Chapter Two #2
Thunder rumbled again, distant this time. The storm was moving north. Kairen studied the envoy one last time—the calmness in her eyes fighting the flicker of fear she refused to show.
Too composed.
Too clean for his world.
He turned away. “There’s an old ruin half a league east. You’ll find shelter there. Stay until daylight, then head back to your prince and tell him his borders are bleeding.”
“And you?” she asked.
“I don’t take orders from princes—or envoys.”
She stepped after him. “You saved my life. That makes this a shared problem, whether you like it or not.”
He paused; shoulders tense. “You think I need company?”
“I think you need someone who can help you navigate the political consequences of what you’ve just done. And I need someone who can keep me alive through it.”
He looked over his shoulder, rain dripping from his dark hair. “You’re remarkably calm for someone standing in a graveyard.”
“I’ve had practice.”
Her composure annoyed him. No one should look that unruffled with a corpse at her feet.
The rain dwindled to a mist by the time they began moving.
Kairen walked ahead, cloak heavy with water, keeping the rhythm of his steps steady so she could follow without complaint.
The envoy’s soft boots squelched against the mud, but she neither stumbled nor asked for rest. He had to grant her that much—she didn’t wilt under pressure.
The wind followed him still, teasing the edges of the storm. He could have sent it away, but the lingering current steadied him, kept the restless thing in his blood caged.
~
They reached the ruins an hour before dawn—an arch of stone nearly swallowed up by vines, rising from the earth like the spine of some half-buried beast. The Hollowwood pressed close, trees bending inward as if to listen.
Kairen pushed open the gate, the wards long since broken. The temple had been old when the Four Kingdoms were young. Shifter runes still traced the walls, dulled by time, but not erased.
Adira stepped past him, eyes wide with cautious wonder. “This place is… alive.”
“It remembers.”
“Remembers what?”
“Before the rise of the Four Kingdoms, there were people who could take two shapes. Human and beast both. They vanished long ago. The Hollowwood was theirs.”
She turned to him. “And you? What are you, Kairen Vale?”
He hated the question, but her voice held no mockery—only quiet curiosity.
“Something to be feared,” he said at last. “A failed experiment of the mage your prince is courting.”
Her expression didn’t twist in disgust, as he’d expected. Instead, she studied him as if he were a puzzle she intended to solve.
“Why help us, then? Why save a Sunvaaran envoy when our prince wants to work with Rindais?”
Kairen leaned against a pillar, folding his arms. “Because you can still be saved.”
That earned him silence. The rain dripped steadily from the temple eaves.
He watched her move through the ruin—graceful, deliberate, fingers brushing the carved runes without touching the power beneath. She carried herself like someone used to being overlooked and yet determined not to vanish.
He busied himself setting a ward circle near the altar, his fingers tracing sigils into the dust. “We’ll rest here until sunrise. Then you can decide whether you still want to walk deeper into this mess.”
“And you?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t look up. “I don’t get to decide. My fate was chosen for me.”
~
Over the next half an hour, Kairen watched as Adira dispatched her guards with short, efficient commands. Only three men had survived from the original five. She sent two to dig graves for the rest, while the other went to salvage what he could from their supplies.
When they returned, dripping with rain water and miserable with the cold, she sighed.
“Now that the hard part is done, you must return home. You have seen me past the border, now you must return to report all that has happened here.” She narrowed her eyes at the guards.
“Don’t forget to tell the Crown Prince that Rindais and his wards were responsible for our comrades’ deaths.
You must tell the prince that Rindais is not to be trusted. ”
The guards shuffled their feet. “It was those damned bandits—”
“The wards incapacitated us,” Adira said sharply. “The Magelord knew we were coming, and he laid a trap for us. To what end, I cannot guess.”
The guards said nothing, but it was obvious to Kairen that they didn’t agree with their envoy’s assessment. Interesting. Given that Sunvaara had sent a female envoy, he’d thought that they’d moved past discrimination against the female gender. Evidently not.
Or maybe this Crown Prince that Adira Sharma spoke of was different, he thought sourly. Kairen noticed that she certainly gave the prince her loyalty without question.
Whatever the guards thought, they kept their opinions to themselves and obeyed Adira. In another ten minutes, they were gone and he was alone with the envoy again. With a sigh, Adira found a dry spot near the wall and sat, exhaustion seemingly catching up with her.
Kairen settled opposite her, cross-legged, watching the rain drip through the broken ceiling. The scent of damp stone mingled with the faint metallic tang of Rindais’s wards still clinging to his senses.
After a moment, she broke the silence. “You’re injured.”
“Not your concern.”
“It will be if you collapse before dawn.” She shifted, drawing her cloak tighter around her shivering form.
“You’re a witness to the attack on an envoy from Sunvaara.
You know Rindais. Your help would be invaluable to us.
” She smiled, almost reluctantly. “I don’t want to have to drag you back to the border. ”
His mouth twitched. “You could try.” Leave aside the fact that he’d die before he was another’s pawn again.
“I’ve negotiated truces between men who’ve hated each other for generations. I think I could manage one stubborn mage.”
There it was again—that composure, that maddening confidence. He should have been irritated. Instead, he felt the faint stirring of something he hadn’t felt in years: amusement.
“You talk too much,” he said.
“And you avoid the truth too much.”
He almost laughed then. “Careful, envoy. You’re straying into dangerous territory.”
She met his gaze evenly. “So are you.”
For a moment the air thickened between them—not magic, not yet, but awareness. Her eyes reflected the torchlight like molten bronze.
Kairen looked away first.
Adira’s voice broke the silence. “Those wards…they didn’t attack us until I got down from the carriage. That suggests intent. That kind of magic doesn’t exist, according to everything we know.” She paused. “It shouldn’t exist.”
He didn’t look back. “Rindais has access to magic you couldn’t imagine. And he’s bent on creating still more.”
Her tone sharpened. “More magic?”
Kairen almost laughed. “You know nothing of this place, and they still sent you here?”
“I’m a diplomat, not a mage,” she replied evenly. “But I learn quickly.”
Of course she did.
“The Hollowwood is place that lies on the border,” he said, “Between Telluria and Sunvaara. Between the living world and what’s left of the gods’ magic. Rindais believes he can make it bleed to feed his experiments. He’s wrong.”
“And you would know.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. Her face was pale but resolute, the torchlight flickering against her cheekbones. “I know more than you can guess,” he said. He saw her pursed lips and sighed. “Go on, ask what you really want to ask.”
“You know him. Rindais.”
He almost smiled, but there was no humor in it. “I knew him. Once. Long enough to learn that genius is only madness wearing a crown.”
“Then you can help me. I must complete my mission.”
“You said yourself that Rindais is not to be trusted,” he snapped.
She laughed, as if caught off guard. “This is politics,” she said scornfully.
“Nobody trusts anybody, even if they are allies. Besides, I almost expected this ambush.” She shook her head, looking at him almost pityingly.
“We cannot eschew an alliance with a powerful partner simply because he is distrustful.”
“Rindais attacked you!” he said, unable to believe his ears. “He killed your men! That is more than being distrustful, that is being untrustworthy.” He shook his head. “You don’t know what Rindais is capable of.”
“And you speak as if you do,” she countered.
“I am what he’s capable of.” He let his inhuman nature peek through, felt his features twist and his eyes catch fire.
Her breath caught. He turned away before she could speak again.
“Do you still want to meet Rindias?”
The words hung between them like smoke.
“Yes,” she finally said firmly. “I must. It is my job.”
And didn’t he remember what it was like?
That unshakeable trust that the task he had been set was important, that he had to stay loyal to his master, because otherwise it had all been for naught.
All his sleepless nights, all the doubts he’d silenced, the conscience he’d lulled into complacency—they had to mean something, otherwise what was the use of anything he'd done so far?
Adira Sharma still trusted the Crown Prince, still thought that the task she had been set was honorable.
He didn’t have the time to wait around until she learned the truth for herself.
But he couldn’t let her walk into danger completely unprepared.
“Sleep, envoy,” he said gruffly. “Tomorrow, we talk about how to keep you alive long enough to finish whatever suicidal errand your prince sent you on.”
She smiled faintly, settling back against her satchel. “I’ll take that as agreement.”
He cursed under his breath. How did he get stuck with such a stubborn woman?
The storm outside softened to a murmur, as if listening to their silence.
A long while later, as dawn broke over the horizon, Kairen stood at the threshold of the ruins, the wind cool against his face. He looked down at his hands—scarred, strong, too steady for what they’d done. The amulet at his wrist glowed faintly, the pulse within it syncing to his own.
Behind him, Adira slept beneath the flicker of the wardlight, her breathing even.
For a moment he let himself believe that the quiet might last. Then he caught the scent of something wrong on the breeze—blood and corrupted magic, faint but unmistakable, drifting from the west.
He closed his eyes. So it began again.