But then—“I didn’t have time to want anything else.” His voice is steady. Even.
Something in the way he says it knots beneath my ribs. I turn my body fully to face him, folding my leg between us on the bench, but he’s still looking ahead. Calm. Composed.
But there’s a thread pulled loose now—unraveling slowly.
I go still, every breath suspended.
“Before my brother died,” he says quietly, “he was the one meant to be Warlord. Kastiel was the heir.”
A pause.
“I was just training to be a soldier. A warrior. Nothing more.” His fingers flex again—subtle, but I see it. “Then he was gone.”
His voice doesn’t crack. Doesn’t shift. But the silence that follows is sharp.
“And Rowena . . . she was next in line. But she’d just met Sera, and their responsibilities were already entwined. Sera was bound to the House of Naihar, one of the high families of the Water Clan. It was . . . complicated.”
He draws a slow breath. Releases it carefully. “I knew she didn’t want the title even though she didn’t hesitate when she was next in line. So I offered to take it on.”
Another pause. Another breath. “We thought we had more time, but my father got sick.”
I blink, surprised. “Sick?”
Thane’s jaw tightens slightly, but his voice stays measured. “He developed . . . ‘sadness of the heart.’”
The words fall like ash, soft, but clinging to everything.
“It made him weak. Made it impossible for him to lead.” His lips press together like the words taste bitter. “So the responsibility became mine. A lot sooner than expected.”
I study his profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the calm in his voice that feels too practiced. Too hollow. Like he’s reciting someone else’s story. It was never a moment of grief or resistance or fear. Justfact. Something handed to him without ceremony or choice.
“So that was it?” I ask softly. “One day you were training as a warrior, the next . . . you were leading an entire people?”
“In the Fire Clan,” he says simply, “there’s no room for hesitation.”
I swallow. “There’s no room for a lot of things, then.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “No.”
The wind drifts through the trees, whispering through the tallgrass that’s taken root along the outpost’s worn stone walls. But it carries more than air—something unspoken, lingering in the silence between us.
I think about what it means. To lose a brother. To lose a father—not to death, but to a slow unraveling. To be handed leadership like a sword still dripping in blood. To never have the time to grieve. Or question. To never askwhat do I want—because the only answer iswhat is needed.
Again, I’m struck by it—the image of a boy who never got to be anything else, now housed in the man who carries it all.
The sky has softened into deep afternoon gold, sunlight casting long shadows across the stone towers that mark the outpost’s edge. We sit on the bench in silence—Thane beside me, his presence steady, constant. Familiar now in a way I never expected in such a short time.
And he’s talking.
About himself.
The pieces of his past fall into place, each one painting a clearer picture of who he is, how he got here.
But there’s a piece missing. It takes me a moment to realize it—to understand what isn’t being said. He’s talked about his father, his brother, his sister. But nother.
Not his mother.
And maybe I should ask. Iwantto. But I don’t. Because if he wanted to talk about her, he would have.
