Minthara works the metal of her armour in her hands, slow and deliberate, unbending the dent left by some warrior that didn't breathe long after bestowing it upon her.

You sit not far from her, muttering to yourself over your gear as you tend to some menial task. Something ordinary.

Minthara pretends not to listen, though the edge of her ear angles minutely toward your voice. Love. The word alone tastes foreign in her mouth. Too human and too warm. It coils in her throat like a secret trying to escape.

She hates that she feels this. Hates how it tightens her chest when you're wounded, how her gaze always returns to you in battle- not to bark an order, not to assess formation- but just to make sure you're still breathing. She loathes how often you cross her thoughts in the quiet hours before sleep, how your voice echoes even when you're not speaking.

But worse than all of it is you make her hesitate. She’d once viewed kindness as a mask for cowardice but when you are kind to her, it feels like a mercy she hasn’t earned. it's power of a different sort.

It scares Minthara more than a blade at her throat, because in a way, that's what love is to her; a knife point pressing to her heart.

"You miscounted," she breaks the gentle silence, eyes still fixed on the breastplate in her hands. "You've five healing potions, you counted four." And she knows that for a fact because she slid the fifth one in your pack herself.