CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Frost-tipped pines towered on either side of the path, their ancient trunks wider than a man's embrace.
Weak sunlight filtered through their branches, casting dappled shadows across the needle-strewn ground.
The scent of resin hung in the air, sharp and clean, so different from Verdant Port's salt-heavy atmosphere.
There, the air had tasted of brine and decay, of too many lives pressed too close together.
Here, each breath was a knife of clarity, painful but purifying.
Footsteps quickened behind him, matching his pace. Kaine didn't need to turn to know who had joined him—the distinctive rhythm, the barely perceptible jingle of ice-steel charms woven into leather armor, the subtle scent of Northern pine oil used to waterproof boots and blades. Senna.
"You look terrible," she said by way of greeting, her voice pitched low enough that only he could hear. "The South doesn't agree with you."
Kaine glanced sideways at her. Senna's face revealed nothing, her features composed in the impassive mask Northern warriors were taught to wear from childhood. But her eyes—silver-gray as winter clouds—held something softer than her words suggested.
"Good to see you too," he replied. "I trust Frostforge has been quiet in our absence?"
"Quiet enough." She adjusted her stride to match his longer one. "Though there have been more Warden sightings along the coast. Nothing like what you found at Verdant Port, but... concerning."
They walked in silence for several paces, the distance between them filled with unspoken words.
Years of shared history, of expectations and disappointments, of paths that had once aligned and now ran parallel at best. Kaine focused on the rhythm of his steps, on controlling his breathing in the thin air, on anything but the woman beside him.
"I'm glad you're back," Senna said suddenly, her voice dropping even lower, losing its formal edge. The admission seemed torn from her, reluctant but sincere. "When Wolfe announced the fortress-whale mission... I was worried..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. They both knew the mortality rate for such missions approached certainty.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Kaine said.
Senna shrugged her shoulders in a manner that suggested disagreement; Kaine felt his spine stiffen.
Whatever lay between them now, Senna had once been the center of his world—or at least, the center of what his world was supposed to become.
They had been paired by tribal matchmakers in his sixteenth year, her fourteenth.
A good match, the elders had declared. Her father's prominence in the tribal council was balanced by his mother's ancient bloodline.
Both of them are skilled in Northern crafts, and both are strong enough to survive the Reaches' brutality.
They'd spent two years in each other's orbit, learning each other's ways, preparing for the joining ceremony that would bind their lives and bloodlines.
Then he'd killed his father.
The memory still burned like acid in his veins. The drunken rage that had been building for days. His father's hands on his mother's throat. The sound of his mother's gasping breaths. The single, terrible blow that had ended one life and irrevocably altered three others.
Five years in a Northern prison followed—five years of cold stone and colder silence, of learning to forge metal because working the bellows kept him warm, of wondering what had become of his brother, of Senna, of the life he'd been meant to live.
When he'd been transferred to Frostforge, he'd assumed Senna would want nothing to do with him.
A marriage to him would no longer signify status within the Reaches' society—in fact, it would make her a social pariah, just as he had become.
He had expected her cold shoulder, her disdain, perhaps even her hatred.
He had not expected her continued interest, her fierce protection of what she still viewed as hers. And he certainly hadn't expected her obvious jealousy when Thalia entered his life.
Kaine glanced at her now, noting the new scar that bisected her left eyebrow, the tightness around her mouth that hadn't been there before.
Senna had grown harder in his absence, more contained.
Or perhaps she had always been this way, and he simply hadn't noticed, too caught up in tribal expectations and traditions to see the person beneath them.
"You're thinking about her," Senna said, her voice flat. “Aren’t you?”
"I'm thinking about a lot of things," Kaine replied, neither confirming nor denying. His feelings about Senna were too complex, too bound up in his checkered past to ever be fully investigated. Especially now, with worry for Thalia gnawing at his insides like a starving wolf.
"She's resourceful," Senna said after a moment. "Greenspire. Reckless, but resourceful." The words seemed to cost her something; each one was pulled from deep within. "If anyone can survive whatever's out there, it's her."
The unexpected support caught Kaine off guard. He studied Senna's profile, searching for some hint of mockery or deceit, but found only resignation beneath her stoic expression.
“How did you know?” he said eventually. “That Thalia—”
Senna snorted. “That Greenspire commandeered your mission? Please. You’re back here, she’s not, and neither are Redwood and that stormspawn. I can guess exactly how this went down.”
"I tried to order her to return to Frostforge," he admitted, the words falling from him like stones. "I pulled rank. Told her it was for her own safety."
Senna's bark of laughter startled a nearby bird from its perch. "And how did that work out for you?"
Kaine's lips twisted in a humorless smile. "About as well as you'd expect."
"You're an idiot," Senna said, but there was no heat in the words. "Greenspire doesn't take orders—she never has, if you’ve been paying attention. Not from Maven, not from Wolfe, certainly not from you." She shook her head. "You should have asked her. Given her a choice."
The simple truth of it struck Kaine like a physical blow.
He should have known better. Should have recognized that Thalia would never respond to commands, to being sidelined or protected.
She'd spent her entire life fighting to prove herself, to carve out space in a world that tried to diminish her.
Of course, she would reject any attempt to push her aside, no matter how well-intentioned.
"You're right," he said, the admission easier than he'd expected. "I was an idiot."
Senna's eyebrow arched in surprise at his ready agreement. "Well," she said after a moment, "at least you're learning."
***
Kaine's footsteps echoed against the stone corridors of Frostforge's eastern wing, each sound amplified in the pre-dawn stillness.
Sleep had eluded him since his return, his mind too full of vanishing islands and Thalia's absence to find rest. The documents recovered from the Warden ship lay heavy in his satchel, their secrets pressing against his side like a physical weight.
Without Roran's fluency in the Warden tongue, translation would be arduous—but not impossible. Not with the right help.
He paused before a weathered oak door, one of many identical entrances lining the dormitory corridor.
The quarters Thalia shared with Luna and Ashe when not deployed on missions.
His knuckles hesitated against the wood, a flicker of doubt passing through him.
It was early—too early for most of Frostforge's inhabitants.
But Luna Meadows had always kept different hours than most, her peculiar habits a subject of mild fascination among her peers.
He knocked, three sharp raps that felt too loud in the quiet hallway.
Seconds stretched into a minute before the door cracked open, revealing Luna's face—alert despite the hour, her dark eyes already cataloging everything from his posture to the satchel at his hip. She didn’t seem surprised to see him, but then, Luna never seemed surprised.
“Kaine," she said, none of the performative distraction she sometimes affected for strangers present in her voice. "You look like you haven't slept in days."
"I haven't," he admitted. "Are you on duty this morning?"
Luna leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Guard shift on the plateau in an hour. Why?"
"I need your help." Kaine glanced down the corridor, then lowered his voice. "Find someone to cover for you."
Luna's eyebrows rose, interest kindling in her gaze. "That serious, is it?" She studied him for a moment longer, then nodded. "I'll ask Brynn. She owes me a favor." Her eyes narrowed. "What's going on?"
In answer, Kaine reached into his satchel and withdrew one of the scrolls, allowing her a glimpse of the angular Warden script. Luna's breath caught, her casual posture vanishing as she straightened.
"Are those—"
"Documents recovered from a captured Warden ship at Verdant Port," he confirmed, returning the scroll to his satchel. "They need to be translated fully and quickly. With Roran gone..." He left the implication hanging between them.
Luna's face transformed, the last traces of sleepiness vanishing beneath a sudden, sharp focus.
"Give me ten minutes to find Brynn and change.
" Her lips curved into a genuine smile—rarer than most realized.
"Gods, something actually consequential.
I've been bored out of my skull on guard shifts since your mission left. "
Before she could close the door, Kaine added quietly, "I also have something you should know… about your father."
Luna arched an eyebrow, unsurprised.
"Based on what we could gather, it seems he left Verdant Port before the Wardens arrived," Kaine said. "He seems to have fled, probably anticipating trouble."