Chapter 32
—Kienna—
Kienna stumbled upon Elowen’s door. She shouldn’t have been there. The rules Elowen set were clear, and Kienna couldn’t be sure if her husband, Thorn, would be home or not. The woman remained skittish around Kienna and Moira. Still, Kienna knocked.
Elowen opened the door halfway, peering out. She scanned the area past Kienna, and then she opened up to hurry Kienna inside. Rats scurried along the floorboards, nipping at seeds and crumbs Elowen dropped for them. “What’s wrong, child?”
“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t the place to meet, but—”
Elowen pushed her tongue against her teeth and tsked. “Thorn is at the shipyards. We have maybe two hours at most. Take a seat. Would you like some tea?”
Kienna shook her head and sat on the couch. Elowen’s home looked exactly as it had weeks ago, covered in old, dusty books and random items scattered about. Elowen busied herself with cleaning paintbrushes, something she often did when Kienna was looking.
“Ash told me you helped my parents build the Silver Span. I don’t know why that brought me here, but I have questions.”
Elowen stopped cleaning. “Questions about the bridge?”
“Questions about myself.”
She set the brushes aside. “What can I tell you about yourself?”
Kienna hesitated.
Elowen wiped her palms on her dress and shifted her gaze to the corner.
She realized she had never actually spent a moment alone with Elowen where the old woman wasn’t frantically pacing around.
Moira’s presence made her calmer, like a piece of a puzzle that needed to fit to make their company work.
“You knew my parents, Elowen. Why can’t anyone I know answer a straight question about their lives? I shouldn’t have to be piecing it all together on my own.” Kienna wearily slumped into the cushions.
Elowen finally sat and leaned forward. “We’ve been scared, dear.
It doesn’t make it right, of course, but you come from something different.
” The woman’s attention trailed to the corner of the room.
Tiny wrinkles around her eyes bunched as she grimaced.
“Your friends take great caution to lead you to the information. They want you there as much as I do, sweet girl, but your parents died for this, and we can’t take any more risks until you’re ready. ”
Kienna stood and paced the room. Elowen’s words didn’t help piece things together, but Kienna remembered seeing books in her visions.
What were they looking at when her parents were together?
She leaned over the leather-bound stories scattered around the room.
A larger book with dark brown leather and golden sigils etched onto it caught her eye.
As she reached for it, the K on her thumb burned with an intensity deeper than fire. It seared her arms and lit her hand under the charm. Kienna pulled back and turned to Elowen, eyes wide.
“Well, that’s something,” Elowen said. She stood from her chair and brushed Kienna’s hand, then the book.
She rummaged through the large pile of texts.
A few tumbled to the ground, cracking open and crinkling the pages.
Elowen didn’t seem to mind. She kept pulling at books until she had three in tow.
“Start with these. I’ll make you some tea. ”
Kienna took the books from Elowen. The covers were blank, giving away no secrets as to what she’d be reading, but their hard canvases were worn well beyond their years, tearing at the seams. She pried one open.
The timeworn paper cracked with brittle sweetness.
She closed it to open another, coughing from the specks of musty tang.
“What am I looking for?” she asked as Elowen returned.
Elowen lifted Kienna’s chin, almost instinctively, as any mother would to their own child. “I think it’s time you start your journey to knowing what you are.”
“What am I?” Kienna searched Elowen’s face for any hint. Her chin quivered.
“You, my sweet child, are meant to be whatever you choose to be. There is a path for you, though. One you should have been on before Vaerin took that away. Scan these books. Call your Elvish friend. He’ll help you.
Tell him I said it was time.” Elowen’s fingers brushed the spines of the books, her voice falling softer, almost secretive.
“What you seek is already part of you, dear Kienna. These are only echoes to remind you of where to begin.” She tapped one of the books with a crooked finger, then stood and left her house.
Kienna turned and watched the door click.
All that remained were the rats scurrying around.
She stared at the books longer than she thought she would. They stacked on top of each other in her lap, like decayed history breathing forgotten worlds. Her fingers brushed the fine leather of the first book, the title now a faded bundle of letters scattered throughout.
Kienna. Connak’s voice pulled her from a daze.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You called me,” Connak laughed.
“I did?”
“Can I come through?”
Kienna opened her mind and let him in. Connak looked around and then back at her.
Black circles stained the skin under his eyes.
She wondered if he slept at all. On top of having to manage through her random nightmares, he commanded an entire army that scavenged the land for hints of King Vaerin’s next move.
His eyes stopped wandering when he landed on the books in Kienna’s lap. “Why do you have those?”
“Elowen said it was time.” She held up her hand, the glowing K pulsating a deep, fiery orange that wouldn’t die.
Connak studied her, then knelt on one knee. “There’s no turning back from this, Kienna. You start down this path, and everything else that happens from here on out…you can’t run from it.”
Kienna bit her lip. What could be in those books that would spark something so important? She took a breath and nodded once. Connak squeezed her hand and then opened the first book. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
Her eyes dropped to the pages, shifting between stories of old myths.
Tales of heroes and villains from the ancient past rang through history books, telling of valiant men and women who stood together at the test of time.
They told of kings and queens rising and falling from the heavens.
Kienna’s vision blurred from time to time as the light shifted in the windows.
“Here.” Connak pointed when she turned the page to a new story. “This is where you need to be.”
Kienna sank into her chair, thumbing carefully through the fragile pages. The words bled into her like old magic waking up. Fire and mist, a girl crowned by ash, a people led from darkness. As she read, her heart stumbled.
Long ago, the veins of magic ran free beneath the earth, enough to twist the creatures of the wild. When the sun refused to rise, the creatures would crawl from their dens and spill across the land. Fields were blackened, rivers turned to steam. The very stones bled with corruption.
Kienna thought of King Vaerin and the creatures he summoned for his army. Were they creatures he had created himself? Or were they ancient beings of the world’s oldest magic? Maybe both?
In the heart of the Shrouded Vale, where mist never lifted, and shadows ruled, the last free people stood with nothing but rusted weapons and shaking hands. No walls guarded them. No armies rode to their aid. Only a woman with a worn cloak and a crown she never asked to wear.
Her name was Kienna.
She almost shut the book. Connak grazed her arm. “Keep reading.”
The warrior of folklore bore no shield blessed by mages.
No sword forged by kings. She bore only the fire that lived in her heart—wild, unyielding, and bright enough to shame the stars.
When the beasts came howling through the mists, Kienna did not run.
She stood at the mouth of the vale, a torch clenched in her fist. Behind her, the broken remnants of a hundred scattered villages huddled together. Kienna looked at them once.
Only once.
She cast the torch into the field of dry grass and fallen leaves.
The fire caught like a living thing, racing outward and roaring to life.
The creatures screamed as the flames encircled them, as the mist itself turned to gold and ash.
The fire tore through the lands as the cloak clung to Kienna.
Flames licked at her skin, seared her hands and face, but she did not fall.
She walked through the ring of flame, barefoot and bleeding, leading her people of the Shrouded Vale while the beasts withered behind her into the inferno.
They said later that her cloak burned away, and when she emerged from the smoke, the ash clung to her skin like a second soul.
They called her the Ashborn Queen from that day on, a woman crowned, not by bloodline, but by survival.
Where her blood spilled into the soil, the earth grew stronger.
When the world needs her most, her fire will rise again.
She will be reborn of fire and wind, a seer of all things, to destroy the last of the darkness.
Kienna’s hands trembled against the pages. “Surely, you aren’t showing me this to tell me I’m an Ashborn Queen. That’s bullshit.”
Connak shifted. “There’s more when you’re ready.”
“This is a Dove Port story. Perhaps it was common enough. Why else would Vaerin call me Kienna?” She closed the ancient text in front of her. “I bet if you looked hard enough, you could find an ancient hero you’re named after.”
“Sure,” Connak whispered. He placed a warm hand over her shoulder, brushing her ash-laden hair out of her way.
“I’m not her.” Kienna tensed as her eyes bore into Connak’s with such vulnerability. She was uncomfortable revealing it, but she’d pushed him away for so long, and she was tired, too.
Connak gave a sad smile. “It’s only a path.”
“Why must it be me? I wanted to get away and be free. No one is letting me.”
He only shrugged, giving her his famous lopsided smirk. “Why must it be anyone? We can only guess what the world has in store for us. Your parents were building something here. Whatever it was, The Mother believed in them enough to give them you.”
Kienna wanted to argue, but she didn’t have a solid retort.
Culture, rich and alive, lived in her through what her parents had built.
They believed in something so deeply that they led a rebellion against the natural order of the world, one that eventually drove Vaerin to madness in search of his own power.
She came from everyone, yet nothing. “I wish I knew who they were before the world turned on them. They could guide me.”
“Elowen did,” Connak said firmly. “That’s why she has these books.”
Kienna glanced at the faded leather and set the books next to her. “Can you stop disappearing? I’m going to need you.”
Connak lowered his brows. “I don’t think you do anymore, Kienna. We need to live in a world where that can be true.”
She thought about a world without Connak to talk to.
She found she’d taken him for granted before, not realizing how much he’d gotten her through the worst times between River Storm and now.
The dungeons loomed over them like a dark reminder, but it lessened on her, knowing he’d only tried his best.
“I promise to take these books with me and think about them if you promise to stop thinking like that,” she said.
Connak ran his hand through his hair and grinned. “Can’t get enough of me?”
Kienna took hold of his hand. “Something like that.”
She glanced at another book, peeking into the pages. The first page she landed on indicated magical projections. She squinted. “Spells?”
“I don’t know that one. Be cautious of what you read there. Projections can be dangerous. You could get stuck if you’re not careful.”
Kienna read through the page.
Magical projections served to channel the mind and presence into a physical location. Highly skilled sorcerers could do this and physically alter the world.
Connak had done this in River Storm. Kienna studied him and then the book.
Less skilled mages could only bring themselves to other locations spiritually with a tether to where they wanted to go.
“Was I your tether?” she asked.
Connak brushed her hair. “Always.”