Chapter 23
AFTERMATH
KAL WAS RAGE—UNLEASHED, UNHINGED, primordial rage.
He tore into the forest. Woodland beasts bolted.
Birds launched into terror-stricken flight.
The black wolf that patrolled his property saw him and crouched, tail tucked, lips peeled back in snarled warning.
It let out a yelp of alarm before taking off in the opposite direction.
Two miles from the cabin, Kal offloaded a world’s worth of fury in second form. The man that he claimed to be, the one he’d spent a lifetime honing, one so thoroughly focused, so disciplined, so intentional, may as well have been an apparition.
The nearest tree, a stunning maple sporting crimson foliage, crashed with a deafening boom, the trunk cleaved in two.
A noble fir followed. Two oaks were stripped of their lower branches by vicious claws.
Kal raked grooves in the earth deep enough to bury bodies.
Ferns exploded, tiny leaves flying in every direction like dandelion fluff.
His wrath was absolute, his instincts impossible to ignore.
Everywhere he looked, he saw that woman.
The trunk of a sacred fig curved the same way her hips flared from her narrower waist. The sunlight that pierced the canopy warmed him like the light of her smile.
Creeping bittersweet vines fell in a verdant snarl like the tangle of her thick hair, dark and twisted as her betrayal.
Kal vented his inner torment on the innocent wood.
He didn’t know whether it was minutes or hours later that he finally collapsed, great clawed hands hitting the dirt, chest heaving.
There were splinters of wood caught between his teeth.
Thorns, twigs, and leaves peppered his coat.
He blinked against the dirt in his eyes.
The sudden stillness of the forest pressed in on him from all sides. Alone. Kal was utterly alone.
If his mother were to see him now…Kal could almost picture the sympathetic turn of her beautiful face.
Imagined his father’s hand landing on his shoulder in comfort and understanding.
He saw his Grandfather Magnus’s stern silver brow and defiant gaze, allowing Kal a moment of self-pity before urging him to his feet.
A guttural cry burst from his lungs.
Fucking divine, how he missed them. What Kal would give to have five minutes with his family. To smell his mother’s scent. To feel the reassuring strength of his father’s embrace. To stand eye-to-eye with his grandfather and see pride and approval reflected in the old man’s expression.
The weight of their loss crushed him in a way he hadn’t felt since boyhood, the acute pain of their absence made anew by the violent ripping away of faith he’d placed in Kitty. The stupid hope he’d allowed himself to entertain.
He thought he was disciplined? Self-aware? He was a reckless fucking fool.
Kal had never given himself to a woman. Not fully.
He’d had plenty of bedmates over the years.
Warm bodies, tender touches, and frenzied passions to ease the ache of loneliness he had a habit of neglecting for too long.
His selflessness in the bedchamber had once earned him esteemed repute within female circles of gossip.
He gave them pleasure and thrill, yet invariably withheld his own, finding his release in hurried solitude long after his sated companions had dozed or gone.
They always wanted things Kal couldn’t provide. Things his mother warned him against giving.
“Guard your heart, Kalevar,” his mother had cautioned. “An honorable man only gives it once.”
“Pah.” Grandfather Magnus had leaned forward in his favorite chair, wily expression earning a stern look from Kal’s mother. “Better you guard your seed, boy. Wherever that goes, your heart will follow, whether you will it or not.”
Kal had guarded both with little difficulty. Any time he’d found himself close to crossing that line, the ghosts of his family’s warnings rectified his temporary lapse of resolve.
Until recently. Until her.
With Kitty, Kal wanted more than cursory companionship. Without even meaning to, he’d found himself envisioning a life with her. A future he’d long since deemed impossible.
But she wasn’t Railah Harless. She wasn’t a rescued Fate. She wasn’t Kitty.
She was…oh fuck it. Whoever she claimed to be, one thing was certain. She wasn’t his.
Kal shoved to his feet, shaking his bulk to free the debris from his pelt, then shifted back to first form. He stalked away from the ruined section of forest, guilt nipping his conscience as he skirted a felled tree.
He had his tantrum, made his mess. But he could atone for that later. There was an injured woman in his bedroom, and spilled seed or no, his damnable heart wouldn’t let him leave her there to bleed.
Kal found Kitty where he’d left her hours before. She sat slumped against the doorframe, head lolled to one side, injured arm cradled against her chest, face pinched with pain even in unconsciousness.
He didn’t allow himself to examine the emotions that surfaced at the sight of her. A fucking grimalkin. He could throttle Lucien Cross for suggesting such an adversary. And Saul for allowing it. Then again, Kal could throttle her for choosing the physical trial in the first place.
Kal lifted her as gently as possible and set her on the bed. A whimper left Kitty’s pursed lips as he eased her back against the furs. She cracked an eyelid, lashes dusted with salt from dried tears.
“Kal—” Her hoarse voice held a plea.
“No,” he clipped.
“But…”
Fucking divine, did it always have to be a battle with her? “Listen to me. I don’t want excuses or explanations, and you’re in no state to give them. So just…be quiet and let me look at you.”
By some miracle, Kitty let her lids fall and, with a shallow nod, rested her head back against his pillow.
Kal moved with practiced efficiency. He cut away her tattered sweater—no, his sweater—and the shirt underneath.
Two deep gouges marred the skin over her collarbone, a third traveling the length of her shoulder.
The grimalkin’s claws missed her throat by inches.
Kal peeled the ruined fabric away from the lacerations where it had adhered to her ragged flesh.
Despite the delicate precision of his touch, Kitty ground her molars as a fresh wave of pain lanced her. “How bad?”
“Bad enough. The wounds need to be disinfected.” He paused. “You need stitches.”
“How…ironic,” she gritted. “Don’t suppose…I can refuse…like you did.”
The new scar above Kal’s eye itched. The one she referenced. He’d sustained the injury during a good-natured bout with Adder in Cindamar, before Kitty knew Adder was an ally. She told him to have it mended. He spent the night drinking whiskey instead.
“No.”
“Then why…the hesitation?”
“Because I’m no mender. These will scar. And it will hurt.” Like a sonofabitch.
Kitty’s nostrils flared, and she clenched her jaw.
Despite the attempt at a brave face, Kal sensed her fear.
Her exhaustion compounded every raw nerve.
He knew what she was feeling, but then, he was no stranger to suffering.
Facing necessary agony was uncharted territory for the tender creature before him.
“I don’t have an anesthetic, but I’ve got something that’ll help,” he offered.
“What?”
“Whiskey.”
Kitty’s honey-green eyes collided with his.
Gods, how he wished he could inoculate himself against the spell she cast. Even now, after all her secrets and lies, Kal couldn’t break free from the power this woman still didn’t know she wielded.
She lay before him, battered and bleeding, yet without an uttered word, Kal was the broken one being pieced back together by her gaze.
“Pick a good bottle,” she said.
He chose his best.
An hour later, Kal sat on the top step of his front porch, listening to nearby crickets sing their discordant song.
Every few minutes, the chirping melody was punctuated by the throaty hoot of an owl.
Kal’s finest bottle of bourbon dangled from his fingers, nearing empty.
He swirled the amber liquor, its color dark in the encroaching dusk, and swallowed the remainder.
Kitty was out cold. She’d doggedly downed three respectable gulps of whiskey, passed out roughly twenty minutes later, and hadn’t woken since.
He cleaned her wounds and stitched them as best he could.
Kal hadn’t exaggerated; he wasn’t a mender, but he’d sewn flesh on more than one occasion, and after tying off the last suture, couldn’t help but admire his work.
She would undoubtedly scar, as he’d warned, but the edges were approximated well enough, and he felt confident the wounds would heal without any complication.
Kitty had begun snoring as he smeared an old warrior’s salve on the injuries.
He debated removing her filthy clothing and cleaning the rest of her but settled on wiping the dirt and sweat from her face, arms, and torso, before folding a blanket over her sleeping form.
Kal wasn’t sure whether further intrusion would be well received, and, if he were honest with himself, he didn’t need the added torment of seeing her naked.
His own imagination was torture enough in that regard, and it didn’t involve her injured, inebriated, or unconscious.
Now, here he sat, respectably buzzed and wishing his tumultuous mind would seek oblivion as easily as hers.
His body desperately needed sleep. However, once again, Kal’s needs went unfulfilled, another sacrifice to circumstance.
In this case, a visitor. Even with his vision going fuzzy at the edges and the blue-black shades of the nighttime forest, Kal recognized Santhe’s approach. It was slow, cautious.
He waited until she got within ten paces of the porch, then patted the step beside him. “I won’t bite.”
Santhe eyed him warily. “It’s not the teeth that concern me. It’s the dashing me against a boulder and tossing my broken corpse in the dirt.”
Kal made a show of looking about. “You’re in luck, San. Not a boulder in sight.”
She sat beside him. “What the hell was that, Kal? What were you thinking? Why did—”
Kal stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and a shake of his head. The motion rattled his brain. “Please. Not tonight, Santhe.”
She studied him. “Are you alright?”
Kal searched for the familiar burn of anger but only found weary irritation. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she mused, ticking items off on her fingers.
“Because we attempted to rescue an Asterosian Fate and it went horribly awry, your reckless—and rather annoying—friend now hates you, you violently impeded a prisoner’s physical trial—something that’s never been done, by the way—and afterward, you single-handedly leveled a sizeable section of ancient woodland. ”
Kal inspected the shallow cuts and abrasions that riddled his hands. He’d scrubbed them thoroughly before attending to Kitty’s wounds but still felt like his nails were crusted with dirt and dried blood.
“Oh yes,” Santhe said, noticing his scraped knuckles. “I saw the results of your tantrum—the aftermath, if you will.” When he didn’t answer, she added more softly, “I’m asking because I care about you, you idiot.”
The oppressive loneliness from before lifted just barely, allowing a tentative flare of gratitude to soften Kal’s heart.
He wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot. But he didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in despair.
Leaders never did. “I will be,” he said, answering her original question, more out of reassurance than sincerity.
“Did you…Did you kill her?”
Something inside Kal rattled his carefully constructed cage of composure.
“No. Perhaps I should have.” White hot tongues of painful fire licked at him at the very idea of taking Kitty’s life.
Kal was a seasoned killer, but he could never.
He already hated himself for putting hands on her.
The feel of her slender neck cradled in his claws, so easily snappable, haunted him.
“Where is she?”
“Inside.” Asleep. In his bed.
Santhe leaned her elbows on her knees, rumpling the skirt of her dress. “She lied to you. Deliberately misled you. And you broke laws you helped establish, ones you claim to uphold, to save her from herself. A mess she created.”
Kal set the empty bottle aside and considered uncorking a second. “Are we counting her sins, or mine?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“And I thought we weren’t doing this tonight.”
Santhe purged the air from her lungs in a forceful exhale. They sat for some time, neither speaking. Kal’s buzz reached its initial descent, his increased metabolism burning through the excess of alcohol. The gentle sounds of the forest composed a lulling symphony, an illusion of tranquility.
“So, what now?” Santhe eventually asked.
Kal scrubbed at his face. “Fuck if I know, San.”
The tension bracketing her mouth said it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
The weight of responsibility sat heavy on his shoulders.
“I should hate her. Hell, I’m trying to hate her.
” And why shouldn’t he? Kal had every right to it.
And yet, for all his anger, all his hurt, he couldn’t hang on to the loathing.
He hated that she’d lied. Hated that she hadn’t trusted him enough to accept her truth. To safeguard it.
Then again, look at how he’d reacted when she finally had. He couldn’t fault her reluctance.
Santhe stared into the dark. “I’m the wrong person to offer advice on hate, Kal. Some days I feel made of it.”
Kal leaned his head back, eyes drifting to the thick canopy high overhead. He wished he had an unobstructed view of the clear night sky, the swirling galaxies, and innumerable stars.
He’d made some semblance of a life here, in this little cabin nestled within the sanctuary of Stillwater Wood.
With the people of Meress and the Cozened resistance.
Yet a piece of him existed, buried deep within the boy he used to be, that longed for home.
At least, for what it once was. For briny air and sea mist. Towering ocean cliffs draped in aquatic foliage.
For an endless horizon, its infinite line kissing the ceaseless currents of a roving sea.
“One day we won’t be prisoners of our hate, Santhe,” Kal said, forcing himself to believe it. “We’ll have peace. We will remember what it feels like to wake with wonder, instead of facing each day with uncertainty and fear.” He’d give his life to make it so.
The smile that lifted Santhe’s lips was sad.
“That’s why you’re the one to lead us, Kal.
That’s why people follow you. Because you remember a time before fear.
A world before hate. You remember the light.
” She stood, smoothing the front of her skirt with a gentle shake.
“The rest of us don’t have those memories. We’ve only ever known the dark.”
Santhe left, then, but her words hung in the air long after she’d gone, leaving Kal to ponder them alone.