That's not bravery. That stupidity wearing bravery's coat maybe doesn't change what I'm doing about it. She studied him a long moment. Fire light moved across her face and for the first time he saw something under the weariness. Exhaustion.
The particular exhaustion of someone carrying a weight nobody else had offered to help lift. "You shouldn't be out here," he said, alone at night this close to Crane's men. Her laugh was short. No humor in it at all. That's rich coming from you.
I mean, it it's dangerous. Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I rode three days from camp for fun? Her voice sharpened quick as the arrow she'd already put an inch from his skull. The council said, "Wait, said the men would handle it." Said, "A woman has no business hunting raiders." "So you left anyway?" "I left anyway." She said it like a challenge, like she expected him to argue.
He didn't. Good, he said instead. That seemed to catch her offguard more than the arrow had caught him. Good. Waiting gets people killed.
Waiting is what my whole town did this morning. While your people freeze, he held her gaze. You didn't wait. That's not stupidity. That's the opposite.
Something shifted behind her eyes. Not trust. Exactly. Not yet. But the door to it cracked open half an inch.
You talk like a man who's tired of watching people wait. She said I am. Why? Because I waited once. He almost said, "Because I hid behind a water trough and waited for someone else to save my father and nobody came and he died anyway.
And I have never once forgiven the boy I was for waiting." He didn't say any of that. Not yet. Some things you don't hand a stranger on the first night. Even a stranger who's just tried to put an arrow through you. Long story, he said instead.
For another fire, she almost smiled at that. Almost. Then her head snapped toward the ridge, body going still as stone. Someone's coming, she said, voice dropping to barely a breath. Ezra's hand found the revolver again.