thin. She squeezes his shoulder. “Not yet. Not until you’re warm-warm.”
“I am awake,” he means to say, but it escapes as a slurred hum.
“Good. Keep doing that.”
Molly claps his hands together once, sharp and purposeful. “Right. Insulation. Warm wizard sandwich. Let’s move.”
He crosses the room in long, confident strides, the kind that look theatrical, but only to hide worry. He drags their bedrolls toward the fire with a flourish of his tail, kicking them open across the boards. Jester is already pulling down the heavy curtain from the lone window, its faded fabric fluttering to the floor. Molly adds his coat on top, smoothing it like an offering. Jester piles her cloak beside it.
Layer upon layer until the floor looks almost soft.
Caleb watches dimly, a fog settling over his thoughts. His teeth ache with how still his jaw is.
Jester kneels in front of him, hands warm on his knees through the blankets. “Okay, Caleb? We’re going to move you, all right? We need you closer to the fire. And softer things for you to lie on.”
He tries to respond. Nothing comes out.
He tries to nod. It ends up being more like a tilt.
“Good.” Her voice gentles. “Molly - help me?”
Molly slides in behind, looping Caleb’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on then. Up you get.”
They lift him. His legs barely remember how to bear weight, folding uselessly beneath him. Molly and Jester carry most of it, murmuring encouragements he barely hears.
They lower him onto the layered patchwork of bedding. The warmth of the fire kisses his skin, but he can’t feel it properly. Everything is too far away.
Jester tucks blankets around him like she’s building a nest.
Then she freezes.
“Caleb… you’re not - you’re not shivering anymore.” Her voice trembles. “Is that a good sign? Molly -”
“I know,” Molly says quietly, already sliding under the blankets on Caleb’s right. “And no, it's not. Come on, you too love.”
Jester slips in on the left, pressing herself against Caleb’s cold side.
The change hits Caleb all at once.
Warmth. Pressure.
Two bodies bracketing his own.
His mind, fogged and slipping, reaches instinctively for meaning - and finds an old shape waiting.
He’s been between two warm bodies before. Different ones. Long ago.
Stone walls. Thin blankets. Breath misting in the air. Astrid’s elbow digging into his ribs. Eodwulf’s steady weight behind him. Children trying to survive a school that wanted them sharp, not warm.
For a moment, it feels the same - a nest of heat, the illusion of companionship, the fragile safety of being in the middle.
But the memory fractures on contact with the present.
Because Jester’s hand is gentle, lacking any and all sharp edges.
And Molly’s warmth is steady, not restrained.
And no one here will pull away the moment the class bell tolls.
The thought drifts through him, hazy, incomplete -
Warm. Safe. Between friends.
Is that… allowed?
His eyes slip half-shut, breath evening against his will.
The glow from the hearth blurs, warmth bleeding into the cold like a dream. The fire crackles somewhere far away, a soft, rhythmic sound that pulls at him like a lullaby. His limbs feel heavy. His breath slows. Someone says his name, he thinks, but it’s muffled, like hearing through snow.
He shouldn’t sleep.
He knows that.
He knows that.
But gods, he’s tired.
Warmth at his back, warmth at his chest - his body tries to fold into it, to let go, to drift -
A hand taps sharply against his cheek.
"Five more minutes, Astrid."
"We cannot be late, Bren."
“Caleb? Caleb!” Jester’s voice is tight with fear. “Hey - hey, keep your eyes open, okay? Please?”
He tries. The effort feels impossible.
His eyelids sag again.
And that is when Molly leans in, his voice slicing through the fog with deliberate, stubborn brightness.
“Oh no you don’t,” Molly declares, pulling the blankets tighter around the three of them. “You can sleep later. Right now, you can shiver. C’mon, do your job and shiver, love.”
Caleb gasps, the first real breath he’s taken in minutes.
And then -
then the shaking starts again.
Not because Caleb wills it. Because their warmth reignites something in his body, sending tremors spiraling through him, weak at first, then harsher.
Caleb doesn’t manage words.
He just shivers - violently, painfully, gratefully - held between them like something precious.
He is freezing.
But he is warming.
He is safe.
And he is not alone.
Molly’s hand finds his under the covers, warm and steady.
Jester presses her cheek against his shoulder.
Caleb drinks in the heat like a man starved.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
One moment, he is shivering between them - trembling so hard his bones feel hollow - and the next…
…stillness.
Not total. Not frighteningly still. His body hums with a deep, exhausted ache, the kind that comes after shivering, not before.
A different kind of quiet.
A safer one.
Caleb’s eyes flutter open to the dim glow of dying embers. The fire has burned low, painting the cabin in long, sleepy shadows. The wind still howls outside, rattling against the shutters, but in here...
...in here, everything is soft.
Everything is warm.
He realizes, slowly, that his cheek is pressed against something solid and warm and alive.
A heartbeat.
Molly’s.
The lavender tiefling is half-curled around him, one arm still draped protectively over Caleb’s ribs, hand curled loosely against his stomach beneath the blankets. His tail is tucked somewhere behind them, warm against Caleb’s calf like a lazy serpent.
Jester is on Caleb’s other side, curled tightly into his back. One of her legs is thrown over his, her breath warm and even against the nape of his neck. She’s talking softly in her sleep - something about a giant hamster with a very tiny hat - and every few breaths her fingers flex lightly against his arm, as if reassuring herself that he’s still there.
Caleb lies very still, absorbing the quiet warmth pressing into him from both sides.
This kind of waking is unfamiliar.
He is used to waking alone.
Or with the small weight of a goblin pressed against his legs like a cat.
He is not used to waking cradled between two people who care whether he breathes.
He swallows hard, overwhelmed.
The blankets have trapped their combined heat, creating a cocoon of warmth that sinks deep into his bones. His legs still ache, but the icy bite is gone. His breathing feels steadier. His thoughts, for the first time since the fall, are clear enough to hold.
He shifts a little - just enough that Molly stirs.
“Caleb?” Molly mumbles, voice thick with sleep. His arm tightens around Caleb’s middle instinctively. “You awake?”
Caleb hesitates. His voice is raw when it comes. “Ja.”
Molly lifts his head slightly to peer at him - hair a wild mess of tangles and horns silhouetted in the ember light. His eyes sweep Caleb’s face with soft concern.
“Good,” he murmurs, hand splaying wider across Caleb’s stomach. “Thought you’d decided to scare us again.”
Caleb’s throat tightens. “I am… warmer.”
Molly’s smile is slow, relieved. “You damn well better be. We nearly melted ourselves keeping you alive.”
Behind him, Jester makes a small, sleepy noise and burrows closer, her forehead pressing between Caleb’s shoulder blades.
Caleb freezes, breath catching. The contact is so gentle, so trusting, it almost hurts.
Jester slips an arm more tightly around his waist in response, hugging him from behind without waking
Something inside him - something long-wound, long-starved - gives a slow, aching tremor.
He clears his throat, quiet. “I… did not mean to... scare you.” Emotion tangles the words.
“We know,” Molly says simply. “You don't have to apologize.”
The words settle over Caleb like another blanket.
For a long moment, none of them move.
The fire murmurs low in the hearth.
The storm rattles at the wooden walls.
Warmth presses at Caleb from both sides - Molly’s steady heat, Jester’s soft weight - anchoring him, grounding him, holding him here.
Alive.
Safe.
Wanted.
Caleb lets out a trembling breath and allows himself, just this once, to sink into it.
Just for tonight.
Just until morning.
Molly’s hand slides up, slow and reassuring, rubbing circles against Caleb’s ribs. “Try to sleep again. We've got you.”
Caleb hesitates - just for a breath - and then his fingers curl, lightly, around Molly’s sleeve. For the second time since the mountain gave way, Caleb reaches instead of bracing. He holds there, loose and careful, like he’s afraid it might vanish.
Caleb closes his eyes.