They've played this game before. Easy, teasing little turns of conversation, so well-worn that the words would come to him without thinking.

Now it feels like walking a forest path in the dark. It feels like he could lose his way, for the first time in his life.

And he can see the way Alina registers this too, the way it works across her face as her hands clench.

"I hope so. I'll need to be tough, if I'm going to be the Sun Summoner's bodyguard."

A shadow of an old joke. It's all so much more serious now, isn't it? Trying to hide, trying to keep Alina free after all she's suffered—

He'll have to be more than he is now. Somehow. Cleverer, stronger, quicker. He has to find a way to make himself all of that before they hit land.