Chapter 23 Zarrek’s Watch
Zarrek’s Watch
Zarrek stood near the edge of the Commander’s tent, arms folded, watching the world quiet down. Tonight, the Resh’Agar would sleep. It meant his Second would stand here all night. Watching. Waiting. Battleaxe primed. Ready, in case of the worst.
He mentally ticked off everything he’d wanted done that day. Drills, patrols, ration schedules, and checking in on the forge masters to ensure they had what they needed to fix wagon wheels and armaments.
The heavy rain had made their travel challenging, but they were entering the Wette, a swampland where the grass sank into mud and navigable paths narrowed.
Resh had charted their course days ago, but the land tended to shift with each Cycle.
During Growth, plants burst from the ground and caused landslides and avalanches, sometimes forming hills and cliffs where none had been before.
The Kelvasari hadn’t passed this way since the last Growth and knew little of how the terrain had changed.
Behind him, the flap to the Commander’s tent rustled as it opened. Resh joined him without a word. They stood side by side in silence until the sound of a shifting wind broke the still.
“She’s staying,” Resh said.
Zarrek turned. “What?”
“Auryn. In my tent. Tonight.”
Zarrek blinked. “While you sleep?”
“She asked,” Resh replied, voice low.
“You sure?” Zarrek asked. “She’s still sick. You want her that close to that thing…when you can’t protect her?”
A flicker passed over the Resh’Agar’s face. Weariness. Fear. Hope.
“I’m tired of pushing her away.”
Zarrek huffed. “About time.”
Resh scratched absently at the back of his neck. “Stay close, Zar. You know how to wake me. Or get her out if you have to.”
Zarrek didn’t argue. Not aloud.
But he did cross forearms with his Commander and slapped him hard on his armored shoulder.
He would do what had to be done.
He always did.
“There’s rarely a time when you’re wrong, Zarrek,” Resh admitted. “You don’t have to say what’s on your mind right now for me to hear it loud and clear.”
“Then I won’t repeat myself,” Zarrek grunted.
With a slow exhale, Resh reached into his belt and pulled free an ornate dagger made of pure Polis and aethersteel. He deftly turned it in his palm, examining the detailed etching on the hilt. Symbols lost to time. When Resh pressed it into Zarrek’s waiting palm, the grizzled warrior nodded.
“Don’t hesitate,” Resh said, his blue eyes sharp. “It won’t kill me, but Auryn—”
“Sleep,” Zarrek cut in. “I’ve got your back.”
Resh nodded, then disappeared back inside. Despite his assurance, Zarrek’s stomach coiled tight as he watched the tent flap settle behind the man he followed into battle—and the girl that had come to mean too much to all of them.
Zarrek made his rounds, checked the perimeter, and stopped by the Lioness’s tent to give brief instruction not to disturb the Resh’Agar tonight.
Thessia looked less than pleased, no doubt misunderstanding the reason for his orders.
Valid, he supposed. Something had visibly changed between Resh and Auryn in the last several days—ever since he’d gone to check on her in the bath.
Before his life as the Resh’Agar’s Second, Zarrek had been a prime Source for Breeders and Lifegivers.
He’d been with enough women and sired enough progeny to know the signs.
The look. The glow on their skin when they’ve been with a man and experienced fulfillment.
Auryn already pulled in plenty of attention, but now—now even his disciplined Reskala couldn’t help but stare as she walked past.
He’s making a mistake. Maybe the little star is too.
But their strange and tangled connection seemed fated. Decreed.
Zarrek believed in nothing save for the weapon at his back and the strength of the man next to him in battle. But seeing what Auryn could do. Seeing her reshape a man in months that hadn’t changed in centuries—was making a believer of him.
Not in some deity sitting on his ass up in the sky.
Just in her.
In what she was becoming to all of them.
He returned to his post at the Commander’s tent with only the occasional sound of wind to keep him company. Let the Lioness misunderstand. Let the men think the Resh’Agar was claiming his Sokar tonight.
None could know the truth. That he was sleeping for the first time in months. That, should anything go wrong, he could awaken unrecognizable and wipe the Kelvasari from existence with a single swing of his blade.
Zarrek clutched the dagger tighter in his hand—the Stillheart—the only chance to counter the madness. If he was quick enough.
The hours passed without incident.
Around the camp, wards flickered, buzzing. Until one of them…shifted. Not violently. Not like when danger approached. But disturbed—like a ripple through mana itself. A tension, like the breath of the world catching in its throat.
Zarrek rose to his feet in an instant, drawing the dagger.
He approached the tent with care, parting the flap to peer inside.
And froze.
Resh lay on his cot, shirtless and dead asleep.
But his runes…
They were glowing. Bright. Angry. Red.
Like fresh hot blood.
Zarrek had seen this ominous light before. On the battlefield. When men screamed and cities burned.
And there, seated astride one of Resh’s legs, was Auryn.
Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, cascading like silver fire down her back and to the floor. Her nightgown had slipped off one shoulder—skin bleeding starlight, hands weaving, lips chanting. Threads of white laced through the feverish glow of the markings carved into the Resh’Agar’s skin.
Zarrek pushed into the tent in a single stride, heart slamming in his chest.
“Auryn—”
She turned to him and shook her head.
Her eyes shimmered with something too ancient to name even as her hands kept moving.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t wake him.”
His voice came out sharper than intended. “What in the Void are you—”
“His runes,” she explained, fingertips hovering just above the delicate web of lines traced into his arm. “They hate stillness. They fight against the wards. But if I speak to them… sometimes they listen.”
Zarrek’s throat tightened.
Her hand drifted a fraction higher. Stopped at his nape.
“Except the one on his neck.”
A beat.
“That one fights more than the others. Its voice…hurts.”
Behind her, Zarrek moved. Sharply.
“What did you say?”
She looked up, startled. “The rune. Just beneath—”
He was beside her in a blink, crouched low. His hand clamped around her wrist.
“Don’t touch it,” he whispered. “Don’t speak to it.”
“Why—?”
“Because it listens.”
Her gaze was level. Steady. “I know. It breathes.”
Zarrek stared at Kailorien’s sleeping form. The pulse at the nape of his neck was darker now. Weighted. Waiting.
His voice wavered. “That one isn’t your burden, Auryn.” A beat. “It’s his.”
She held his eyes. Silent. Unreadable.
Then turned back to Resh.
“Zarrek,” she said, soft but sure, “I never faced him with one foot on shore and one in water.”
Her fingers trailed over his shoulder, where the runes glowed beneath her touch.
“Either I help him. With everything I am. With everything that means. Or I don’t.” A beat of silence. “Do you understand?”
Zarrek’s jaw worked. His voice came rough. “He doesn’t want you using that power, Auryn. I’m betraying his orders. I should stop you—”
She whispered, “You love him. So, you won’t.”
Auryn’s gaze wasn’t defiant. Not pleading. Just…true.
“Please,” she said. “Let me protect him. Even mountains need to sleep, and this one has been vigilant for far too long.”
He stared at her. Looked at Resh.
Even in slumber, the man’s jaw was taut.
His breathing was labored, muscular chest rising and falling with every sharp cycle of pain.
A vein throbbed in his neck. Sweat beaded along his temple.
And yet, the runes weren’t flaring red anymore.
They’d shifted to a low, pulsing white—still dangerous, still wild, but… tempered.
Zarrek exhaled shakily. He said nothing more.
He couldn’t bear the way her lips kept moving in silence, pouring herself into a man who would never know the price she paid for his rest. Couldn’t bear the pallor of her skin, the tremor in her hands, or the way she bowed her head over Resh like he was a temple, and she the last priestess left to keep the flame alive.
Not because he was afraid something might go wrong.
But because, for the first time since he’d started railing against the Resh’Agar’s foolishness—since he’d mocked and snarled and warned him off this girl like any good soldier would—
He finally understood.
She loved him.
Not with the clumsy heat of lust or the ache of gratitude.
No.
She loved him the way wildfire loved wind—recklessly, wholly, with the kind of devotion that could consume everything if left untended.
And it broke something in Zarrek’s chest.
Because the world didn’t spare its cruelty, especially for a love like this.
Because Resh would never see her casting as mercy.
He would see it as a danger to her life.
Recklessness.
The one line he could never allow her to cross.
When he woke and learned the truth—there would be no stopping the wound that would rip them both open.
He clutched the Stillheart tighter in his hand. Not to protect her from Resh’s madness. But to steady himself. For the first time in his life, he was about to disobey his Resh’Agar’s command.
If there was a deity somewhere up in the sky, Zarrek hoped that—for once—it was paying attention.