Chapter 3 A Voice, Remembered #2
Zarrek circled the perimeter, brooding, shadows carved deep on his face.
For now, Resh let him be. He had no reassurance he could give his Second about Auryn’s presence in their camp.
There was no telling how Auryn’s presence would affect the Campaign.
Would she follow him to Stonewake—or leave?
The thought struck cold as iron. He had no claim on her, and he would not chain her to his side against her will.
Especially when choosing him meant Krystopolis. Doctrine. Rules. She would be lost and
alone. Unless—
“Kailorien.” Her voice razored through his fog of growing doubt, clear as a songbird crooning to the sunrise. “Your breath is heavy.”
On reflex, he smoothed his expression into a lighthearted smile. “Is it? Perhaps I need a drink after all. I wasn’t going to have any tonight, seeing as we depart at dawn.”
She searched his lies—saw them. Then—
“I will go with you, Kailorien.”
The floor beneath his feet spun as he lost himself within her eyes.
“Go?”
“To the city of stone.”
His shoulders tensed. “How do you know of—?”
“The warriors spoke of mountains. Open skies. The place where the Resh’Agar first woke the Stone. It sounds…bright.”
His lips moved before he could stop them. “I want that,” he rasped. “I want that very much.”
She smiled, then turned back to the bright-eyed dancers. A movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye, and he turned to find Zarrek’s golden gaze searing into him. Resh looked away, heat suffusing the tops of his cheekbones.
A young girl—perhaps nine—slipped from her mother’s side and approached Auryn with a shy little waddle. She held out a daisy, worn and sagging.
“Are you a dryad?” she asked, her brown eyes wide and awed. “Mama says dryads are real. Mama says they come from the Rivers to teach us things.”
Auryn accepted the wilting flower with delicate fingers. She paused, turning the flower over once in her palm. Taking a breath, she raised it to her lips.
The air sighed and shifted.
A ripple. A shimmer.
Petals bloomed—not just from the flower, but from the air, spilling into the sky in a kaleidoscope of color. Connecting them was starlight, threads weaving together into a miracle.
Gasps broke around them. Silence fell.
Dancers stumbled to a halt. Notes quaked their last into ascending silence.
Resh hardly breathed.
“I am myself,” Auryn said to the child, as though the sudden quiet didn’t touch her. “I do not teach. Only remember.”
Zarrek’s aura flared like a roaring beast, as Resh’s stomach twisted.
Auryn handed the daisy back to the child, and the little girl gasped in delight.
Beat by beat, the party picked up its prior pace.
But the lighthearted atmosphere had withered as the petals bloomed in the air. Whispers surrounded them.
Not stunned in the wake of a miracle, but divided.
Later, as the camp settled and the villagers packed their things, Resh escorted Auryn to his tent. Their path was no longer one unnoticed. Eyes watched from every tent and forge and fire pit.
Awed, fearing, judging.
Resh shouldered all of it with neutrality. His mask.
“Does life frighten those that dream?” Auryn asked when she’d settled on his bed and hugged his star map close to her chest. “The child wanted to know. So I showed life. Yet now, the air shakes.”
She reached for his hand, and he gave it without hesitation. Then stopped. For a heartbeat, the thought of what that touch could mean slid unbidden into his mind. But he buried it at once, dropping to one knee beside her bed.
“They’ve just never seen someone like you before. Auryn, what was that spell? With the flower?”
She made circles on his palm, thoughtful. The slow drag of her fingertip across his calloused skin unraveled him, each stroke a thread pulled loose. His body reacted before his mind could leash it. Heat curling low, the rune— Dregnr—at his hip igniting. He clenched his jaw until it ached.
“Your hands know magic,” she murmured, still tracing. “The warrior with yellow eyes and scars, too. But it is not the same. It is—” she searched for the word, “it is dominance.”
“And your magic isn’t?” His voice cracked, raw.
She shook her head, her eyelids heavy.
“If you’re tired, you can rest.” The circles continued, each one a brand. He forced his breathing steady, forced everything steady, even the burning at his hip.
Again, he spoke without thinking. “I’ll be here when you wake.”
When all was hushed and night had wrapped its inky shroud about those resting in the Moores, Resh stepped out of his tent bleary-eyed.
We need to leave. To travel. I need to fight, feel my blade in my hand again. It’s always steadied me in times of trial.
Footsteps cut through the quiet. Resh didn’t turn, recognizing their weight and cadence after decades of brotherhood.
“You find me at last,” Resh said. “Took you long enough to come to your Commander.”
A pause as Zarrek’s heat blazed against Resh’s back.
“You’re losing yourself,” the warrior said without preamble.
Resh still didn’t turn. “Not now, Zar.”
“Yes now. Someone needs to smack some sense into you before it’s too late.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Being around that thing has addled your mind, Resh. And it’s only been a few days.”
“She’s not some thing,” he snapped, his tone still restrained but on edge.
But she is something. Something I can’t hope to understand. Something I want to.
He hadn’t touched her. Not truly. Not yet. But the want had touched him. In his chest, his throat, his hands. A hunger braided with guilt. It would break him if he wasn’t careful.
Perhaps Zarrek is right. He’s always right.
Zarrek growled low in his throat. “You don’t see it. Or maybe you do. Maybe that’s the problem. You saw what it did with that flower. It wasn’t magic.”
“You’re right about that much,” Resh agreed.
Another moment.
Another flare.
Zarrek’s frustration bled into his runes—hissing, tangible. “And what happens when it’s fire? What happens when it bends stone or ruptures armor?”
Resh whirled around. “She’s not a threat.”
“You know better.”
Resh closed his eyes and looked away, flames burning in his gut.
“This,” Zarrek spat, voice hard, “this is not how the Resh’Agar should be.”
He walked away without waiting for a response, leaving Resh to stare at his retreating back with a feeling he couldn’t describe.
Zarrek had never turned his back on him like this before.
Not once. Not even when they were wading through blood, and death, and gore to see another sunrise. Not even when…
His hand came up to touch the back of his neck. Right at his nape. His fingers grazed scar tissue, raised and knotted. He scratched.
You carried me through the worst, only to turn your back when I want to be better than what Krystopolis would make of us.
Again, he scratched, and something churned in his thoughts. A darker tone. A darker purpose. The kind he hadn’t had to suffer in two decades. A presence that was just a feeling, but always existed on the cusp of something more.
I need to sleep. It’s been too long. Even this body has limits.
But with Zarrek brooding over Auryn and the danger she posed to the Kelvasari, he couldn’t start the conversation. Not now. Not when so much was still uncertain.
Zarrek wouldn’t neglect duty over a personal disagreement.
Still, he scratched.
This might be more than that. Might run deeper.
He turned and stepped back inside his tent. After dropping a few more phiros stones into the portable fluxhearth near the cots, he laid down without taking off his armor. He was too exhausted to worry about a bath tonight.
Staring at the ceiling of the tent, he let his thoughts drift. The Moores were silent save for the wind, low and constant against the canvas. He closed his eyes, willing any kind of rest to come.
But it did not. It never did. Not anymore. The back of his neck itched. Why did it seem worse lately? No amount of scratching or distraction kept the itch at bay.
His eyes snapped open when he heard rustling. Linen and furs shuffling. Then a sound he was beginning to recognize. Soft feet padded over the rugs, so light they could have been an extension of the breeze.
And then she was there, standing over his cot, a blanket wrapped around her thin shoulders. Her silver eyes stared down at him.
Through him.
He took a breath.
“What is it, Auryn?”
She shifted her weight between her bare feet. Sniffled. “It’s cold.”
He frowned. “I gave you my furs.”
She pondered this for a moment. Looked back to her cot. At the blanket around her.
Then back at him.
And he knew, then, what was coming.
Braced for it like a man bracing for a hammer to the gut.
She tilted her head, leaned down, and touched his chest. “The furs you gave me are soft and pleasant. But your skin is warmer than they are, even covered in armor.”
Before he could answer, she slipped under the edge of his furs as if she had always belonged there. Her weight was barely a dent in the cot, yet his whole body went rigid. Her breast moved against his arm with each breath. The faint scent of her hair was a temptation he did not need in this moment.
Kailorien tried to think of anything—anything—to keep his thoughts in order. The supply count. Tomorrow’s march. The dull ache in his shoulder. Zarrek’s stubborn pride. That one thought successfully took him on a long tangent.
But then her hand moved. Small fingers brushed his jaw, then lifted to the side of his head. She found the emerald teardrop earring at his ear and twirled it once between her thumb and forefinger.
He flinched as though she’d pierced him with a needle. “Auryn, you shouldn’t—”
“You hide much,” she murmured, eyes fixed on the green stone, “but in this verdant crystal, you carry pain for all to see.”
The words struck deeper than they should have.
Impossible. She could not know. Should not know.
And yet, here she was, speaking truth no soul had ever pried from him.
She knew his true name. Spoke in riddles.
Saw into the world in ways others could not.
He locked eyes with her, searching her gaze.
But she wasn’t focused on him, just on the earring she twirled between her fingers with care.
In Krystopolis, the legends called them the Resh’Agar’s Tears. Not a name he’d chosen, but the result of centuries of rumor. He’d worn them every day for longer than most kingdoms had stood—never removing them, never explaining them.
“They’re just stones,” he said at last, voice low.
“Not in your eyes,” she replied. “To you, they are a reminder. Much like this world is for me. A way to remember things long forgotten.”
She settled closer, the gem still caught between her fingers. Her other hand relaxed and slipped to rest against his chest.
A breath.
Then another.
“Kailorien…”
He hmmed in reply.
“Your sweat smells strange, but I don’t dislike it.”
His breath caught, a fraction too long. Of all the things she could have said, that was not the one he had been bracing for. A spark caught low in his gut despite himself, chased immediately by the absurd urge to laugh.
A moment passed. Then several more.
Her breathing slowed. Sleep claimed her.
But for him, sleep was farther away than it had ever been.
He reached up, thinking to scratch at his scar again, only to realize that it wasn’t itching anymore. Something about her warmth had chased away the nagging discomfort, bringing about a new kind of shift.
One of quiet.
One of peace.