Chapter 28 #2
Before I can answer, Zillah emerges from the shadows, arms crossed, her expression carved from stone.
“Maybe we’ll share some things with you,” she says evenly, “if you’ll return the favor.”
Arden turns toward her completely unbothered. His grin sharpens. “Now you give off an interesting aura. Powerful shielding, I assume—since I can’t see anything. Always blocking me, are you?”
“You wouldn’t have to assume if you’d just give a little,” Remli’s voice cuts in, low and edged. She steps from the trees in her human form, hair wild, chest heaving like she’s been holding herself back.
“There you are,” Arden says, his eyes alight with mischief. He looks at her as if he’s already won something. “And what will you give me, Remli Ravelle? I’d do just about anything for you to touch me with those claws again. Let me feel that rage. Punish me with it. I don’t mind.”
The air crackles, heavy with heat and something darker. Remli’s fists clench at her sides. For one unbearable moment, I think she might actually step toward him. Then Zillah’s fist flashes.
Her punch cracks against Arden’s mouth, sending his smirk sideways and scattering the spell like shattered glass. Chaos erupts before I can even catch my breath.
Arden staggers back from Zillah’s blow, blood streaking the corner of his mouth. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and grins—not angry, not shamed, but delighted, as if pain were a prize he’d been waiting to unwrap.
Zillah lunges forward, fist cocked for another strike, but Remli slides between them in a blur. Her eyes are wide, startled by her own instinct to shield him.
Selene is there in an instant, cupping Zillah’s face, murmuring soft words I can’t quite hear. I see Zillah’s chest heave as she fights for control.
Lowan presses me back behind him, sword already in his hand, his whole body vibrating with a fury that promises blood. I slip to the side, refusing to be hidden, dagger ready in my palm.
For a heartbeat, the clearing holds its breath. It could end here. It should end here. But of course, Arden can’t leave it.
Over Remli’s shoulder, he calls, voice low and needling, “Didn’t think it’d be you that cracked, Shields. Figured Feathers would snap first—especially if he thought I looked too long at his prized possession.”
His gleeful gaze cuts to me. My lungs seize. The jungle explodes. Lowan’s face twists, murder blazing in his silver eyes as he raises his blade—but I’m faster. My dagger flashes past him, close enough to shear a line through Arden’s ear before it bites deep into the tree behind his head.
Arden tilts his head, touching the thin spill of blood, and laughs. A shimmer bursts between us as Zillah throws up a shield; the barrier humming in the charged air, pinning us all in place.
Remli whirls, fury breaking loose at last. She shoves Arden so hard he stumbles, her voice raw and shaking as she screams, “What is WRONG with you? Don’t you understand their father gave his life to save yours?
And this is how you treat them? Like everything is a joke, and you’re always the one who gets to laugh last? ”
For once, Arden stills. The grin falters. Behind the blood smeared on his lip, I glimpse something else—a flicker of pain, quick and startling, before his mask slams back into place.
“I didn’t know,” he mumbles. His hand hovers near his ear. “I didn’t know their father was the man who saved me.”
“Well, he was,” Remli spits. Her voice cracks, thick with rage and grief. “And he died for it. All because your father—”
“Stop.” Arden’s hands fly up, as if to hold the words back. He stumbles another step away. “Stop. I don’t want to know what you were about to say.”
Remli takes another step toward him, fire blazing in her eyes. Zillah’s shield thrums between us, holding Lowan and me back as helpless witnesses to whatever this is.
And then, cutting through the tangle of anger and blood and humming magic, Elaris’s voice rises from the shadows, clear as a bell:
“The time for truth is here. Make your way inside.”
We file back to the cave, the air thick and brittle with everything that just happened.
Each of us gives a drop of blood to the stone.
Arden doesn’t even bother with the blade—he merely smears fingers already wet from his split lip and presses them hard against the surface.
The stone accepts him anyway, glowing faintly before opening.
Inside, Elaris is waiting as if she knew the exact moment we’d return. She perches on her chair, teacup in hand, eyes calm and ancient. We lower ourselves onto the cushions, but no one speaks. The silence swells, heavy and intimate, until it feels like even breathing too loud would be a betrayal.
Arden finally leans back with that familiar mask of bravado. “I don’t know why you think I’m going to open up. I’m not.”
But Remli cuts across him, sharp and certain. “Yes, you are.” Her eyes glow faintly gold in the dim cave light. “Tell me. Just me, Arden. If it’s just me you’re talking to, say it. Why don’t you want to know anything about your father?”
He looks at her, and something in him breaks. His voice is barely a whisper. “Why would I want to know anything about him? Or my mother, for that matter. They didn’t want me.”
The room holds its breath. It feels wrong to be here, like we’re intruding on something private and sacred. Lowan squeezes my hand tight, grounding me, and I sense Zillah’s shield hum into place around us, locking us in a fragile bubble.
Remli leans forward, voice rough with grief and fury. “And so you joke, and smile, and flirt your pain away? Is that it? Nothing is real for you?”
Arden winces, the words cutting deeper than her claws ever could. “I want you to be real, Remli. All jokes aside, you and I could be—”
“Could be what, exactly? Nothing if I can’t know you. Nothing if you won’t let me in.”
He surges to his feet, chest heaving, voice cracking the cave walls. “Let you in? Let you in, Remli? LOOK AT ME!” The chamber shudders with the force of it. Zillah’s shield tightens, pressing close to my skin. But Remli stays seated, looking up at him, utterly unflinching. Watching him come apart.
“You think I don’t look around this island and know I don’t belong?
” Arden’s voice breaks raw. He gestures to Selene and Elaris with a trembling hand.
“You think I don’t see it in my hair, my skin?
I have no earth magic. Every fucking day, I work myself to the bone just to keep up because I’ll never have what they have. You think I don’t feel that?”
“You have a family—” Remli starts.
“I have a family that took me in—loved me. And told me not to ask where I came from. That this was enough.” His eyes blaze. “So I don’t care. I don’t.”
“Except you do,” she whispers, voice steady as steel. “You care too much. And it’s eating you alive.”
He drops to his knees before her, head bowed.
His voice is a broken rasp. “Am I so horrible? So horrible, they gave me away and never looked back? So horrible that a man I never knew lost his life for me, and now I can’t even look at his children without hating myself more?
Tell me, Remli Ravelle, how horrible I am.
You could never be more disgusted with me than I already am with myself. ”
Her hand trembles as she threads her fingers through his sun-kissed hair, tilting his face up to hers. Her eyes glisten like molten gold.
“You are not horrible, Arden Navarre. You are not to blame for other people’s choices. But you are broken—and I would know, because I came here in pieces myself. I can’t promise you anything except that we can help each other pick up the shards. I’d like to see you whole.”
His eyes close under her touch. Two tears escape, tracing slow paths down his blood-smeared cheeks. When he opens them again, his smile is small and aching.
“I said you’d ruin me. Ruin me, Remli.”
Remli smiles through her own tears. And before I can exhale, Elaris’s voice cuts the air:
“Truths have been spoken this night. Rest. We have much work to do.”
Zillah lowers her shield—the spell breaks. We shuffle awkwardly toward the hall, each of us feeling like we’ve just stood in their bedroom and witnessed something we had no right to see. Remli helps Arden to his feet. She doesn’t let go of his hand.
When we reach the corridor, the cave has shifted again. Four rooms are gone. Three stand in their place. Remli and Arden don’t even glance at us. They walk straight into her chamber, the stone door sliding shut behind them with a soft, final click.