CHAPTER TWO
The walk home felt endless today, the cobblestones slick with the evening dew and seemingly stretching into infinity under my boots.
The sun bled slowly into the horizon, staining the sky a bruised purple and stretching every shadow thin and jagged across the lane. Each darkened edge felt like a reaching finger, a reminder of the men that had interrupted a mundane work day.
Even now, I could still detect the faint trace of smoke and ozone clinging to my skin. It was subtle but unmistakably Talon.
Our cottage stood at the edge of the ward, timber beams weathered by seasons of wind and rain, whitewashed stone catching what remained of the fading light. The woods pressed close behind it, their darkening canopy swallowing the last gold of day.
I pushed open the heavy oak door, the familiar creak quietening the chatter inside.
The inviting aroma of roasted root vegetables enveloped me, causing my stomach to grumble in hunger.
“Kaelia?”
My mother stepped from the kitchen alcove, brushing flour from her apron, though her attention was already fixed on my face.
“You are late,” she said quietly. “The ward is saying the Master of Umbral stood in the market.”
I crossed the room and placed the twelve coppers on the scarred wooden table, the coins hitting the table with a hollow ring.
“He did,” I replied, keeping my voice even as I unpacked the small loaf of bread and wedge of cheese I had managed to secure. “He wished to be seen. That is all. A reminder to the unbound that they are observed.”
“That is never all,” my father said from behind me.
I turned to see he stood in the doorway of the back room, the dying light outlining his frame in muted gold.
The years at the tannery had already leached much of the warmth from his complexion, but tonight the strain about his eyes ran deeper, etched not by age but by apprehension.
He crossed to the window and drew the linen curtains shut with hands that did not quite conceal their tremor, sealing us within the amber glow of the hearth.
It was a futile gesture—as if a piece of fabric could keep out a man who commanded the shadows themselves.
“I am well,” I insisted.
I loved them, but their worry was a suffocating weight I had no desire to carry. It was a permanent fixture in our house. My mother had lost her younger sister to a lack of bond two decades ago. And my father had watched it happen.
It was as if they saw the same future each time they looked at me.
“She was likely caught up in the town’s vibrancy,” Lyra offered gently from her place beside Theron, her fingers resting in the clasp of her Elarthai.
I offered her a thankful smile.
Lyra was the calm to my storm, the daughter my parents wished I were: patient, demure, and safely bound.
Mother poured warmed cider into a cup and placed it before me.
“Vibrancy turns to whispers quickly,” she murmured. “And whispers turn to cautionary tales. You heard of Sena Torvin.”
A knot formed low in my stomach at her name.
She walked around our countertop to grab another glass. “Only last week, not even a heartbeat into twenty-one, and her soul… gone. Just like that. A whisper of Asvara in the night, and she was nothing more than an empty vessel.”
The cider turned bitter on my tongue.
Every moon cycle, the Veythar performed their assessments, checking their ledgers against the unbound souls in every district of Haelen.
Our ward had the unfortunate task of being first on that list the last moon cycle.
And Sena Torvin—being a single sunrise away from her solstice—was at the top of the assessment list.
As soon as the moon had reached its peak, her screams echoed beyond the thin walls of our home, every family lining up by their window to watch her be dragged away.
She was never to be seen again.
No one truly knew what happened in the Thrynn chambers, but the whispers said the Veythar would slowly feast upon a soul, shredding it piece by piece until nothing remained but a husk.
“Mother, please,” I murmured. “Do not speak of such things at dinner.”
“But we must speak of them, Kaelia!” Father’s voice rumbled, uncharacteristically loud. “You have less than a moon cycle until your solstice. Every day without a bond increases the scrutiny upon you.”
He began pacing the narrow stretch between hearth and table, his hands clasped behind his back in an effort to contain their restless movement.
“We will soon have an assessment,” he continued. “We do not wish to see you taken away.”
I rose from the table, unable to sit beneath the mounting pressure.
“And what would you have me do?” I asked, the question leaving me before I could temper it. “Bind myself to the first man who offers simply to quiet the council’s ledger? Stand beside a stranger and call that salvation?”
“It is safer than—”
“Safer than losing myself?” I pressed. “A Lunthra is supposed to be a recognition of souls, Father. Not a prison sentence.”
“The mandate is clear,” Mother whispered, her eyes wide. “We have little options, Kaelia.”
My lips parted, ready to form a response just as a heavy thud suddenly echoed through the house. It was the sound of a steel gauntlet striking the door.
We all froze.
“Assessments,” my father breathed, his face ashen.
The door swung open a moment later.
Two Veythar guards entered, their dark garments absorbing the warm light, hoods casting their features into obscurity. One carried a parchment scroll; the other held a small orb in his gloved hand, its sapphire core pulsing faintly.
“Kaelia Vaser,” the first intoned. “Age twenty. Approaching twenty-first solstice.”
Father moved forward before I could utter a word, his palms raised in supplication.
“Sir, we were informed our district’s assessments were taking place tomorrow evening,” he said carefully. “She has three more sunrises.”
“The Master of Umbral has advanced the schedule,” the guard replied. “All unbound within the Isvale wards are to be cataloged before moonrise.”
The guard pushed my father aside with the back of his hand and strode towards me with the orb raised.
I glared at him, taking a step back.
“Stop moving,” he ordered.
Before his hand could reach out to steady me, I turned and fled toward the narrow servant’s exit behind the pantry.
“Kaelia—”
The rest was swallowed by the slam of the door and the rush of night air.
Cold seized my lungs as I ran, boots striking stone in uneven rhythm while shouts erupted behind me.
I did not look back. I could not bear the sight of their faces.
The city of Haelen lay hushed beneath the rising moon, save for the distant, mournful cry of a lone hound somewhere beyond the riverbanks.
The streets smelled faintly of damp stone and extinguished hearth-fires, the last traces of evening clinging stubbornly to the air as if the city itself resisted sleep.
I avoided the main thoroughfares, slipping instead through narrow passages, my shoulder brushing rough plaster and hanging laundry, the fabric cold and damp where it grazed my skin.
I had not even had time to grab my coat.
Ignoring the chill, my path turned toward the oldest ground in all of Haelen—the Shrine of the First Lunthra.
It rose beside the Thrynn River in solemn ruin, gray stone worn smooth by centuries of wind and prayer.
I slowed and hopped over the cracked pavement, careful not to slip on the damp moss. After ascending the worn steps, I reached the small landing and turned toward the river.
It was the most beautiful sight in Haelen.
Obsidian spires clawed at the sky, casting jagged shadows across the river in the pale moonlight.
On the Haelen side, the bank was a tangle of wild weeds and mossy stone—familiar and dull. But the Umbral side was a world of bioluminescent blue, the fungi glowing with a cobalt light that spilled into the river.
It was a single body of water, yet the divide was absolute.
Turning back to the pillar, I placed my hands upon the altar with a sigh.
What I would not give to be happy with a boring life in the city.
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to breathe.
“You seek answers where only silence resides, little flame.”
The voice did not startle me with its volume; it was the way it seemed to bleed directly from the stone itself. My eyes snapped open to find him only paces away.
He stood half-veiled in shadow, yet appeared impossibly sharp against the moonlight.
Little flame.
The name felt alien on his tongue, a strange mix of condescension and something far more intimate. It was meant to be an observation, a comment on the fiery shade of my hair, but it felt like a judgment on my attitude.
“How do you always find me?” I asked, turning fully toward him. “I do not need a shadow at my heels.”
“A shadow follows even those who do not wish it,” he murmured.
I stepped down from the altar, hopping down the stairs until I stood in front of him.
“In case you could not tell, I do not need saving.” I swept a hand out, gesturing to the vacant, shadow-drenched landing.
His gaze moved over me before a small frown tugged at his mouth. “I am not here to save you, Kaelia.”
“Then why have you crossed into Haelen?”
“I am here to oversee the operations.”
“Yes, the assessments,” I mocked. “How could I forget?”
“They are essential.”
“To whom?” I challenged, crossing my arms over my chest. “Certainly not to those of us who must live beneath it.”
He finally moved, taking a slow step toward me.
“You believe the Veythar thrive upon your fear,” he said. “That we relish the role carved for us.”
“Do you deny it?”
The distance between us narrowed enough that I felt the faint disturbance of air between our bodies, though he did not touch me.
“Do you truly see me as a monster, Kaelia?” he asked, and though his tone remained composed, there was something beneath it now. “Or have you simply accepted that it is easier to believe I am one?”
My throat tightened, though I held his gaze.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “To the first.”
His eyes narrowed.
“And no,” I continued, “to the second. I have eyes. I see what becomes of those who fail your standards.”
“You see the consequence,” he replied. “Not the cost.”
“You sent them to my home,” I said incredulously. “Do not speak to me of cost as though you are untouched by it.”
“I did,” he answered without hesitation.
There was no excuse in his tone. No apology either.
“I do not abandon my duties,” he said. “Even when I would prefer to.”
I stepped back, instinctively, though he matched the movement with a step of his own.
He lifted his hand slowly, as though allowing me time to object. His fingers hovered inches from my cheek but he did not touch me.
“Return home,” he said at last, and the edge in his voice had roughened. “You are too near your solstice to stand this close to a Veythar without consequence.”
“You would prefer to see me fail,” I accused, though the words lacked certainty. “To watch me cataloged and sealed away.”
“That is not true.”
I turned my nose up. “The Thrynn Chambers will never see me.”
Appreciation flared in the depths of his ocean eyes. “I hope they do not.”
Heat stirred low in my stomach—unwelcome and wholly ill-timed.
I turned before it could root itself more firmly, descending the cracked steps of the shrine.
I did not look back, though awareness of him lingered like the press of unseen heat between my shoulder blades.