Chapter 17 Elle #2
“Almost took your head off,” Sarnyx corrected.
“Would have, too, if you weren’t so damn fast. We fought for twenty minutes before he finally pinned me.
I was waiting for the killing blow—figured I’d die trying to save my village.
Instead, he explained who he was. A rebel.
Someone fighting against the Crown that had been stealing from us for years. ”
“She’s been my second ever since,” Kaelren finished. “Best decision I ever made, even if she did nearly cave in my skull.”
“Your turn,” Bryx said, looking at me after the laughter died down. “Tell us about your grandmother. The one who started all this.”
I hadn’t planned to. I sat there trying to control my breathing, willing the tears to not break through at the thought of how much I missed her. But surrounded by their stories, by their trust, the words came anyway.
“She used to garden in the moonlight,” I began. “My grandmother. She’d wait until after midnight, when the neighbors were asleep, and she’d go out in her nightgown with this old trowel and just… talk to the plants. Like they were people.”
“Did they talk back?” Bryx asked, genuinely curious for once.
“I thought she was losing it,” I admitted. “Grief does that, right? Makes you a little unhinged. But now…” I gestured at my glowing marks. “Now I wonder if she heard them the same way I do. If she knew what I’d become.”
“She knew,” the Sage said softly. “Josephine knew exactly what you’d inherit. Why do you think she ran away from this world?”
“And yet you’re here anyway,” Kaelren observed. “Destiny, or just bad luck?”
“Maybe both,” Peeble chimed in from my shoulder. “Though if we’re ranking bad luck, Elle’s really cornered the market. Falls into murder realm, immediately gets marked for cosmic doom, finds the one guy in Wynmire who’s emotionally constipated—”
“I’m not emotionally constipated,” Kaelren said flatly.
“You’re seventy percent repression and thirty percent murder instinct wrapped in a very attractive package of doom.”
“That’s not—” He paused. “Actually, that’s depressingly accurate.”
Everyone laughed, even Sarnyx, and the sound echoed warmly off the breathing walls.
“Your turn, murder prince,” Bryx said, gesturing at Kaelren. “Tell us something we don’t know. Something that doesn’t involve you being terrifying.”
“I’m always terrifying.”
“Try anyway.”
Kaelren was quiet for a long moment, his hand still wrapped around mine. Through our bond, I felt him weighing what to share, testing the words before speaking them.
“I had a brother,” he finally said, his voice colder than before—distance as armor. “Before the marks. Before everything went to hell.”
The room went silent. Even Peeble stopped buzzing.
“Older or younger?” I asked gently.
“Younger. By two years.” Kaelren’s jaw tightened, but his voice remained flat, emotionless. “Therin. He was everything I wasn’t. Warm. Easy to love. The kind of person who made things better just by existing in the same room.”
“What happened to him?” Nimor asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer wouldn’t be good.
“The marks happened,” Kaelren said simply.
“When I tried to take the power, when I carved these into my skin, the corruption didn’t just affect me.
It spread. Therin tried to stop me, grabbed my arm right as I completed the final mark.
” His free hand moved to his carved marks, tracing them without expression.
“The corruption jumped to him. Instantly. Ate through him in seconds—not slowly like it’s doing to me, but fast. Violent. He screamed once. Then he was gone.”
Through the bond I felt the chasm of grief beneath the words, but his face revealed nothing.
“That’s why you’re so desperate to fix this,” Eltrien said quietly. “Not just for yourself. For him.”
“I made him a promise,” Kaelren replied. “That I’d make the marks work. That his death wouldn’t be meaningless. Every day I fail is another day I’ve broken that promise. Another day he stays dead for nothing.”
I squeezed his hand, not knowing what else to offer.
“Well this took a dark turn,” Peeble said after a moment, their voice uncharacteristically subdued. “Anyone want to hear about the time I accidentally started a war between two hives by insulting both queens’ honey-making techniques?”
There was a collective groan from the group, but that didn’t deter the overly eccentric beetle.
Peeble launched into an elaborate tale involving diplomatic honey, very offended queen bees, and what they called “the Great Pollination Incident.” It was completely ridiculous, probably half-fabricated, and exactly what we needed.
The stories continued flowing—lighter now, safer.
Bryx described the dryad who’d chased him through half a dozen territories in increasingly creative attempts at seduction.
Sarnyx told about a hunt that had ended with her prey outsmarting her so thoroughly she’d recruited them instead.
Even Nimor shared about his first attempt at shadow-walking, which had resulted in him getting stuck halfway between states for a week.
I felt myself relaxing, the tension from the battle finally starting to unwind. The Root-resonance of the monastery thrummed through me, steady and soothing. My marks had settled to a gentle amber glow, no longer threatening to tear me apart.
“Elle’s falling asleep,” Vashael observed with a smile.
I tried to protest, but a yawn ambushed me. “No, I’m fine. Keep going.”
“You’re barely upright.” Kaelren’s voice wasn’t gentle. “You need actual rest.”
“But…”
“Sleep, child. You’ve earned it,” the Sage assured me.
My eyes were already closing. Through the pleasant haze of exhaustion, I felt Kaelren shift beside me. Then strong arms slid under my knees and back, lifting me as easily as if I weighed nothing.
“I can walk,” I mumbled against his chest, though I made no move to prove it.
“You can barely stand,” he replied with slight amusement in his voice. “Stop arguing.”
He carried me through the monastery, his footsteps soft on the living floor. I felt him navigate turns, felt the air change as we entered a different chamber. Warmer here. Quieter.
Then I was being lowered onto something impossibly soft—moss, I thought distantly, or maybe the wood had simply chosen to be gentle. A blanket settled over me, smelling faintly of pine and that particular scent that was just Kaelren.
“Stay,” I whispered, not quite awake enough to be embarrassed.
“I wasn’t planning on leaving,” he said, and I felt him settle beside me, close enough that I could feel his warmth.
The last thing I registered before sleep claimed me completely was his hand finding mine in the darkness, our fingers interlacing, the bond between us humming softly.
Safe. For now, I was safe.
I stood in a garden stitched together from pure magic.
But calling it a garden was like calling the ocean a puddle. This was Wynmire distilled to its purest essence—every impossible wonder, every breathtaking beauty, every magical absurdity concentrated into a dreamscape that made my chest ache with how magnificent it was.
The trees weren’t just trees—they were living sculptures of light and shadow, their trunks spiraling upward in impossible helices.
Their leaves weren’t green but every color imaginable, shifting and shimmering like oil on water.
Some branches grew downward, their roots reaching for the sky.
Others simply floated, untethered by anything as mundane as physics.
Streams that resembled flowing honey mixed with morning dew cut through pathways of petrified flowers, their movement thrumming like roots seeking water.
Fish made of pure luminescence swam upstream, leaving trails of phosphorescence in their wake.
And above—gods, above—the sky was a kaleidoscope of every sunset and sunrise that had ever existed, layered over each other in impossible beauty.
“We really need to stop meeting like this,” Kaelren’s voice came from behind me, and I could hear the dark amusement in it. “People will talk.”
I turned, and he was… different. The weight of his failures momentarily lifted. His carved marks glowed with silver-blue light instead of their usual corruption-black, and his eyes—his eyes were actually warm.
“Let them talk,” I shot back, grinning. “Besides, this is my dream. I can do whatever I want.”
“Our dream,” he corrected, stepping closer. He was dressed in something that looked like raven feathers woven seamlessly together, practical but somehow elegant. “You pulled me here. Just like you pulled the monastery’s resonance to stabilize yourself. You’re getting stronger.”
“Did I?” I looked down and realized I was wearing a dress made of living flowers—petals that bloomed and shifted with each breath, vines that wrapped around my waist like a belt. “Huh. Subconscious fashion choices.”
“It suits you.” His eyes traveled over me with an intensity that made my skin warm. “Very ‘forest deity who could destroy you but might kiss you instead.’”
“That’s specific.”
“I’m a man of specific tastes.”
Before I could respond, something bright blue zoomed past my head, leaving a trail of glittering dust. I turned to see a dragonfly the size of a cat hovering nearby, its wings creating miniature rainbows with each beat.
“Okay, that’s adorable,” I said.
“Wait until you see the rest.” Kaelren held out his hand. “Come on. If we’re going to be trapped in a magical fever dream, we might as well enjoy it.”
I took his hand, and the moment our fingers touched, the world shifted.
We were standing on the edge of a clearing filled with mushrooms—not the normal kind, but massive toadstools the size of houses, glowing with bioluminescent patterns that pulsed like heartbeats.
Some were as tall as trees, their caps broad enough to use as platforms. Others clustered in groups, creating natural steps and ramps between levels.
“No,” I said, immediately understanding what he was suggesting. “Absolutely not.”