Chapter 9 #4
I tilt my head slightly, considering him. “Not so different from you, actually.”
Thane’s jaw tenses, almost imperceptibly, but he doesn’t look at me.
The silence hangs—taut—and I let it breathe. Then nudge it gently back toward him.
“What about you?” I ask. “Siblings?”
“Rowena,” he answers. “She’s older than me. Married now, so it feels like I have two sisters.”
I blink. “You have a sister?”
I just . . . stare at him for a second, trying to picture it. Thane. Someone’s younger brother.
It doesn’t fit the version of him I’ve come to know these past few weeks. The Warlord. The warrior. The man who carries the weight of an entire realm on his shoulders.
But he’s not just that. He’s a brother.
I shake my head, exhaling a breath of something like disbelief. “It never occurred to me that you have a . . . family. You’re just so . . . Warlord.”
As I say these words, they sound ridiculous, even if true. Everyone comes from somewhere.
He smirks. “Did you think I just appeared out of the fire one day?”
“Honestly? Sometimes it feels like you did,” I scoff.
His smirk deepens, a faint glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
“I’d like to meet her,” I say before I can stop myself.
Thane exhales through his nose. “She’d like you.”
Something stirs in my chest. It rises—slow and warm, a temptation I’m not ready to name.
So I bury it. Before it blooms.
Then, his voice shifts. “I had a brother too.”
I feel it before he says the name—the change in him. The way his fingers flex slightly on his knees. The way his shoulders still—drawn taut beneath the leathers.
“Kastiel.”
He says it softly. Like it’s not a name he says often. Maybe not at all. But that single name conveys everything.
I turn to look at him, frowning. “Had?”
He doesn’t look at me. Just stares ahead, his face blank. His voice, when it comes, is flat. Controlled.
“He died when I was eighteen. In battle.”
The words fall like a stone.
I see it then—not just the weight of command, but the grief beneath it. The kind that builds walls and calls it discipline.
No one ever told me about his brother. And Thane . . . Thane doesn’t talk like this. Not about himself. Not about his past.
Now I can’t unsee it—the shape of his silence. The history etched beneath the armor; not just a warlord. A brother. A boy who lost too much too young.
I should say something. But what do you say to someone who doesn’t want sympathy, or soft words, or anything that pretends it might ever be okay?
So I don’t.
I just sit beside him. Letting the silence hold the weight. Letting understanding settle into the space between us.
Then—before I can stop myself, before I can overthink the way my voice drops into something softer, something real—I ask, “What’s it like?”
Thane’s gaze flicks to me, curiosity there. “What?”
I look straight ahead, as if the answer might be waiting in the fields beyond.
“Being the leader of the realm.”
The question hangs there—too big for a break in training, too heavy for idle conversation. And yet, he doesn’t deflect. Doesn’t throw it back at me with that dry edge he’s so good at wielding.
And then, after a moment, he answers.
“There’s no room for doubt,” he says finally. His voice is measured, like he’s choosing his words carefully, sifting through a lifetime of responsibility and only pulling out what he’s willing to show me.
“There’s no room for failure,” he continues. “No room to be uncertain, or hesitant, or anything less than exact—because if I falter, the realm pays the price.” His grip on his water jug tightens slightly, the only visible crack in his otherwise unreadable exterior.
I watch him closely. Not the words—him. The way his body holds the silence. The way it’s shaped to carry the cost of command.
“That sounds—” I hesitate. “Lonely.”
His jaw ticks, and then says, “It is what it is.”
I frown. “That’s not an answer.”
He glances at me, eyes smoke-gray and impossible to read. “It’s the only answer I can give.”
And somehow—I know that’s true. Because he’s not complaining. He’s not asking for sympathy. He’s just naming it: the burden. The shape of it. The silence inside it.
I exhale through my nose, glancing forward again, watching the soldiers in the neighboring rings spar.
“I think that’s why people follow you,” I murmur.
Thane doesn’t respond, so I keep going.
“They know you won’t fail them,” I say. “Because you won’t let yourself.”
His fingers flex slightly on the jug. Something flickers across his face—too fast to name.
And then, finally, he exhales a quiet breath. “Maybe.”
He stays seated beside me, his body still as ever. But it feels different now. Not just because he’s speaking—but because I’m starting to see him.
Not the title. The man beneath it.
“You weren’t born a Warlord.”
His gaze cuts to me. Sharp. Measuring. “You just say whatever’s on your mind, don’t you?”
I smile sheepishly. “I did just tell you about my mother raising me to speak up.”
Thane shakes his head and laughs, his eyes sparkling.
My heart actually skips a beat.
I ignore it and tilt my head back, watching two dragons arc across the sky, their wings slicing clean through the morning light before they vanish beyond the outpost walls.
Then, quieter, I ask, “What did you want? Before the war? Before the weight?”
Silence.
At first, I think he won’t answer. That he’ll deflect, retreating behind the wall he’s so carefully built.
But then—“I didn’t have time to want anything else.” His voice is steady. Even.
Something in the way he says it knots beneath my ribs. I turn my body fully to face him, folding my leg between us on the bench, but he’s still looking ahead. Calm. Composed.
But there’s a thread pulled loose now—unraveling slowly.
I go still, every breath suspended.
“Before my brother died,” he says quietly, “he was the one meant to be Warlord. Kastiel was the heir.”
A pause.
“I was just training to be a soldier. A warrior. Nothing more.” His fingers flex again—subtle, but I see it. “Then he was gone.”
His voice doesn’t crack. Doesn’t shift. But the silence that follows is sharp.
“And Rowena . . . she was next in line. But she’d just met Sera, and their responsibilities were already entwined. Sera was bound to the House of Naihar, one of the high families of the Water Clan. It was . . . complicated.”
He draws a slow breath. Releases it carefully. “I knew she didn’t want the title even though she didn’t hesitate when she was next in line. So I offered to take it on.”
Another pause. Another breath. “We thought we had more time, but my father got sick.”
I blink, surprised. “Sick?”
Thane’s jaw tightens slightly, but his voice stays measured. “He developed . . . ‘sadness of the heart.’”
The words fall like ash, soft, but clinging to everything.
“It made him weak. Made it impossible for him to lead.” His lips press together like the words taste bitter. “So the responsibility became mine. A lot sooner than expected.”
I study his profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the calm in his voice that feels too practiced. Too hollow. Like he’s reciting someone else’s story. It was never a moment of grief or resistance or fear. Just fact. Something handed to him without ceremony or choice.
“So that was it?” I ask softly. “One day you were training as a warrior, the next . . . you were leading an entire people?”
“In the Fire Clan,” he says simply, “there’s no room for hesitation.”
I swallow. “There’s no room for a lot of things, then.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “No.”
The wind drifts through the trees, whispering through the tall grass that’s taken root along the outpost’s worn stone walls. But it carries more than air—something unspoken, lingering in the silence between us.
I think about what it means. To lose a brother. To lose a father—not to death, but to a slow unraveling. To be handed leadership like a sword still dripping in blood. To never have the time to grieve. Or question. To never ask what do I want—because the only answer is what is needed.
Again, I’m struck by it—the image of a boy who never got to be anything else, now housed in the man who carries it all.
The sky has softened into deep afternoon gold, sunlight casting long shadows across the stone towers that mark the outpost’s edge. We sit on the bench in silence—Thane beside me, his presence steady, constant. Familiar now in a way I never expected in such a short time.
And he’s talking.
About himself.
The pieces of his past fall into place, each one painting a clearer picture of who he is, how he got here.
But there’s a piece missing. It takes me a moment to realize it—to understand what isn’t being said. He’s talked about his father, his brother, his sister. But not her.
Not his mother.
And maybe I should ask. I want to. But I don’t. Because if he wanted to talk about her, he would have.
I don’t know what happened to her—not really. There are rumors. Whispers traded in war camps, murmured in court halls, woven into fireside tales from travelers and soldiers. But no one knows the truth.
Except for Thane. And his remaining family members.
I wonder how much of who he is now was shaped by what happened to her?
Thane stands, brushing dirt from his palms as he sets his water down.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised. “Back to it. We’ve got a lot to cover.”
Then, as we didn’t just have our first real conversation that is not about magics or wars, he says, “I’ll fetch you after dinner. Strategy lessons start tonight.” His voice is clipped. Controlled. “Most warriors get years to learn this. We don’t have that luxury.”
THANE
What the fuck just happened?
One minute we’re training—cool air biting at our skin, the spring wind stirring the grass around our boots—and the next . . . I’m telling her my whole fucking life story.
I didn’t plan on talking. Just meant to ask a few questions. Simple. Tactical.
Her village. Her family. Childhood stuff. Enough to get a read on who she is beneath all the fight—to gain knowledge to better train her.