Chapter Six
Wynessa
It crept in slow and soundless, veiled in mist thick enough to choke on.
Emberwood felt like it was holding its breath.
The air was colder than yesterday, the damp clinging to skin and bone. Even the horses were restless, hooves shifting, heads tossing at shadows that hadn’t moved. Bran let out a low growl and stared into the trees, fur raised along his back.
Something was out there. Not moving, not approaching. Just…watching.
I ran my fingers along the spine of my journal, but didn’t open it. Not this morning.
Jasira moved with deliberate care, her hands steady but her eyes scanning everything.
Tyren rubbed his thumb over the hilt of his sword, again and again, like it might vanish if he stopped.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered as he fastened the last strap on his pack. His voice cut through the dense fog, unnervingly clear, almost jarring in the muffled silence. “Good,” Gideon said, slinging his cloak over one shoulder. “Fear means you’re alive. Or smart. Or both.”
He paused, sniffing the air. “If I drop dead from ghost mold spores, avenge me with poetry.”
We were nearly ready to move when a raw, desperate scream tore through the silent trees.
High-pitched. Panicked. A boy’s voice, too young to belong to anyone in our group.
It was a sound that instantly froze my blood.
Everyone moved at once. Steel hissed from sheaths.
Hooves pounded through the fog. I chased the noise without thinking.
A small caravan had taken shelter ahead in a grove of cypress. There were tipped wagons, canvas half-collapsed, and smoke that still rose from a dying cookfire. A boy no older than thirteen limped backward in the clearing, a red gash seeping down his leg. His eyes were wide with terror.
Three raiders surrounded him. Mountain-born, by the look of them.
They were broad-shouldered and weather-beaten, their cloaks sewn from patchwork fur and bark fiber, teeth stained from root rot.
One bore the sigil of a Caerthaine trade house, burned into a stolen pauldron.
Another wore a child’s ribbon tied around his wrist like a trophy.
The moment their eyes locked with ours, a clatter of steel filled the air as they snatched their weapons free.
Behind them, my eyes were wide with horror at the shattered remnants of the caravan, which told their own story.
An overturned and burnt wagon; a child’s doll blackened in the mud beside a broken wheel.
A woman lay half-covered by a torn canopy, throat cut, her hand still curled around a wooden spoon.
Another figure, perhaps the boy’s father, slumped unmoving beside the fire pit.
Something jagged and cruel had opened his chest.
The boy hadn’t run from danger. He had run from death.
“Down!” Erindor’s voice cut through the morning like a blade.
And then he was a blade.
He lunged forward, low and fast, slicing one raider cleanly across the gut.
The man staggered, clutching his belly as crimson soaked his tunic, but Erindor was already moving.
Another raider roared and charged at him with a rusted axe.
Erindor ducked under the swing, rolled through the slick earth, and came up behind him.
His blade cut clean across the back of the man’s knees, sending him down with a cry.
Without pausing, Erindor plunged his sword through the man’s ribs and yanked it free with a grim twist, blood spraying in an arc that vanished into the mist.
Alaric and Tyren were not far behind, steel flashing in the half-light.
Bran leaped into action and bit into the nearest raider’s leg, mangling it.
Lark took a hit to the shoulder and stumbled, but recovered when Corren came to his defense.
A dagger streaked toward him, but Gideon's shield swung up, shunting it aside.
Without pause, he lashed back with a stone. It hit the raider square in the nose.
“You picked the wrong fog to lurk in, you tree-moss bastard!” he yelled.
My muscles locked, a sudden, primal clench that bolted me to the spot. My legs trembled, the tremor a silent scream before my mind could even process the danger before me.
But the boy. Gods, the boy.
I ran. Branches clawed at my cloak as I pushed through the underbrush, thorns snagging at my sleeves.
I dropped to my knees beside him, the cold from the soil seeping into my skirts. Blood spilled from his thigh, dark and fast. His face was pale beneath the grime; his lips were blue at the edges.
“Hold still,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
But he wasn’t, far from it. Nevertheless, I needed him to believe it.
I pulled herbs from the pouch at my belt: yarrow, crushed comfrey, a thick salve of beeswax, and lavender.
My fingers pressed into the wound to slow the flow, ignoring the warmth, the smell, and the way my hands shook.
Jasira appeared beside me, helping to unroll the bandages as my fingers became tangled in the cotton.
“Breathe, Wyn,” she whispered. “You’re here. He’s here. Breathe.”
“I’m trying,” I rasped, blinking against the sting in my eyes. “I’m trying.”
When I looked up, the raiders were dead. One guard was wounded. Erindor stood still in the mist, blood dripping from his blade, his breathing measured. He looked like something carved from stone and fury.
The boy stirred. Alive. His lashes flickered—a breath caught in his throat.
Then he sagged against the earth, slipping into a dark unconsciousness.
I sat there, frozen in a paralysis that defied the will to flee, his blood drying into a sticky film beneath my nails.
Jasira stayed beside me, gently taking my hands and wiping them clean with a strip of linen. “You’re alright,” she said softly. “You did well.”
I whispered, “I was breathless.”
“But you didn’t run. You stayed. That matters.”
I looked across the clearing.
Erindor stood apart, shoulders squared, sword still in hand. He wasn’t looking at anyone. Not at the boy. Not at me. But at the trees. The way someone looks when they’ve already seen this too many times.
He didn’t speak. He simply wiped the blade clean and walked back into the mist.
…
We traveled more slowly after that.
The boy named Kellen now rode with Lark, barely awake, his leg bound and stiff.
He had woken only once, just long enough to whisper his name before slipping under again.
He would heal, but only if we found him a proper shelter soon.
By mid-afternoon, we sought refuge in a patch of sun-dappled clearing, where the light broke through the canopy in golden shafts.
The mist had thinned, but tension lingered in the branches.
Jasira unpacked a small satchel of dried fruit and broke it into portions, handing pieces to anyone who passed.
Alaric reclined with one arm behind his head and the other tossing twigs into the low firepit.
Despite the risk, we built a small, smoky fire, tucked low into a ring of stones, for the sake of the boy.
Kellen needed warmth and something hot in his belly.
The twigs crackled softly beneath the pot, the flame of their fire barely more than a flicker, but it was enough to boil water for soup.
Gideon was crouched nearby, fiddling with a half-bent buckle on his armor and telling Tyren an embellished story about a cursed heirloom that made its owner fall in love with frogs.
His laughter was a mere echo of its usual boisterous self, a soft breath of sound almost swallowed by the quiet.
Tyren, bruised and winded from the morning’s fight, didn’t join in, but did appear to be listening intently.
Corren sharpened his blade with careful, practiced strokes, his eyes constantly flicking toward the treeline. Lark sat with Kellen propped against him, dozing. He hummed softly under his breath, some lullaby that sounded older than the kingdoms.
I sat cross-legged with my journal, Bran’s head resting heavily in my lap.
I tried to write something, anything wise or comforting, but the words wouldn’t come.
My hands still smelled faintly of iron and moss.
I looked down at my palms, the persistent aroma, a strange blend of raw iron and the cool, damp breath of moss, still clung to them.
“Princess.”
I looked up.
Erindor stood over me, a dagger in his hand.
“You froze,” he said. His voice gave away nothing.
I took the statement slowly. “I acted.”
“Badly.”
I bristled. “Why are you here? To shame me?”
“No,” he said, stepping forward slowly toward me. He held something out for me to take. I hesitated, peering out to see what it was. A dagger. Its polished bone hilt, intricately carved, was aimed directly at me. “To teach you,” he said softly, his eyes gazing at mine, waiting for my reaction.
I stared at the dagger. “I’m not helpless.”
He nodded once. “Then learn.”
He led me away from the others, down a narrow deer path that curled toward the edge of camp. The trees grew denser here, their branches weaving the sunlight into thin ribbons of gold.
We had been walking in silence for a couple of minutes when I spun around expecting an empty space, but instead I nearly collided with Erindor. There he stood. Far closer than I expected, silent as a shadow, and somehow more solid than anything else in the world.
I fumbled a step back, my heart jumping. “You move like a ghost,” I muttered.
He didn’t respond. Just tilted his head slightly, eyes unreadable.
I turned away again, trying to focus. My fingers fumbled with the dagger, already painfully aware of how awkward I must look. My palms were sweaty. My skirts kept catching on the underbrush.
I briefly looked over my shoulder. Erindor continued to stand behind me like a statue. Unbothered. Unmovable.