Chapter 147 Walking VS Duty

Chapter 147 Walking VS Duty
\-MYSTAL-

The village felt smaller when she walked through it beside Kaol.
Not because the place itself had shrunk, but because memory had risen up and settled over everything. The homes sat where they always had, though time and weather had laid hard hands on them. Roofs bowed lower. Fences leaned. The paths between the houses were darker from thaw, pressed soft in places where meltwater had cut through the earth.
Yet what made it all feel smaller was that she was no longer seeing it as the girl who had been dragged from it half-dead. She was seeing it now as a woman beside the son of the man who had once looked at her and not seen something already ruined.
Kaol stepped over a narrow run of meltwater and glanced back at her. “That patch sinks.”
She followed where he had stepped. “Then I’ll trust your judgment.”
Something faint moved at the corner of his mouth before he looked ahead again.
That had been the shape of the walk from the start. He pointed things out, and she answered.
Then a quiet settled between them again, easy enough that neither seemed in a hurry to disturb it. He showed her the lower homes first, talking about them like they weren't buildings but people.
He told her who rebuilt after a particularly bad winter. Who still salted meat in the old way. A wall had to be set right every spring until his father finally talked the family into rebuilding the whole thing from the base instead of patched at the top.
“He sounds practical,” Mystal said.
Kaol huffed softly. “He hated doing the same work twice.”
There was affection beneath the plainness of it. She heard it clearly.
She said little after that, letting him speak, because listening was easier than speaking and because every time her thoughts slowed, they returned to Eysa.
That was the bitterest part of it. She hadn't ridden north to tour the village in quiet walks or feel the strange warmth of Kaol’s company.
She'd come because her Luna needed Kaol back. Eysa was carrying the Dax’s child, and had sent her because she trusted her. That truth should have been at the front of her mind with every step she took beside him.
Instead, it kept slipping to the back of the line.
She could tell him. She could stop right there and do the thing she had come to do. But then what?
The roads were still going to be blocked under snow and storm. His mother didn't look like she couldn't travel in her state, and Kaol wouldn't leave her behind. If Mystal told him now, all she would give him was worry with nowhere to put it. He would turn his mind south and be trapped facing north.
So she stayed silent.
It was practical and reasonable. At least that's what she told herself.
Kaol led her farther up the slope where the village began to thin and the land opened wider. He pointed toward a narrow shed and told her where meat was still stored through winter. He gestured toward the ridge beyond and said children still use it to slide when the snow packed deep enough.
Then, almost without warning, he said, “My father liked this path.” The words changed the air.
Mystal kept her eyes ahead. “I remember him here. Once.”
Kaol went still beside her. She felt it more than saw it.
She drew a slow breath. “It was cold enough that my hands hurt, though I think I was past feeling most things by then.” Her gaze moved over the roofs below. “I remember thinking he looked too calm for the kind of day it was.”
He said nothing, so she went on.
“Everyone else looked at me like my end was already decided.” Her fingers tightened once against her palm. “He did not.”
This time Kaol did speak, his voice quieter than before. “What do you remember about him?”
Mystal swallowed. The answer came easier than she wanted it to.
“He looked at me like I was still a person.” She stared out over the village and let the memory rise exactly as it was. “Not a burden, or a beast. Not something broken and inconvenient.” Her throat tightened, but she kept going. “He listened as though what happened mattered. No one else had done that.”
The wind moved against her cloak and pulled at the loose edge of her hair.
“I remember his voice most,” she said. “He sounded certain. Like I was worth defending.”
For a long moment, Kaol didn't answer. Then he said, “My father believed you were stronger than they gave you credit for.” The words sounded so factual with how he said it.
Mystal turned her face just enough to breathe without letting too much show.
Stronger than they gave you credit for.
Such a simple thing, and yet it went through her harder than she could have expected. Men had called her useful. Skilled. Enduring. Obedient.
Her strength wasn't recognized as something inherent, but rather forged by hardship.
“When did he say that?” she asked.
“To my mother first,” Kaol said. “Then, later, to me.”
Mystal closed her eyes for one brief moment.
When she opened them, the village blurred before sharpening again. “No one ever told me.”
Kaol’s voice softened. “I think he would have wanted you to know.”
That nearly undid her. She nodded once because she could trust that movement more than her voice.
“I did not forget him,” the words pulled from her.
“I’m glad,” Kaol answered.
They stood there for a while after that, shoulder to shoulder, saying nothing. The quiet felt different now.
Beneath them, smoke rose from chimneys and thinned into the pale sky. Somewhere down the slope a dog barked once before falling silent. The village breathed on as if nothing had changed, but something in her had shifted all the same.
She became aware then of how little Kaol seemed to want the moment to end.
It wasn't in anything he did. He didn't tell her to stay. He didn't look at her like a man trying to make something obvious. But when he glanced toward the farther ridge, he said, “There’s a better view of the eastern road from there.”
Mystal looked at him, and he looked away almost immediately, as if the words had come more easily than he had intended.
And because she had noticed it, the secret in her chest weighed even more.
He wanted more time. She could feel it in the way he had slowed this whole walk, and in the way he had kept finding one more thing to show her, one more path to take.
She should have told him then. Duty should have cut through all of it.
Instead, she heard herself say, “Then show me.”
Relief moved across his face so quickly she might have imagined it if she'd blinked.
He turned and started down the path, and Mystal followed.
For just a little while longer, she could let the truth remain unspoken.