Arden chuckled darkly, striding past and clapping Kage on the shoulder with a touch that was somehow both reassuring and ominous. His laughter rippled through the trees like a dangerous melody, light-hearted and laced with secrets.
‘Ah, but I’m the exception, of course.’
With a sigh steeped in resignation, Kage turned to follow, clicking his tongue to call Spirox and Ghost to attention, both already near, yet alerting instantly, as though they’d been waiting for his command all along.
And so they vanished, two tricksters and their beasts, into the wild hush of the rainforest.
…
‘It should only take a few days to reach Floridia from here,’ Arden said hours later, his voice low as they kept a steady, cautious pace. Every footfall was careful, ears tuned to thesubtle music of the rainforest—rustling leaves, distant bird calls, and the occasional snap of a twig that made Kage’s hand twitch towards his weapon. They had long since abandoned the main route, guided by Arden’s confidence and whimsy. By tomorrow, the Fae had claimed, the dense rainforest would give way to the Forest of Endless Trees.
When they stumbled upon a hidden oasis, a secret glade veiled by hanging vines and thick canopy, they paused. A waterfall spilt like silver lace over dark stone, feeding a clear pool circled by mossy rocks and overgrown roots.
‘Time to bathe,’ Arden declared cheerfully, already dropping his satchel and shrugging off his clothes with the ease of someone born to disarm. Without hesitation, he dove into the water, sending a spray perilously close to Kage, who was perched on a flat rock nearby, his gaze sweeping the foliage.
‘Are you not getting in?’ Arden called, floating lazily on his back. ‘It may be days before we find such a luxury again.’
Kage didn’t answer. His eyes scanned the undergrowth, attuned to the rhythm of the wild, unwilling to be lulled into a false sense of safety. Another splash, this time striking his cheek, forced his attention back to the grinning Fae.
‘Get in!’
‘No.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I do not bathe with others.’
Arden sighed theatrically. ‘And here I was thinking the only prudes left in the world were drakonians.’
‘I’m not a prude.’
‘Then what are you?’
Kage exhaled through his nose, tired of the exchange. With a resigned shake of his head, he rose to his full height, stripped off his damp clothes, and stepped into the water, utterly ignoringArden, who had now reclined against a warm rock like some forest-dwelling deity, eyes closed, wholly at ease in the heart of the wild.
‘What will become of her?’
Kage turned his attention to Arden, who sat motionless beside him, his green eyes fixed upon the surface of the water with a gaze steeped in sorrow. The question needed no clarification; they both knew the “her” in question.
‘She’ll become a valkyrian,’ Kage said, his voice thin with grief. ‘She will be reborn. And with that rebirth, every memory of us, of her family, will vanish like mist at dawn.’
A pause. Then Arden’s gaze lifted, no longer soft with grief but sharpened by something fierce. ‘She won’t forget me.’
‘That’s not how it works,’ Kage said quietly, though there was no cruelty in his tone, only the inevitability of truth.
‘She promised me.’ Arden’s voice cracked, the words trembling as if held together by sheer will alone.
Kage felt his jaw tighten, the instinct to contradict stirring within him, but he quelled it. This wasn’t the moment to shatter another man’s hope. ‘Why do you care for her so deeply?’ he asked instead.
Arden gave a faint shrug, though there was nothing casual in it. ‘The Black Lotus… we are forced to be feared, trained from infancy to kill without question. Caring becomes a foreign concept. Then I met her, and for the first time in my life, I felt something stir in the hollow where a heart ought to be. She made me feel alive. And I don’t want to go back to that emptiness. I don’t want to be a ghost again.’ His jaw clenched. ‘I don’t want to be Black Lotus anymore. I want to have a purpose. Wren had one. To save the kingdoms. Mine will be to save her.’
Kage nodded slowly, the sentiment striking a chord he hadn’t expected. His thoughts drifted, unbidden to Bryn Wynter,the wolverian prince whose absence left a quiet ache in his chest. Would their paths ever cross again? He could not say. Perhaps he was fated to live like this: on the periphery, always yearning, never possessing.
He glanced down at the wolf stretched lazily upon a sun-warmed rock, licking its paws without a single worry to claim it. Kage exhaled. He would return the creature to its rightful owner, perhaps then, with a little luck, he might find a way to coax his own heart into beating for someone, too.
The crisp crunch of approaching footsteps made both men lift their heads in unison. Above, Spirox let out a warning caw, circling like a dark omen against the treetops, while Ghost rose from his resting place, the fine fur along his spine bristling in alert.
Kage and Arden moved without a word, swift as lightning, instincts honed and sharp. Within moments they had scrambled from the water, tugging on their garments and reaching for their weapons with the efficiency of seasoned warriors. Golden threads began to unfurl from Arden’s fingertips, delicate and gleaming like strands of spun sunlight. He flung the enchantment into the air where it burst into a fine, shimmering dust that rained over them like enchanted ash.
