14. Buried Paths
BURIED PATHS
The air was biting and cold, the sky already dimming as Kalemon worked with quiet urgency.
Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows, gray eyes hard as steel as she loaded crates and bags onto two tired-looking mules tethered to the back barn of her clinic.
The animals stamped and snorted against the cold, their breath rising in pale clouds.
Allora hovered nearby, cloak drawn tight around her shoulders, her nerves fraying with every passing moment.
Her hands shook as she tried to help, fumbling with straps and buckles, the weight of fear pressing down against her chest and against the new life inside her.
Every sound made her flinch. The distant creak of a cart wheel.
A dog barking in the lane. Even the wind's long fingers dragging across the eaves set her pulse racing.
Kalemon barely blinked. She worked like a soldier on campaign, every motion acute and efficient. A sack of dried herbs landed on one mule, its straps tightened with ruthless precision. "Here," she barked. "Pass me the smaller satchel."
Allora obeyed silently, placing the satchel in her hand. But the question burned beneath her ribs, tight and insistent. She could not hold it back any longer.
Allora stepped closer, her scarf slipping from her throat. "Kalemon, I've been meaning to ask you this, but how did you get here? To this world, how did you even end up here?"
Kalemon's expression softened just slightly, though her voice was still edged with iron.
"Army. Special ops. Experimental medicine.
We were testing viral agents, bioengineering strains to see what stuck, what killed faster.
Then we found one. A virus that shouldn't have existed.
It didn't follow any of our genetic rules.
" Her eyes dimmed, haunted by memory. "It came from a breach, a large portal off the coast in Germany.
No one believed it at first. But the virus wasn't just deadly, it was intelligent. It adapted too fast."
Allora's skin prickled.
"And as always a rich prick used it for biological warfare hoping to sell it to the highest bidder," Kalemon continued bitterly.
"So they turned it loose in controlled poverty zones, usually in areas with high populations of disposable non-whites, to watch it spread. And it worked too well. The world began burning and the people in charge were already planning their escape. They took the out, escaped to the portal, and they meant to leave Earth behind. To hell with everyone else. Thought that Awyans would treat them a certain way like equals, but then were quickly shackled and treated like cattle, which was a suitable end for them.”
Allora swallowed hard. "So you came through too?"
Kalemon's jaw flexed. "Me and a few others destroyed the portal from this side.
Trapped ourselves here with them to stop any more breaches, whether human or not.
But humans were already here. Pulled through older breaches, survivors, stragglers.
Canariae, they called us." She shook her head.
"I've been here ever since, keeping us alive.
Searching for another breach. One that doesn't bring hell with it. "
She paused, her hands stilling on the rope she was tying.
"I was tracking other portals years ago, trying to destroy them before anyone else could use them.
Had a device that could pick up the energy signatures, the dimensional tears.
But the battery died, and my solar charger got destroyed in a raid about five years back.
Haven't been able to use it since then." Her voice turned bitter.
"The last reading I got was in Zaharein.
Strong signal, clear as day. But without the device, searching would be pointless.
That country is massive, and I wouldn't even know where to start looking. "
Allora stood frozen, the strap she had been tightening still clenched in her gloved hands. Her breath fogged in the dark air, her eyes fixed on Kalemon as if she were looking at a holy sign in a wasteland of ash. Her voice turned eager, eyes bright with hope.
“When I got here, I had a bag with me. I was using an energy field tracker that led me to the portal in the cave while I was in Botswana. It picked up the portal signature perfectly. That device is still fully functional.”
Kalemon's head snapped up, her storm-colored eyes blazing with sudden intensity. "Where is it?"
Allora's expression fell, the hope draining from her face. "It's in the fortress. The one Malec took me to when he first captured me. He took all my things. The last time I saw it was in his office in the tower of the Canariae concentration camp."
Kalemon stared at her for a long moment, then let out a harsh breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "That place is a death trap. We'd never get in there alive."
Hope drained from Allora's face like water through cupped fingers. She stood there in the cold, her mind racing through possibilities. Maybe she could get help. Surian might still have some sympathy for her, or Luko with his guilt-ridden conscience. Or Erolyn?
Her thoughts snagged on his name. Where was he even?
She hadn't seen him in weeks. He had left with Malec one morning before dawn, and she hadn't laid eyes on him since.
She hadn't even thought to ask Malec where he'd gone, had simply assumed he was off on another traveling business venture, whatever merchant quest the Awyans sent him on.
But Erolyn had authority. He could walk into that fortress unharmed and retrieve her bag without raising suspicion.
Then warmth bloomed in her belly, subtle but unmistakable, as though the child was trying to get her attention.
Her hand moved instinctively to her abdomen, pressing against the slight swell still forming beneath her cloak, but she could feel it now.
Every shift. The child she had not asked for and would be hunted for. The child of the Silver Fox.
Her throat worked, dry, as the whisper slipped out. "You think he'll stop if I disappear through it?"
Kalemon didn't waste breath on false comfort. She didn't lie.
"No," she said simply. "But I think if you go far enough, he won't be able to follow."
Allora hoped, dreamed it would be true. But as she glanced back at the path they had come from, a thrumming started in her chest, warning her that he was closing in. If she wasn’t careful, he would find her.
The wind swept low through the valley town north of the healer's village, carrying snow, silence, and soldiers in its wake.
At the head of the caravan rode Malec. His blue and white Capitol officer's uniform, though dulled by days of travel, was still pristine beneath the layers of dust. His platinum hair was tied into a severe low ponytail beneath the hood of his cloak, not a strand left out of place.
When he dismounted, his black knee-high boots sank into the slush of the main road with the weight of inevitability.
He said nothing at first. Words were unnecessary. His gaze swept the square not with sight but with a deeper sense: the tether.
That golden thread pulled taut whenever she was near, faint when she was far, a compass buried in his soul.
He followed it like a predator follows blood in the water, and beneath the ache of distance, he felt the steady pulse of her heartbeat.
She was alive. Breathing. The relief that flooded through him was almost painful.
His stallion neighed as his militia fanned out behind him in a semicircle, Luko at his side on a weary gray mare.
The people knew him. Recognition rippled through the crowd like a stone dropped in still water.
Some fled into doorways while others froze and stared.
The rest bowed their heads, praying he would pass by without noticing their breath.
But no one mistook him for anything but what he was: a fox wearing the insignia of a general.
Luko hunched in his saddle, his face pale, lips pressed thin. Regret lived in the lines around his eyes, but resignation kept him silent. Every fiber of his being rebelled against this hunt, yet still he followed because he always did.
Malec's sand-worn glare cut through the crowd like scalpels before the first incision. He stepped forward, his voice low, deliberate. "You know why we're here."
His words didn't rise. Volume had never been necessary when authority could be carried in a whisper.
The Captain at his shoulder barked instead, his voice cracking like a whip. "We are searching for a runaway Canariae, dark of skin, clever of tongue, possibly injured. She may be traveling under disguise. Anyone aiding her will be tried for treason."
Gasps rippled through the square. Whispers broke like small waves. Eyes flicked nervously, but no one dared speak.
Malec's gaze hardened. "You will bring me her name," he said, his voice like frost. "Or her scent. Or her shadow." He let the threat breathe, let it permeate every person in the room. "And I will be merciful."
The word fell wrong in his mouth, hollow and false, an echo of a man who had once wanted to be gentle. That Awyan was gone now, buried beneath the weight of obsession, consumed by the ache of her absence and the relentless hunger to have her back.
The town elder, a weathered Awyan woman, shuffled forward, her hands shaking as she bowed. "My lord, we've seen no one like that."
Malec stared at her without blinking. Then slowly, he drew off one black glove and reached into his coat. He pulled out a small, folded remnant of fabric, torn from the robe Allora had worn the night she fled. He lifted it to his face.
He inhaled deeply, his eyes closing for just a moment as the tether inside him thrummed with recognition.
"She passed through here."
His voice carried no doubt. The tether didn't lie to him. It sang her presence like a melody only he could hear.