Chapter 26 - Kalla #2
I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the woods. Nothing but the peace of a quiet night flowed around me. No tension, no screams, no racing hearts beyond ours, no blood. Everything was calm. Safe.
With a need to embrace my last night of true freedom, I grabbed my clothes off the ground and started through the trees.
“Shouldn’t we go back to the cave?” Jael called after me.
I laughed, feeling as light as a summer wind. “Do you want to spend the day next to Corban?”
“I’d rather be roasted by the dragon on your mountain.” He bundled his clothes in his arms and chased after me, but I put on a burst of speed every time he got close.
If anyone had spotted us, two naked fools running through the woods at night, they might have thought us mad, but I found myself cackling with unburdened happiness. And by the looks of it, Jael was enjoying himself as well, if that’s what I could call the slightly predatory gleam in his eyes.
Suddenly he was catching up, the smile spreading across his face a playful threat.
I yelped and ran faster, a laugh in my throat.
The blind came into view up ahead, one of the heaps of branches and thick foliage Cliff and I had built a few weeks back.
I aimed for it, ready to dive inside, but Jael caught my arm and spun me around.
My chest slammed against his, the lines of his muscles and the streak of silver scars stark under the moonlight.
My mouth went dry, while other parts of me grew wet with want.
Fae magic. That had to be the cause of my constant arousal around this man.
“Come on,” he said, his voice husky as he trailed his mouth over my ear. “We need to get you safe. I can’t have you burning up now that we’ve made it this far.”
I was forced to release him to enter the blind, and he crawled in behind me.
“What is the blind for, anyway?” he asked as he struggled to make himself comfortable lying on his back.
As soon as we were in, I pulled the extra branches across the opening, shrouding us in absolute darkness.
“Hunting. We’re close to shifter territory here.
Lots of big, hot-blooded meals just waiting for us to strike.
” I settled in beside him and snapped my teeth at his cheek with a chuckle.
“Or non-shifter animals. That’s far more common.
This deep in the woods, we find all kinds of worthwhile prey.
Even the occasional band of outlaws. But it does mean we often get stuck without cover, so we build these shelters.
We have to make them lightproof, which is why they’re so small, but since we only use them to sleep, it’s not usually an issue. ”
“The darkness doesn’t bother you?”
If I’d been able to see his face, maybe I would have missed the tension underlying his question, but all I had was his voice and the elevation of his heartbeat beneath my palm.
With a pinch of guilt, I remembered his reaction when I’d first bought him to my unlit haven. “That’s right, you hate the dark.”
“Just a little.” His fluttering pulse battered my ears.
I ran my fingers over the side of his face. “You can go. Head back to the others. I’ll be all right on my own.”
I wouldn’t put him through that pain. Not for the sake of keeping me company.
“I’ll be okay.” He swallowed hard. “Just... don’t go far?”
It didn’t matter that there was nowhere for me to go. I knew physical distance wasn’t what he meant.
“I’m right here.”
I trailed my fingers into his hair, down his neck, over his chest. He rested his hand over mine and pressed it to his heart. Gradually, the frantic rhythm slowed and his breathing came more steadily.
“I… Thank you,” he murmured.
Surprise rattled me at his overt gratitude, and my heart melted that much more. “Of course.” I stroked my fingertips back and forth across his scarred flesh. “I might not have the luxury of being afraid of the dark, but I do understand feeling out of control. Chased by nightmares.”
“What nightmares have chased you?”
I searched for judgement in his tone, or condescension. But there was barely even curiosity. He wasn’t prying; he was searching for a distraction.
In all our days alone in the haven, we’d never crossed this line—the boundary between superficial conversation and our deepest secrets. But for his sake, I would expose everything I was if it made him feel less alone.
“I wasn’t born to this fury. I was born in the wild some ways west of here.
A child of two loving parents, I’m told.
I never got a chance to know them. The laws against vampires had been in effect for a while, and they’d spent their years hiding.
Moving from place to place, always staying out of sight.
Then my mom got pregnant, and they accepted that they needed to find somewhere to settle down.
Rumour reached them of the Gloaming Fury, so they came this way to seek refuge.
A few days after I was born, no more than a night away from safety, they were attacked.
I guess they had time to hide me and lead the hunters away, because when Thorn came to meet us at the arranged spot, I was the only survivor. ”
The pain of my loss was always there, but distant, my grief more for the stolen idea than for the reality. But Jael tightened his hold on me, drawing me closer. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “The point I was trying to make is that my life in the fury—it was chosen for me by my parents, by Thorn, by the former king for making all other options impossible. I carry the nightmare of what happened to my parents even though it’s a story I crafted in my head.
I carry the nightmare of knowing I’ll be in this place for the rest of my life, every day the same, my future laid out for me, with no choice, no change. ”
“You could always leave. Leave Golthwaine, I mean. There are countries where people wouldn’t loathe you on sight.”
“Like Soldara?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from my words.
He chuckled. “Maybe east isn’t the solution, no. But I’m sure there’s somewhere.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. But that would mean leaving Thorn. Leaving Cliff. And as much as I sometimes resent being stuck under a mountain, they’re my family.
It’s not so much that I want to leave as I want.
.. I don’t know. Something that’s mine? Something I chose instead of something that was chosen for me? I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
Jael was silent for a long while, his calloused fingers stroking the back of my arm that lay across his chest while the other played with my hair.
His chest rose and fell under my cheek, and I lost myself in the smell of him that reminded me of summer breezes and clear, flowing water.
I seared the memory into my mind to reach for later. After he was gone.
“King Leonine locked me in a storage room for six days,” he said, breaking the silence in a voice so quiet I wouldn’t have heard him if we hadn’t been lying so close together in the stillness.
“I don’t remember why. He has a foul temper and takes it out on his staff in different ways.
That day, drawing blood wasn’t enough for him, so he threw me away like garbage.
A dirty crawl space under the palace kitchen.
No room for me to stand up, barely room to lie down.
No light, no fresh air. Just the reek of rotten food and my own thoughts.
I heard people moving above me, getting meals ready, serving the king’s dishes, but no matter how loud I screamed, no one came for me.
By the time the king sent a servant to release me, I was starving, near dead for thirst, and the lights in the kitchen blinded me.
I vomited up my first meal and fell ill with fever for a week afterwards. I haven’t liked the dark ever since.”
I kept the rhythm of my fingertips across his skin steady. I’d sworn to stay, and I’d meant it.
“Did he often hurt you like that?” I asked softly, wanting him to know he could ignore my question if he wanted to.
He took hold of my wrist and trailed my fingers over the scars that lined his collar bones.
“I was the king’s musician. The one he called first to entertain him when he feasted.
I was also the first he punished when his evening didn’t meet his expectations.
The first time he scarred me was when I missed a note at dinner.
It wasn’t even an important dinner, just a regular night.
But the king was so angry, he marked me right there at the table with a knife he held over a candle.
The second time was because a visiting diplomat wrote the wrong terms on a trade deal and Leonine couldn’t take his rage out on the man himself.
The rest of them were more like that. Other people’s failings taken out on the musician who couldn’t fight back.
By the last one, I lost myself. I lost my music, my magic. ”
I thought of that blue sky again, the beauty of a day I never thought I’d see. “All these years, and you’ve never been able to summon it?”
He stroked my hair. “I suspect the shadows I live in are darker than yours, Kalia me. I might be able to live under the sun, but I can’t see it anymore. I don’t feel its warmth. It might as well be under constant cloud cover.”
The admission dislodged something in my soul. Some secret I’d been keeping to myself.
“I understand why you believe destroying him will give you peace. I won’t lie—right now I wouldn’t mind ripping his heart out, either.” His muscles twitched beneath my palm, and I picked up my gentle glide of fingertips across skin. “But do you ever worry it won’t help?”
“All the time,” he replied, his voice thick.
“I wish there was another way for you.” One where he didn’t need to kill the princess and guarantee a life of constant, endless violence until he met his end.
He didn’t say anything, and I blinked away the tears that threatened, not wanting them to fall. Once I was sure my throat was relaxed enough to speak again, I asked, “What was it you said to me the night we met? Lutrena? You said it was something about a song?”
His deep rumble of acknowledgement made me smile.
“Lutrena bredtha me,” he said. “My beautiful song. I recognized it the first time time I saw you. I didn’t understand why the sun and sky should have sent you to me, but I knew exactly what you were.
Lutrena fin me de presa mathrennen.” He repeated those words—the very first words I’d heard him say—so smoothly it was like they’d imprinted themselves on his mind. “My final song to guide me home.”
My heart clenched, and I knew if I didn’t move past this moment, I would succumb to grief. I guided my hand away from his scars and up to his face, turning him towards me.
“I’d love to bring some light back into your life, Jael. Just for tonight. If you’d let me.”
“No one else has in far too long,” he whispered, his breath warm across my lips. “Whatever magic you carry, I want nothing more than to soak in it. For tonight.”
For tonight. Because tomorrow... tomorrow that darkness we both lived in would shroud us forever.