Chapter 3 #2
"Now," I continue, "unless someone actually has useful information, I suggest you all remove yourselves from my sight before I decide this conversation would benefit from fewer participants."
The Light Court delegation scrambles for their surviving horses with admirable speed. General Altin manages to maintain some dignity as he remounts, though his neck bears interesting shadow-shaped bruises.
"Gün Ata will not tolerate this indefinitely, Kaan," he calls as they retreat. "Even gods have limits to their patience."
"How disappointing," I reply with genuine regret. "And here I was hoping he'd learn to appreciate my vision. Really, you'd think someone who's been alive since the dawn of creation would have developed better taste by now."
My remaining councilors are slower to retreat, huddling together like sheep who've caught sight of the wolf. Elder Omer approaches with the careful movements of a man trying not to startle a dangerous animal.
"My lord," he says with admirable caution, "perhaps we could discuss?—"
The mention of her possible return, the very thought of hope, triggers something violent in the severed connection.
Pain explodes behind my eyes like lightning, driving me to my knees.
It starts as stabbing agony, like someone's driving hot needles into my brain.
Blood runs from my nose, spattering the cobblestones.
"Kaan!" Emir rushes forward, but I wave him back with a shaking hand.
The bond. The severed, ruined connection is having what I can only describe as a tantrum, sending phantom pulses of agony through my skull. This has been happening more frequently—episodes where my body tries to reconnect to something no longer accessible.
"I'm utterly fine," I lie with conviction, wiping blood from my nose. "Just a minor headache. Nothing that wouldn't be improved by violence and decent wine."
But I'm not fine. The severed bond drains my life force drop by drop, and every use of my powers accelerates the rot spreading through my essence. Soon, I'll be nothing but ash and regret.
"My lord," Omer says with gentleness usually reserved for dangerous invalids, "please. Let us help you."
I look up at him, noting the genuine concern in his ancient eyes. For a moment, I'm actually tempted to accept. To lean on the wisdom of men who've served my family faithfully.
Then I remember black eyes disappearing into shadow, remember the taste of fear and betrayal on lips I'd kissed a thousand times, remember waking up alone in a bed that still smelled like her perfume.
"The only help I need," I say, rising with as much dignity as someone can muster while bleeding from facial orifices, "is for everyone to stop offering solutions to problems they couldn't understand if I drew them detailed diagrams."
I turn and walk back toward the castle, leaving them standing in the courtyard with their offers of assistance and reasonable suggestions. Behind me, I hear whispered conversations about contingency plans and alternative leadership, but let them plot. Let them scheme.
None of it matters if she's truly gone forever.
Three days later, reports begin filtering in from the outer territories.
Not from search parties, I'd officially ended those weeks ago.
These come from tax collectors, trade inspectors, the mundane bureaucrats who keep a realm functioning.
Their reports speak of burned settlements, forests transformed into glass graveyards, mountains split against the sky.
My recreational activities have been thorough.
"Forty-seven locations visited in the past month," Emir reports, his voice carefully neutral. "The death toll is…significant.”
I don't ask for specifics because numbers are just abstractions when weighed against the simple pleasure of watching things burn in interesting patterns.
"There's something else," Emir continues reluctantly. "A report from the eastern reaches. Not from our people—a merchant who fled before the improvements could be implemented."
I look up from the wine I've been contemplating. "Define 'something else' in terms that won't require me to kill anyone before lunch."
"The village of Yildizkaya. Small settlement near the old borders. The merchant claimed to have seen something unusual there before he developed self-preservation instincts and fled."
My shadows stir despite my attempts at indifference, responding to something in his tone—just days from officially ending organized searches while channeling my energy into destruction instead of hope. But my heart still lurches at any mention of the unusual.
"What kind of unusual? And please be specific—I'm not in the mood for riddles."
"A healer. The merchant spoke of impossible recoveries when our guards questioned him.
He mentioned the dying brought back from the brink with methods not covered in standard medical texts.
" His voice drops to barely above a whisper.
"He used the word 'miraculous' several times before running away screaming. "
I lean forward despite my best intentions, shadows coiling eagerly. Miraculous healing could mean many things—a talented physician, rare herbs, divine intervention, or someone with abilities that might explain why my magic has been behaving strangely lately.
"Did this eloquent merchant describe our mysterious healer?"
"He was…frightened, my lord. Spoke quickly and fled quicker. But he mentioned dark hair and unusual eyes." Emir pauses, clearly struggling with his next words. "The village calls her Elif."
The name means nothing to me, but something deep in my chest responds to it anyway. A recognition that has nothing to do with memory and everything to do with instinct.
"How far is this fascinating little settlement?"
"Two days by horseback, my lord. The roads are decent enough, though we'd need to pass through the neutral territories."
"Ready a small escort," I say quietly, my voice carrying sudden certainty. "Something's calling to my shadows from that direction, and I find myself desperately curious about what it might be."
"My lord, perhaps we should send scouts first?—"
"No." The word comes out sharper than intended. "We leave within the hour. I find myself suddenly impatient to meet this mysterious healer."
Emir bows and retreats, probably to warn the stable master and send ravens to various allies about my impending departure. Smart man.
The journey begins at a punishing pace because while I could open a shadow portal, such magic drains what little life force I have left, and given how the severed bond already bleeds me dry, I reserve portal travel for true emergencies.
Besides, my shadows seem unusually eager to move in this particular direction, practically pulling me forward.
We ride hard through the afternoon and into the evening, stopping only when the horses begin to foam at their bits and my guards start swaying in their saddles.
"My lord," Emir ventures as we make camp in a grove of ancient oaks, "perhaps we should rest properly. The village will still be there tomorrow."
But I'm not listening, because something peculiar is happening to my shadows. They've been growing increasingly restless as we've traveled, coiling and writhing with an energy I haven't felt in months. Not the chaotic thrashing that's become my constant companion, but something focused. Purposeful.
Like hunting hounds that have caught a familiar scent.
I pace the edge of our small camp, shadows flowing around me in patterns that would be beautiful if they weren't so unsettling.
The constant ache in my chest—the gaping wound where the bond used to live—has begun to shift.
Not healing, exactly, but…settling like a fractured bone finding its proper alignment after months of grinding against itself.
"My lord?" Emir approaches cautiously, noting my agitation. "Are you feeling..."
"Different," I finish, because there's truly no other word for it. The shadows that usually writhe around me in chaotic tangles have begun to calm, flowing in steadier streams. Still wild, still dangerous, but with direction rather than aimless aggression.
I stare through the trees in the direction we're traveling, toward a village I've never seen but somehow feel drawn to with an intensity that borders on madness.
Something waits for me there. Something that makes my magic respond in ways I haven't felt since…
since before everything went spectacularly wrong.
"We're perhaps a day's hard ride from Yildizkaya," Emir says carefully, watching my restless pacing. "The merchant said the healer lives apart from the main settlement, in a cottage at the village's edge."
A cottage. Simple domesticity. The kind of peaceful life she always claimed to want. I can't see it from here, obviously, but somehow I can feel it—or something—calling to the darkness in me.
And suddenly, impossibly, something in my chest stirs. Not the bond—that remains as severed as ever. But something else entirely, something new and inexplicable and achingly familiar.
The shadows around me don't just calm—they begin to sing.
Not audibly, because I haven't completely lost my grip on reality despite popular opinion. But they pulse with recognition, with something that feels almost like joy mixed with desperate hunger. They're drawn in the direction of that distant village like metal filings to a lodestone.
For the first time in months, I don't have to fight to control them. They want to go somewhere specific, and that somewhere is calling to them with a voice I can't hear but somehow recognize.
They want to go home.
"My lord?" Emir's voice seems to come from very far away. "What is it?"
I continue staring through the darkness toward whatever waits for me in Yildizkaya. Deep in my chest, in the place where the bond used to live, something entirely new begins to unfurl its wings.
Not recognition. Not memory. But possibility wrapped in shadows and tied with a golden ribbon.
"We leave at first light," I say quietly, my voice strange even to my own ears. "Something calls to me from that direction, and I find myself desperately curious about what it might be."
Because if I'm wrong—if this is just another phantom, another cruel joke played by hope and my inexhaustible capacity for self-delusion—then Yildizkaya will burn like all the others.
But if I'm right...
If I'm right, then perhaps the shadows know something I don't. Perhaps they've been trying to lead me somewhere all along, and I've been too busy drowning in my own spectacular misery to listen.