Chapter 3
In Interion, daylight hours existed in perpetual twilight because a solar barrier covered the nation.
The summer sun had been cruel to the crops, and after the Great War, the imbalance caused by the fires made things worse.
So the council created a magical barrier to filter the sun's rays, letting them reach the ground at reduced intensity.
During summer, a reddish shield covered the capital.
Until autumn arrived, every day would look like dusk.
It was wonderful having the best hour of the day all the time.
On the horizon, between the mountains, countless colorful houses and shops perched on every buildable piece of land.
This was why Interion became known as the nation of colors: its inhabitants couldn't paint their facades in neutral tones, and having two houses on the same street share a color was almost unthinkable.
Not even the trees escaped the colorful anarchy.
Everywhere, purple wisterias, red maples, and orange plane trees filled the view.
While running through the military district, I ran into several students from my class.
They pretended I didn't exist, and I pretended I didn't care.
There was only one person at the academy I could call a friend, and right now he was heading toward me with a smile bright enough to light up the whole neighborhood—if you could convert it into volts.
“You, running?” He stopped at the curb, waiting for a military truck to pass. Breathless from his own run, he looked up at the sky, pretending to search for something. “A storm's coming!”
Breno crossed the street to reach me. I took in his golden blond hair, his fair skin dotted with freckles, and eyes so blue it was impossible to look away during even a simple conversation.
“No storms, just warming up for tomorrow.” I gave him a genuine smile and squinted as the sun blinded me. “How are things around here?”
Besides being a friend, he was my favorite training partner and the one who went easiest on me in wrestling classes. Like me, he was also feeric.
“You'd know if you spent more time with us and less time with those boring people who smell like corpses.”
I smiled at Breno's impression of elmedics and kept walking toward the grove.
“Better clean corpses than a bunch of sweaty teenagers,” I grumbled, narrowing my eyes at him. “And you know we don't smell like that.”
“Of course I know. But seriously, Kay, you could spend more time with us during the holidays. Dominic and I miss you.”
Dominic was his eleven-year-old brother. We'd only met a handful of times, but it was enough for us to hit it off.
“I was busy studying for the hospital's final tests. I can't afford to rest during the holidays.”
He laughed and placed his hand over his heart, hamming it up.
“I felt that dig. You break my heart, Kay.”
I smiled and picked up my pace again as we passed through the wooden archway marking the grove's entrance.
“How's the internship going?” I asked.
Breno was a blocker. His gift let him create force fields that blocked magic or any physical matter. It was a rare and valued power, just like mine.
“Good. I think every house in the military district has a defense system I built, and last week I bottled up so much of my gift that the pharmaceutical industry will have enough blocking supply for the whole year. I just think it's unfair they pay us so little because we're interns.”
Beyond defense, Breno's power also worked well in medications. The thing was, sometimes a gift could become a problem. Take someone with impenetrable skin trying to get blood drawn—impossible. That's why the pharmaceutical industry made millions of dunas a year selling temporary blocking capsules.
“The word intern should be a curse word,” I grumbled. “Don't complain about your salary—mine is worse. I've been saving dunas for years to buy a phone. The pittance they pay us must be some tactic to force us to finish the academy faster.”
The duna was the continent's currency. After the trade treaty between nations was reestablished, the leaders had opted to switch from physical money to digital. But the transition was still in progress, so physical coins were still common around the neighborhoods.
“But you're rich,” Breno replied, indignant. “Why don't you use the general's money?”
“You know why,” I grumbled, not wanting to get into the same subject again. The truth was, I didn't even know if I should still be living in Zion's house. “How am I supposed to use money from someone I barely know?”
After a few minutes of running, I noticed my friend open his mouth to say something, then change his mind. He glanced at me sideways, sighed, and let it go.
“I know that look—you look like a fish out of water, opening and closing your mouth. What happened?”
He looked at me, surprised.
“Nothing, it's just that…” He ran his fingers through his hair, awkward and flustered at being caught. “I saw Zion today,” he blurted out. “He was walking around the academy with that thing you guys call Kiara.”
I maintained my pace, trying not to let my emotions show.
Breno was the only person I'd told about the marriage.
About two years ago, his teasing started getting intense, and I worried he was developing feelings for me.
I ended up telling him about the union but left out the part about the bond.
That put an end to his feelings. Still, the guy was a natural-born flirt, and even without romantic feelings, he kept up the teasing.
“She's not a thing, she's a chimera. I've already explained this to you.”
“Yes, yes, the pet chimera. I know, Kay. But that doesn't change the fact that she's terrifying.”
I couldn't help but laugh. Very few people had seen the chimera with me—to avoid wagging tongues, I preferred to keep her hidden from the world. Zion, however, never cared about being seen with the creature.
“Stubborn and grumpy, yes, but terrifying? Never! Kiara is a sweetheart.”
I gazed at the mother trees of the grove. They were enormous, reaching a hundred meters in height. The surrounding vegetation was dense, and at this time of year, the orange leaves had begun to fall, forming a rustling carpet beneath our feet.
“Hard to believe, especially with her next to the general. I got the feeling he didn't like me. I could swear the shadows moved around me like they wanted to grab me.”
“Must have been your imagination. Ambrose told me the shadows follow him.”
Breno shrugged.
“And how was the reunion with him?”
I stopped running, realizing I'd picked up the pace without noticing. Maybe my subconscious wanted to escape the conversation.
“To be honest, we still haven't actually met up. Apparently, Zion is dealing with some work stuff.”
I opened my water bottle and took a long sip. Breno was frowning and biting his lip, clearly holding back whatever he wanted to say. For a moment, I wished he'd just stay quiet, but unfortunately, he spoke again:
“Are you telling me he's been here for two days and hasn't come home?” He stared at me in disbelief.
“I don't know what to think either.” I shrugged and pretended not to care. But only the gods knew how much it hurt.
“Kay, he married you, then spent five years away on missions, and when he comes back, he ignores you? That doesn't seem right.”
“He's only my husband on paper—you know that.” I tried to come up with some excuse so it wouldn't seem so bad. Sometimes I repeated this to myself, trying to ease the sting of rejection, but today the words only made me hate myself for making excuses for the general.
“Oh, really? Then why don't you accept invitations from other guys or go to the parties everyone else goes to?”
“Because I'm married, Breno, even if it's only on paper.”
“But that can be worked around. Plenty of people in marriages of convenience have lovers on the side. It's normal, Kay.”
I took a deep breath, feeling small for having to discuss my love life.
“Okay. And who would be crazy enough to challenge Zion? Have you considered that maybe he wouldn't take kindly to his wife sleeping with someone else?”
The problem here wasn't even the marriage.
A marriage was easy enough to undo: people go to the courthouse, sign papers, trade insults, and that's it.
Within a week, they never have to see each other again.
But our situation was more complicated: we shared a bond—an eternal, unbreakable connection tangled with complications.
The bond was rare among the fae. Ancient texts described how the partnership formed when two souls met across so many lives that they fell into eternal harmony. Once the connection took hold, the souls spent every reincarnation seeking their other half, regardless of distance or time.
Most explanations came from legends told by old women around ancestral bonfires, but the bond truly existed; countless people throughout the centuries had found their partners and described feeling that intimate, profound connection.
If the accounts weren't enough, science had also proven its existence.
Biologically, the DNA of both halves showed similar chains and countless compatible genes.
However, for the connection to be fully realized, both partners needed to accept each other in body, soul, and mind.
The bond was so strong that if one died, the other would die too from the breaking of the magic.
There were accounts of people who survived the separation, but they were consumed by endless grief at being alone in the world; eventually, they passed on to reunite with their other half in another life.