Nyssa took one more step, as if to bridge a chasm she could not cross. "Tell me," she whispered, voice cracking. "Tell me you did not…say it. Say it so I can go back to them and not have to look you in the eye."
Liora looked at her then, and for the first time she met the question Nyssa's mouth did not frame: Do you love him? The truth of it lodged like a stone. She had not meant for that truth to find a voice. Love had slipped into her like a tide. It had softened edges that had been carved hard by fury.
"I didn't kill her," she said again, this time with a steadier voice. "Not the child. Not Vanya's daughter." The words were not a plea. They were a stubborn, cold fact.
Nyssa's face crumpled for a moment as if struck, as if the night itself had given her a blow. Yet almost immediately she hardened, the way stone hardens when coated in salt. "You are lying to yourself," she accused softly. "I can see how you look at him. I can see how you stand in the doorway and ache. You wish it were you he cradled, not her. But wishing does not absolve murder."
"Then go," Liora said, and the single syllable had the weight of a slammed door.
Nyssa paused, as if a part of her wanted to continue the argument, to tear apart the alibi, to savage the justifications. Instead she drew a breath that was half surrender and half contempt. "You are a bitter loser, Liora. You always have been. A woman who bites at the world because it does not bend to her the way she wants."
Nyssa turned and walked away without another word, her cloak swallowing her shape as she retreated up the path toward the stronghold. For a long time Liora watched her go, the silhouette receding until it became only a darker smudge against stone and torchlight.
When the footsteps were gone, Liora let her shoulders sag. She reached for the river and scooped water into her cupped hands, letting it flow through her fingers. The motion was small and ordinary and the ordinaryness was a salve.
She took a cloth from her satchel, an old thing, still smelling faintly of herbs and wiped at her cheek, where Nyssa's slap had left a bloom of heat. The cloth came away pressed with the lightest trace of salt and dust. She smudged at the line as if erasing a map she no longer wanted to read.
Tears came then, unbidden and suddenly hot. They carved tracks down her face that she had not planned for, and she let them fall. She did not try to hide them. She did not try to make them into anything other than what they were: proof that the hurt had reached places vengeance could not touch.
Behind her, beyond the river and the scrub and the dark stretch of the stronghold, the world went on. People prayed. Children slept in the shadows of the walls. In another hour, someone would call for a search party. Someone would try to find the body. Someone would accuse another, and another. The pack would spool through grief in its own way, and Nyssa would stitch the wounds she could reach. And Liora—Liora would remain by the river, throwing stones and watching the circles die.
She folded the cloth and tucked it into the pocket at her waist. She laced her fingers together and let silence settle like a shawl. The night seemed to hold its breath, listening. She had been accused and she had answered the one way she knew how: with the truth she could still claim.
The river moved on, indifferent as ever, swallowing light and sound and secrets. Liora wiped at her face once more, pushing the cold water over her skin as if to baptize away the anger and the accusations. She rose slowly, shoulders squared in a tired, private sort of resolve. There were decisions to make, paths to walk that would not be softened by another woman's slap or another pack's worship. She did not yet know which path she would choose.
But she would choose one.
She turned away from the river and stepped back toward the stronghold, the night fo
lding around her like a cloak.