Chapter 19
Evie
The smell of ash reached my nostrils. I was on the ground, knees and palms in the dirt, eyes closed. Silence wrapped the world.
I opened my eyes. My vision steadied, and the searing pain in my shoulder began to fade, though my head still rang and my skin still burned where the vines had struck.
What had just happened? Ash drifted around me like snow. Behind me, the creature was gone, its body scattered into pale dust across the floor.
I lifted my head toward Kael’s last known position, and our eyes met. He looked at me with startled wonder, lips parted, lightning crackling faintly around his hand and arm. Then, with a slow clench of his fist, the bolts sank back into his skin, and a strange calm fell over him.
His eyes were lighter. His features, softer.
“What happened?” I asked, pushing myself upright.
He stepped closer, careful, curious. “I didn’t know it was possible…” His voice was low, like he spoke half to himself.
He came so near I felt his breath, cool and mint-laced, brush my cheek. His hands found my face, and for a heartbeat I thought he meant to kiss me. Instead, his gaze searched me, my face, my neck, the scar…
“It struck you,” he murmured, “and you sent it back.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I unleashed a bolt,” he said quietly. “It should have hit you dead on, but you reflected it. It struck me in the chest.”
My lips parted. If he were right, I had no idea how I’d done it.
Those were no seerling powers I knew.
“Did it hurt?” I wondered.
He gave a short laugh, eyes bright with disbelief. “No. It felt… good.” A pause. His brow furrowed, his voice dipping to a near whisper. “Calming, even.” He seemed confused, as if the word didn’t fit.
A sudden pulse of longing rippled through me, echoes of the wild hunger to finish what we had started in the woods.
It throbbed between my thighs, desire calling from low in my belly.
Him standing this close was enough to awaken every dangerous memory of his touch, every warning that he could shatter me without effort.
But he released me instead, turning to scan the desolation. “Is this what you’ve been chasing these past weeks?”
I exhaled hard, grounding myself. “Yeah. It all comes from higher up the mountain—some kind of blight. And those creatures we fought? They’re proof it’s escalating. I’m afraid—”
A shift of movement behind him cut my words short. Kael spun, drawing a dagger from beneath his shoulder cloak. A flash of red, a hiss of steel, the dagger met the edge of an elven sword, then fell to the ground with a muffled thud.
The tip of the blade came to rest beneath Kael’s chin. Its wielder, a woman elf with long, braided red hair and tanned brown leathers, stared at him, anger burning in her green eyes.
She was slim and athletic, a forest-green cloak clasped to her cuirass, a quiver crossing her chest, and a bow hooked at her back.
Golden-brown skin gleamed beneath the light, and dark vine tattoos curled along her face, marking her as one of the Forest Fae, the wood elves.
High cheekbones sculpted her into the kind of beauty only their kind possessed.
I could not guess her age. She looked no older than me, yet she might have seen a hundred winters.
Then, her expression shifted. Recognition softened her gaze. She lowered the blade and smiled. So did Kael.
“Bror…” she breathed, voice warm and tremulous. She stepped close, wrapped one arm around his shoulders, and pressed her forehead to his. “What are you doing here?”
Concern shadowed his face. “What happened, systr?”
Panic flickered across hers. “The darkness came to Vall?ne. In one night, it killed many and burned the homes. We fled to the caves.”
“Where is Mauriel?”
“Mother is dead, Kael.”
Kael hissed sharply through his teeth. He lifted his gaze to the sky, jaw tightening, fury trembling through him. He cursed the forest, the mountains, the gods that had abandoned them all.
I stood like an invisible bystander, watching as if through glass. Questions crowded my throat, but none seemed mine to ask. Seeing him stricken like this, grief laid bare, pulled something deep inside me taut. I wanted to touch him, to steady him, but the moment was too fragile, too foreign.
Then his eyes found me, as if he’d just remembered I existed. “Evangelina,” he said, motioning toward the elf. “This is Naila, my sister.”
Sister?
Kael had an elven sister?
The questions crashed through my thoughts like a storm, each louder than the last.
Naila gave me a graceful nod before sheathing her sword. “We should not linger here. Night comes fast. Follow me to the caves. It is safe there.”
Kael inclined his head, and we followed her into the woods, silent as ghosts.
He whistled once, and Grison came loping through the trees to his side.
They walked together as though this forest still remembered them.
I realized then that I would not be returning to Befest tonight. It was too far. Too perilous.
Through the thick weave of poplars and cedars, Kael’s hand stayed clenched.
I could feel his anger coursing like thunder through his veins.
Perhaps the lightning mark had bound us, tethered our senses in ways words couldn’t.
I couldn’t explain it, just like I couldn’t yet explain whatever had happened in that blighted village.
Night had fallen by the time we reached a lake bluer than the skies of Sud. We had circled the mountain pass and descended the far side of the hills, into a valley carved long ago by ice. A river wound through its heart, leading us to its source, a lake fringed by a scatter of caves.
Torchlight flickered from within the rock.
Voices drifted through the night, low and musical, speaking in Elvish I could not follow.
Kael walked ahead toward a makeshift stable where he left Grison.
Elves emerged to greet him, men and women dressed like Naila, pathfinders, or so I’d learned, their hair shades of russet or brown, their skin glowing like polished bronze.
They touched foreheads in solemn greeting, eyes closed, their murmured words heavy with grief.
With the little Elvish I understood, I knew their prayer meant, “May she rest in peace.”
Naila approached me as Kael moved among them, welcomed like one of their own. I braced myself, unsure of what she might say.
“Kael’s return could not have come at a better hour,” she said at last. “He can help us rebuild the sofament here.” She gestured for me to follow. “Come, walk with me.”
I nodded and obeyed.
The cave opened into a vast cavern, half wild and half wrought by hand.
Wooden scaffolds cradled the rock, forming terraces and alcoves where homes took shape.
Fires burned in the central hollow, their glow painting the walls in shades of amber and shadow.
Elves crossed paths with measured grace, carrying timber or baskets.
Children darted between them, laughter echoing faintly off the stone.
I walked among them, lips parted, unable to hide my wonder.
Questions pressed at my tongue, but I didn’t know where to begin.
“In other years,” Naila said, her voice soft amid the crackle of the fires, “we return here in the fall and build with care. This time, we fled Vall?ne with little more than what we could carry.”
So Vall?ne was the village.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I murmured, finding no better words.
She pressed her lips thin, eyes lowering briefly before lifting again to meet mine. In the firelight, her green irises glimmered like moss after rain. “They walk with the spirits now. We must honor them by enduring.”
“What is this place?” I asked quietly.
“We call it Stenhalla, the Halls of Stone. We are nomads, wandering the mountains where the wind allows. But when the leaves begin to turn, we always return here for warmth and rest.”
Naila spoke with an elf woman who handed her a wooden bowl brimming with green paste. She took a small spoonful, pressed it between her fingers, and stepped close. I flinched at first but allowed her to smooth the mixture across my forehead.
“This is helmossa,” she said softly. “A shaman’s remedy. It will heal your wound within moments.”
She tended next to the burn circling my neck where the vine blight had struck. I let her work in silence, my gaze drifting toward the wavering light of the lake.
“What is helmossa?” I asked.
“It is a paste made of blessed moss,” she replied. “We craft it here, in Stenhalla, from the moss that grows thick around the water’s edge.”
“Oh… Thank you.”
The paste cooled against my skin, leaving a faint tingle as the ache began to fade. I breathed out, lighter somehow, and let my eyes wander.
Across the cavern, I glimpsed Kael, cloak discarded, sleeves rolled, helping another elf lift a heavy beam of wood. The sight spurred the question that had gnawed at me since our encounter.
“So… You are Kael’s sister?”
Naila’s laugh was soft and wistful. “Sister by choice. Kael lived among us long ago. He was of the tribe once.”
She spoke of their people, weaving memories of Kael as a boy wandering these stones and these woods, a bow and arrow in his hands and mischief in his eyes.
She told me of the Forest Fae, the wood elves who graced Vanhaui freely, living in harmony with humans.
But that harmony had frayed since the plague.
Now they preferred to keep to their groves and green halls, choosing seclusion over fellowship.
Footsteps eventually echoed behind us. A man approached, tall and lean, his leather tunic embroidered with silver thread and forest motifs.
His face bore the calm of great age, golden skin lined by the years.
His hair, dark streaked with silver, was braided with leaves and small branches.
When he smiled, it was solemn yet kind, as though centuries of joy and sorrow had passed through him and left their trace.