Chapter 30 - Kalla
Kalla
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Although I’d been the one to push us onwards, Ria’s words stuck with me. They haunted my steps, looping around each other until they formed a cord that tangled around my throat and bound me to the hill where I’d turned my back on Jael.
Every metre I gained, that cord pulled tighter, cutting off my breath and drawing on memory after memory until my head was full of green eyes and bare chests and scars and whispers in the dark. Soft touches, kisses. Bright. Blue. Sky.
I thought of him the way I’d found him: barely lucid, blood trickling out the corner of his mouth, his soul halfway gone.
I thought of the way he’d stared at me when I’d crouched over him and the way my body had reacted to him, immediately drawn by the scent of his blood despite all the other bleeding corpses lying around him. As though he had called me to him.
Most vampires didn’t believe in fate. We stayed alive too long to think anything happened for some great reason. Life was messy. It was complicated. There were so many twisting vines of existence that it was inevitable those vines might overlap in unpredictable—even coincidental—ways.
And yet.
If Thorn hadn’t lectured me about looking for something beyond hunting and sent me off to think, if Cliff hadn’t shared his concerns about my empty life, if I hadn’t been determined to prove them wrong, I never would have stumbled across Jael that night.
From my current position, I found it hard to deny that the universe had brought us together.
Maybe only for this week and a half, but if that was the case, dammit, it wasn’t enough.
He’d made my every dream come true.
Now, thanks to that bloody, broken, beautiful fae, I had a gaping fucking Jael-shaped hole in my life that would never be filled, because where else would I find a gorgeous, passionate musician whose darkness played so well with mine?
A rock snuck under my foot, and I stumbled to catch my balance, rage flooding my body, pumping heat and ichor through my blood. I released a bellow of frustration and kicked the offending rock, sending it flying through the forest debris and leaving my two first toes throbbing.
Birch, Ria, and Cliff turned to stare at me.
“You okay?” Ria asked.
“No, I am not fucking okay.” I tore at my hair with another scream, then turned on my heel and started back the way we’d come.
“Where are you going?” Cliff called after me.
“To humiliate myself.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m going to throw myself at Jael’s feet and beg him not to kill the stupid fucking princess.”
Someone sighed, and I heard a rush of wind before my best friend stood in front of me. His tousled brown hair flew into his dark eyes, but his expression beneath the loose strands was pained. “You can’t, Kal. You know you can’t.”
“Why? Because of Thorn?”
Bitterness lay thick in my throat, and I didn’t bother to hide it. I loved Thorn for her passion and her dedication and for everything she’d taught me over the years, but I couldn’t put a halt on my life because of her or her rules.
Cliff locked eyes with me and waited until he was sure I was listening.
“Because he’s fae. He’s a creature of the sky.
Of the sun. We belong to the darkness and live under a mountain.
What are you hoping to get out of this? Because I don’t see it happening, and I’d hate to watch your heart break over false hopes. ”
I blinked away tears that I swore were from anger and not from having those hopes threatened.
“I’m not expecting him to come home with me”—dreaming, not expecting—“but I don’t want him to die.
None of you have to come with me, and I know I might not succeed—I might already be too late—but I have to try. ”
I pushed past Cliff and stomped over the exposed roots.
“Kalla—” he called, and I whipped back around.
“He showed me daylight, Cliff. His magic flared, and he changed my whole world. I saw blue sky. Green trees. The sun was right fucking there.”
Birch staggered where he stood, Ria gasped, and Cliff’s throat bobbed.
My best friend stared at me for another slow heartbeat.
“There they are,” a voice rumbled through the night.
We froze, and my heart leapt into my throat as Thorn, Twig, Grove, and Aspen stepped into view. Frustration bled through every line of our leader’s smooth, ancient face, and I braced for her to give the order to rip us apart where we stood.
“Good thinking with the bloodbliss root,” she said in greeting. “Your idea?”
I opened my mouth to take the blame, but since we’d been caught, lying seemed pointless. “Ria’s.”
Thorn glanced her way. “Very clever.”
Ria dropped her gaze, and Cliff edged closer to her, ready to protect her should the fury leader decide death was a suitable reward for that cleverness.
Thorn’s gaze returned to me. “Did you get what you wanted?”
By her tone, she knew I hadn’t, so I didn’t bother to reply.
“Was it worth it?”
If there had been any kind of accusation in her eyes, I didn’t know how I might have answered, but there was only curiosity.
Which meant the answer was simple. “Yes.”
Thorn dipped her chin in a nod. “Then my decision hasn’t changed.
If the fae choose to stay, they may. If they don’t, they die.
As for you, Kalla, your sentence has increased to one hundred years of no unsupervised wandering.
Also, the four of you wanted to protect these fae?
Consider it official. If they return with you, you lot are on constant, lifelong guard duty, ensuring they never leave and never reveal our location.
You’ll have the honour of being eternal babysitters, and it’ll be a miracle if you’re ever trusted with any other responsibility. ”
A weight dropped in my stomach. I could accept the consequences laid out for me. A hundred years, two hundred, it wouldn’t matter if Jael was with me. But to put the burden of my desires on my friends was another question. They were only here because of me.
But when I looked at Birch, his jaw was set with unshaken resolve. Ria smirked. “If it means eating food that actually tastes like food?” she said. “Protecting them would be my privilege.”
Thorn’s expression flickered with surprise.
And Cliff… My best friend’s eyes gleamed with understanding, and he kicked his head towards the path. “Go.” He reached for Ria’s hand and pulled her close. “Good luck.”
I looked at Thorn—at my family—frozen now that the possibility of seeking my future stood before me. Then I thought of the Soldaran guards standing around that carriage and Jael going up against them, and in another breath, I was running.
There was still a chance he wouldn’t choose to stay, still a chance he would choose to be an enemy of the fury, but if I could talk him out of attacking the princess, at least he’d be alive.
My muscles burned with the pace I kept and my lungs strained for air.
Branches snapped in my face, and blood streaked down my cheek from where I’d been attacked by foliage, but I didn’t care.
This very moment, Jael could be charging the camp.
Or he could be bleeding out on the grass while the fae fuckers packed up and fled, leaving him there to die.
I refused to believe he was already dead.
Even a whisper of the thought pushed me harder. I tasted blood—my own mixed with Jael’s—and dark spots danced in my vision. Faster. Faster. Come on, legs, move faster.
The hill where I’d left him came into view, and I tore up the incline, calves screaming, tears and sweat stinging my eyes.
I crested the top to find darkness below, and my next exhale stole my strength. Were they gone? Had I missed them?
Through the haze of my blurred vision, I spotted a single light in the distance. The campfire?
No, a lantern. A lantern moving away as the carriage hurried along the trail.
My heart stopped and my shaking legs threatened to give out. Had the rebels failed? Were they lying dead even now?
Filled with dread for what I’d find, I sprinted down the hill after the carriage.
Stones crunched behind me, and I whipped around to face the threat. My heart stopped when I found Jael standing in the middle of the trail. His emerald eyes, appearing almost black in the moonlight, were wide, and his lips parted in surprise.
“Kalia me?” His name for me came out in a near whisper, and a sob caught in my throat as I closed the distance between us and threw my arms around his neck.
“You’re still alive.”
“What are you doing here?”
I pulled back to look at him. “I came here to beg you not to go through with your plan. Don’t kill the princess.
Please. I—I want you to see the sun again.
I want you to feel its warmth. It doesn’t make sense—I don’t understand it—I hardly know you, but please, don’t throw your life away like this. ”
I didn’t know what I was saying, or even how I was saying it, pleading, choked up, barely able to see through the blur of tears. My palms rested on his armour, my fingers curling as though trying to twist into his shirt. I felt out of control, but I couldn’t let him go.
Jael’s eyes hardened, and he wrapped his fingers around my wrists. “I don’t want the sun,” he growled. “What has the sun ever given me?”
My pulse thudded in my ears as the hope that had carried me here drifted away. He’d already made up his mind to embrace the darkness, and I was making a fool out of myself by asking him to be anything but what he was. A rebel. A martyr.
I tried to pull my hands free and step away, but his grip on me tightened and he stroked his thumbs across the insides of my wrists.
“It’s the moon that’s given me everything, lutrena me.” Shock stilled me, and my stomach fluttered under the intensity of his gaze. “I don’t care if I never see the sun again as long as the moon is there. As long as you are there.”
He brushed my hair over my ear, slid one hand to my waist, and pulled me closer.
“I already made my decision and dealt with the consequences.” At his words, my gaze left his to drift over his shoulder.
Hethyr and Pimmin stood behind him. She was smiling, while Pimmin cast a disgusted look towards the ground.
I followed the direction of their stare and discovered Corban lying dead, a bloody hole in his chest.
“You—”
Jael scowled. “He’s the reason our ambush failed, the traitor.
” His eyes softened, and he caressed my cheek.
“Though maybe I should have thanked him before I killed him. If we hadn’t been attacked, I never would have met you.
” My breath caught, but he kept speaking, kept binding me tighter to his heart.
“The Coynfare can keep fighting for their country. I relinquish Soldara. My country, my revenge, my old life are behind me. As long as you allow me into yours. I choose you.”
The hopes that had risen and fallen and guided me and abandoned me returned now in a glow that made me wonder whether the sun had risen without my knowing it.
My smile pained my cheeks, but the evidence of my joy only made me smile wider.
“Are you sure? I live in a tiny nook under a mountain. I bathe in a dragon-heated hot spring and follow the orders of a cranky old vampire. I live with seventy-five other people with very few boundaries and no taste buds.”
His smile wasn’t as overt as mine, but his eyes shone bright enough that their green pierced the shadows. “I don’t want boundaries, and a long soak in a hot spring sounds like magic if I’m bathing with you. As for their taste buds, Hethyr and Pimmin will fix that within the week.”
“We will indeed,” Hethyr agreed.
“What do you think?” A flicker of uncertainty danced across Jael’s features. “I know I’m fae—and that I hurt you. You have every reason to hate me, but I swear—”
“How could I hate the sun?” I interrupted, trailing my fingers along the strong lines of his jaw and up over the points of his ears. “In a world of darkness, you brought me light, Jael.”
He flinched. “My magic isn’t fully back yet, I don’t know if I can—”
I cut him off again. “It’s not your magic. It’s you. You are my sun, Jael. For as long as I breathe, as long as you’re with me, my life will be brighter than it would ever be without you.”
A full smile widened his cheeks now, showing off a faint dimple on the left side. “Will your cranky old vampire leader slay us the moment we step foot under her mountain?”
I slid my arms around his neck and pursed my lips in thought. “She might stay her hand if you come bearing food.”
“Is it all right if I take the chance?”
The earnestness of his question melted my heart, and I twined my fingers through his white-blond hair. “You gave me the day. How can I deny you anything?”
“Dangerous words, Kalia me.” He bent his head, bringing his lips closer to mine. “Lutrena bredtha me.”
He kissed me, and I swore the night sky brightened again into colours I never knew existed in this world. Even if I never left my mountain again, with him, my world was bigger than it ever had been. The bars of my cage had been thrown open, and I could finally breathe.
As I sank into his hold, I closed my eyes and thanked the Fates for their games.