“Tarek—my second-in-command—he knows the plan,” I continue, pacing before the fire. “We established it years ago. There is a rally point. An old, forgotten ruin in the very heart of the Sunken Forests, south of here. Any who escaped the attack, any who were on patrol or foraging parties… they were to make their way there. They are waiting for me, Eoin. They are my people. They are my responsibility.”
Leaving Haven was a strategic retreat, a desperate act to draw the immediate threat away from the survivors. It was never a permanent abandonment.
“They will be hunted,” he states, his voice flat.
“Which is why I cannot leave them out there alone.” I stop pacing and face him directly, my resolve hardening into steel. “I have to go to them. I have to gather what is left of my family and lead them.” I glance at Lyren, sleeping peacefully, a pang of love and fear striking my heart. “You are a traitor to your people. The Matriarch will hunt you just as she hunts me. You have nowhere else to go.”
I take a breath, the next words the most important I have ever spoken. “But I am not your captor anymore. And you are not my keeper. I am asking for your help. Not as my guard, but as my ally. Help me find my people. Help me protect them.” I hold his gaze, letting him see the sincerity, the desperate hope in my eyes. “And we will help protect you.”
It is an offer between equals. A partnership forged in blood and fire and a shared, uncertain future.
He is silent for a long, heavy moment, his gaze shifting from my face to our sleeping son, then back again. I see the calculations turning in his mind, but they are no longer the cold, logical assessments of the Enforcer. They are the thoughts of a guardian, a protector, weighing the risks against the needs of his new, fragile family. His new purpose is aligning with mine.
He gives a single, solemn nod, the movement as binding as any blood oath.
“We find your people,” he agrees, his voice a low, solid promise that seals our new pact. “Then we find somewhere safe where we can live.”
26
EOIN
We leave the dead cavern at dawn. The air in the high peaks is thin and sharp, and the silence that follows us is heavier than the one we left behind. My new purpose is a cold, hard weight in my chest: keep them alive. Keep them safe. Keep them mine.
For the first hour, we move along a treacherous goat path, the mountain falling away into a misty abyss to our left. Lyren walks between us, his small hand held tightly in Elza’s. I am a predator turned shepherd, my senses extended, tasting the wind, listening to the silence, searching for any sign of pursuit.
It comes sooner than I expected.
A faint psychic signature on the wind, like the scent of ozone before a storm. It is disciplined, cold, and familiar. Vrakken. I scan the sky, and there, in the far distance to the north, I see them. Five dark specks, flying in the precise V-formation of a military scouting party. The Crimson Wing. The hunt has already begun.
Without a word, I take Elza’s arm. She flinches, her hand immediately going to her dagger. I register her reaction, the spike of fear and defiance, before she even speaks.
“What is it?” she demands, her eyes flashing.
“Scouts,” I state, the word a low, urgent command as I pull them off the path, down a steep, scree-covered slope. “Five of them. Three leagues north and closing fast. We must get below the tree line.”
My tone seems to override her suspicion. She scrambles after me, holding Lyren close as loose rocks skitter out from under our feet. We move for another hour, a grueling, downward plunge into a thick, ancient forest of silverwood trees.
I stop in a dense thicket where the silver leaves are interspersed with the pale, almost translucent petals of a plant I recognize. “Here,” I say, plucking a handful of the white flowers. “Crush these. Rub them on your skin, your clothes. Both of you.”
I observe her suspicion as she eyes the flowers. “What is this?”
“Ghostbloom,” I explain, crushing the petals in my own hand. They release a sharp, cloying scent, like sweet, rotting meat. “Its scent is offensive to the Vrakken olfactory senses. It will help to mask our trail.”
She hesitates for a moment, then gives a sharp nod and begins to follow my instructions. I hear Lyren wrinkle his nose. “It stinks, Mama.”
I listen as she murmurs to him. “I know, little lion. Think of it as a costume.”
We continue on, the dense canopy of the forest providing some cover from the sky. The psychic link between us hums with a frantic energy that I recognize as a torrent of her unspoken questions.
She finally gives voice to them. “Why are they so relentless?” she asks, her voice low as she navigates a tangle of roots. “You turned on them. The Matriarch sent them to eliminate you as much as to take Lyren. Why does she still hunt us with such fervor?”
“Because I failed her,” I say, my gaze sweeping the canopy above. “And because Lyren exists. To the Matriarch, sentiment is a disease, a symptom of The Fading. My choice to protect you is not seen as a betrayal; it is seen as proof of my corruption. An infection.”
I stop and look at her, needing her to understand the nature of the enemy we face. “The Crimson Wing are not soldiers. They are zealots. They are the purest of our kind, untouched by the plague that is consuming us. They see you as a human contamination that caused my fall. They see Lyren not as a child, but as a tainted relic that must be repossessed and purified.”
I see her face pale, but her eyes remain hard as flint. She asks, “And you? What do you see him as?”
“He is my son,” I state, the words feeling both foreign and absolute on my tongue. “And they will not touch him.”
