Chapter 9 Elle
Elle
I couldn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the construct blooming from the inside out.
Saw the circle of death Kaelren had created.
My shoulder throbbed where the construct’s claws had raked me during our patrol earlier—three parallel cuts that had healed on the surface thanks to the shining threads in my blood, but still ached deep in the muscle.
My ribs on the left side protested when I moved, bruised from when I’d slammed into a tree trying to dodge the second construct.
Various smaller cuts decorated my arms from the thorns I’d manifested too wildly, not yet used to having weapons growing from my own skin.
The marks at my collarbones pulsed with each heartbeat.
They’d grown slightly more vibrant during the fight, the golden vines at my collarbones seeming to glow from within, but they hadn’t spread beyond their original boundaries.
At this rate, I wondered how long before they would begin their inevitable creep across more of my skin.
Would that be so bad? The thought wasn’t entirely mine. The Root speaking, maybe, or just my transformation.
I sat up, giving up on sleep. The camp was quiet except for whoever was on watch—probably Kaelren, because apparently the man never slept.
I needed air. The tent felt suffocating, the forest’s whispers pressing in from all sides.
I emerged to find I was right—Kaelren sat by the dying fire, silver eyes scanning the darkness with the focused intensity of someone who’d spent years waiting for attacks that eventually came.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked without looking at me, though I knew he’d tracked my movements from the moment I left my tent.
“The forest is too loud.” I moved closer to the fire, drawn by its warmth and the one person who seemed immune to the overwhelming presence of all this living wood.
“It’s completely quiet.” He glanced at me then, one eyebrow raised. “I can barely hear anything beyond the fire.”
“Not to me. Every root, every leaf—they’re all talking at once.
Communicating in ways I’m only just starting to understand.
” I rubbed my temples, where a dull ache had taken up residence.
“It’s like trying to sleep in the middle of a crowded room where everyone’s talking directly into your ear simultaneously. ”
“Sounds like hell,” he said flatly, and I appreciated that he didn’t try to minimize it.
“Pretty much. Not everything can be fixed by just powering through it, you know.” I sat on a log across from him, maintaining careful distance. The fire crackled between us, sending sparks dancing into the darkness.
“No. But complaining about it doesn’t make it stop either.” He stirred the fire with a stick. “You adapt or you break. Those are the options.”
“Wow. Inspirational. You should write greeting cards.” I watched the flames dance, remembering nights back home when the biggest concern was whether I’d remembered to lock the car.
“Back home, I had this white noise fan. Ancient thing, sounded like a jet engine preparing for takeoff, drove my neighbors insane. But somehow it helped me sleep—just one constant sound to drown everything else out.” I gestured at the forest around us.
“Here, every single leaf has an opinion it wants to share, and they’re all sharing them at once. ”
“Sounds peaceful,” he said, and the dryness in his tone made it clear he understood exactly how not-peaceful it was.
“Oh, extremely. Very zen, having a thousand plants whispering commentary about everything. Even my bedroll has started trying to grow roots into me while I sleep, which is just fantastic for my already deteriorating mental state.”
He actually looked at me then, attention fully focused. “Your bedroll is growing roots?”
“Small ones. Thin as hair, but definitely roots. I think it likes me. Or it’s trying to absorb me slowly. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.” I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. “Welcome to my life—where even the furniture is becoming sentient and possibly carnivorous.”
“Burn it. Get a new one.” He said it like the solution was obvious.
“The realm will just make the new one sentient, too. Everything here is alive. I’m starting to think that’s the point—I’m supposed to get comfortable with being constantly surrounded by things that are aware of me.”
Silence settled between us, heavier than before. In the distance, something howled—long and mournful and definitely not from any Earth species I’d ever heard.
“You saved me today,” I said quietly, needing to acknowledge it even if he’d dismiss it. “With the construct. When it got past my defenses.”
“You would have managed. The healing was already starting before I intervened.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.” I met his eyes across the fire. “It was too fast, and I was too slow. I froze.” I hated admitting weakness, but he deserved honesty. “You used your corruption to destroy it. I saw how much it spread after—that’s accelerating your decline, isn’t it?”
“Probably.” He didn’t sound particularly concerned about it. “But you being dead would have been inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient. Right.” I tried not to let that sting. “Well, thanks for preventing my inconvenient death.”
“Don’t mention it.” His carved marks pulsed with dark light, and I felt a corresponding warmth in my own. That connection we kept pretending didn’t exist, humming between us like a string pulled taut.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked, shifting the subject with all the subtlety of a battering ram.
“Besides the botanical chorus singing the song of their people directly into my consciousness? I keep thinking about tomorrow. About what’s coming, about the Crown forces, about how many different ways this could go catastrophically wrong.
” I stared into the fire. “Hard to sleep when your brain won’t stop cataloging potential disasters. ”
“Worrying doesn’t change the outcome. Just makes you more tired when the disaster actually arrives.”
“Says the man who never sleeps because he’s always watching for threats that might materialize from the shadows.” I gestured at his vigil. “How is what I’m doing different from what you’re doing?”
“I’m doing something about it. You’re just spinning in circles inside your own head.” He leaned back, shadows playing across the sharp angles of his face. “There’s a difference between preparation and panic.”
“And what I’m doing is panic?”
He studied me for a moment. “What you’re doing is human. Doesn’t make it useful, but it’s understandable.”
Despite everything—the danger, the exhaustion, the fear—I almost smiled at the backhanded acceptance. “You know, back home my ex used to say—” I stopped, suddenly aware of what I was about to do. Why was I bringing up Julian? What was wrong with me?
“Your ex?” Something sharpened in his voice, an edge I couldn’t quite identify. “The lawyer?”
“You remember that?”
“I remember most things. Especially the things people say when they think I’m not listening.” He stirred the fire again, sending sparks flying. “You’ve mentioned him before. Multiple times.”
“Have I?” I tried for casual and failed.
“You talk when you’re nervous. I’ve noticed.” He leaned back slightly. “Apparently you say a great deal when you’re asleep, too.”
“I do not—” I paused, remembering mornings where the crew had looked at me strangely. “Oh god. Fine. What else have I said in my sleep that I should be mortified about?”
“That he thought you were too much. Too intense, too dramatic, too invested in things that didn’t matter.
That you needed to be controlled, shaped into something more appropriate.
” His voice was matter-of-fact, but I caught something underneath.
“That you spent two years trying to be smaller, quieter, less.”
Great. Apparently, I’d been having therapy sessions unconsciously. “Can we please forget I said anything? I’d like to retain some dignity.”
“Difficult, considering how much you talk. Both conscious and unconscious commentary.” He met my eyes. “Your ex sounds like he was an idiot.”
That startled me enough that I laughed. “Wow. Don’t hold back.”
“Why would I? It’s true.” He said it with the same casualness as commenting on the weather. “Anyone who tried to make you smaller was working against your nature. Doomed to failure from the start.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stood, wrapping my arms around myself. The night was cool, but the marks kept me surprisingly warm, like I carried summer underneath my skin.
“The Crown patrol,” I said, needing to shift to something tactical, something less personal. “Tomorrow. What are our real chances of getting out of this intact?”
“Slim.” He didn’t soften it, didn’t dress it up. Just truth, stark and honest.
“That’s it? Just ‘slim’? No percentage, no strategic assessment, no contingency planning?”
“We’re outnumbered, you’re still learning control, and they have resources we don’t. We might get lucky. Probably won’t.” He stood as well, and I was suddenly very aware of how tall he was, how the firelight cast shadows across the sharp angles of his face. “But we’ve survived worse odds before.”
“Maybe a little encouragement wouldn’t kill you. Just a small amount of false hope to get through the night.”
“False hope gets people killed. I’d rather you go in scared and sharp than confident and careless.” His voice was harsh, but I was starting to understand that was how he showed he cared—brutal honesty instead of comfortable lies. “Fear keeps you alive. Hope just makes the disappointment hurt more.”
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told. Frequently.” Almost a smile, there and gone. “Usually right before people try to kill me.”
I started back toward my tent, exhaustion finally winning over anxiety. But at the entrance, I paused, looking back at him silhouetted against the firelight.
“Why did you save me today? Really? Not the tactical answer about me being the marked one and strategically important. The real reason.”