Chapter 54 Whispers
Chapter fifty-four
Whispers
-Kael-
The tavern was loud with music and laughter. Tankards clinked, boots thudded against sticky floors, and the scent of overcooked meat tangled with smoke thick as fog.
Kael sat alone in the darkest corner, hood drawn low, shadow pressed tight around him.
He nursed a cup of bitter, watered-down ale.
He hadn’t planned to stay the night but the wound at his side had forced him to rest, just for a night. A few hours. Enough to gather strength before pressing onward toward Maris.
He hadn’t expected to hear her name beyond his thoughts. Not here, in this grimy tavern on the edge of nowhere.
“She rose right off the stone, they say,” someone slurred three tables over. A man with sunburned skin and too many rings on his fingers. “Hair of night, eyes blazing silverfire. One snap of her fingers and the Veil shut.”
Kael went ridged.
Another voice chimed in, this one younger and in awe. “They’re callin’ her Queen of the Veil. The one who sew it shut.”
“Aye,” the older man muttered, wide-eyed. “And did you hear who stood with her?”
“Our mighty King Alarik.” His voiced dropped to a whisper. “He crowned her himself. Maybe he will bond her and give us a worthy queen."
Kael’s stomach turned to ice.
His jaw tightened to the point he thought it might splinter.
Maris.
She had faced the terrors of the Veil. Closed it. Claimed some ancient crown with Alarik.
And not as a prisoner. Not as a pawn.
But as something else entirely.
Queen of the Veil.
The words a blade drove through him.
He’d known something had shifted. The moment their bond snapped like twine too thin to hold, it had left a hollow so vast it echoed. He had thought it a curse, a trick, some foul divine punishment for daring to love her.
But now?
Now he knew.
She had found what was meant for her and in doing so it had changed her.
He gripped the edge of the table, its wood splintering into his flesh.
He didn’t know if it was rage or longing twisting inside him.
The younger boy kept speaking. “They say the king didn’t even fight the demons. She didn’t need him. Left the whole island blooming in her wake.”
Kael’s lip curled.
She had a goddess's blood and now she was something divine. Something farther from him than ever.
But not out of reach.
Not yet.
He rose in one fluid motion, shadow wrapping around him in breathless wind. Coins dropped onto the table in uneven rhythm. The tavern keeper barely noticed as the silver slid across the wood.
Kael stepped into the night swallowed by forest and fog. He moved like a blade through the trees, the pain of his body now lost to his mania, shadows wrapping tighter around him with each step.
What he needed was her.
The path narrowed as cliffs rose on either side, slick with moss.he waterfall thundered in the distance, but Kael ignored it, his boots steady on the uneven stone. The moon had risen high, a pale sickle watching his descent into enemy territory.
He shouldn’t have come alone.
But Kael had no patience for strategy now. No time for diplomacy. Not when the one he would die to protect had become something untouchable.
His wound pulsed in rhythm with the ache in his chest. The bandages had soaked through hours ago. The fae healer who patched him had warned him not to travel again so soon. But what did they know of his kind? Of what it meant to be bound and then severed?
Maris wasn’t just a woman to him.
She was his undoing. His salvation.
His failure.
Every tree branch overhead clawed at the sky like it mourned. Even the birds had gone silent.
He knew what that meant.
The Veil was thinning.
A shiver slid down his spine, and Kael slowed, every sense sharpening. The shadows shifted to his left, not the way wind moves through leaves, but deliberate. Watching. Waiting.
“Come on then,” he shouted.
The sword sang as it left the sheath, gleaming cold as moonlight.
The thing emerged, oil leaking from the sky. Its shape a pretended form, long arms and no face, just a mouth that opened across its entire head, jagged and hungry.
Kael didn’t hesitate.
He moved like smoke and vengeance, his blade cleaving through its shrieking limbs. It didn’t fall. They never fell easy. Not now. Not with the Veil breaking open in seams.
It lunged again, this time faster, one hand catching his shoulder with a rip of tearing leather and skin.
Kael hissed, shadows exploding from him in a spiral of fury. The creature wailed as they tore into its form, unraveling it thread by thread until only ash remained.
He stood panting in the aftermath, blood soaking into the bandages, breath like fire in his lungs.
But he didn’t stop.
He staggered forward, forcing himself to keep walking. Past the rise of the cliffs. Toward the river path that would eventually lead through the salt plains taking him deeper into Calanthe and toward Nerium.
He could feel her ahead, like a phantom limb.
Not the bond. That was gone.
But something deeper still. Some old thread of want.
He didn’t know what he would say when he saw her again.
Didn’t know if she’d let him speak at all.
But he’d made her a promise once, knees weak —hands shaking. He’d promised to protect her. And he had failed. Again and again.
So now he would make a different vow.
He would not let the gods or kings have her.
Not Eiren. Not Alarik. Not Thauren.
And if she told him to leave?
If she turned from him, crowned and burning and holy?
Then he would go.
But not without telling her the truth.
Not without saying everything.
Not without begging for forgiveness.