My heart stutters. “They do?”
“Bob’s been particularly agitated. Keeps trying to herd people toward wherever you’ve gone.” A small smile tugs at his lips. “Patricia’s notes have gotten increasingly frantic too.”
Despite everything, I feel my mouth twitch. “Even her shadows are calling me out for being an idiot.”
“They know what she needs better than she does sometimes.” Aspen stands, brushing dirt from his pants. “The question is whether you’re going to keep running from what you helped create, or if you’re finally going to show up for it.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone with Bob and the echo of words that feel like absolution and damnation all at once.
Chapter 43
Kaia
I wake to gray light and the weight of my own choices.
Malrik's arm is still draped across my waist, his breathing deep and even against my hair. The lake laps gently at the shore below us, and my shadows drift nearby, quiet but alert—watchful, as if waiting.
But I'm not.
With the magic settled and our bond humming warm and solid in my chest, the guilt hits like a sucker punch to the ribs. Not about Malrik. Never about Malrik. But about what came before. About what's still unresolved.
About Finn.
I dress silently in the pre-dawn darkness, careful not to wake him. My shadows stir at my feet, sensing my tension, but I wave them back. I need space. Need to think without anyone watching, without the weight of their concern crawling under my skin.
I slip from camp before anyone stirs, taking Enif and riding toward the head of our column where the scouts range ahead. The rhythmic beat ofher hooves helps quiet the storm in my head, but it doesn't silence Callum's words.
You were never supposed to choose him. You were supposed to need him.
My stomach twists into knots. The bond with Darian that I've been fighting, denying, trying to bury beneath the others—it pulses like an infected wound, demanding attention I don't want to give it.
Ahead, I catch the low murmur of voices. Kieran and Revna, scouting the path forward, their conversation carrying on the morning air.
"—was never about what I wanted," Kieran is saying, his voice quieter than I've ever heard it. "It was about what would keep her alive."
"Even if it meant she'd never forgive you?" Revna's response is gentle but pointed.
A long pause. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: "Especially then."
The words stop me cold. I pull Enif to a halt, hidden behind a cluster of pine trees, and listen to my heart hammer against my ribs.
He never looked proud of the bond he forced. Just resigned. Just tired. And maybe I never saw him clearly—maybe I didn't want to.
I ride in silence after that, Callum's accusations and Kieran's admission tangle like barbed wire in my brain. Is anything real? Are any of my choices actually mine, or am I just following a script written before I was born?
The question sits in my gut like swallowed glass until we stop for the midday meal. I find them gathered in a loose circle near the edge of camp—Aspen, Malrik, Torric, and Finn, passing around travel bread and dried meat. They look up as I approach, and something in their expressions tells me they've been talking about me.
"Everything alright?" Aspen asks, his ice-blue eyes scanning my face with that annoying ability to see through my bullshit.
I settle cross-legged between Finn and Malrik, dragging my shadows close like armor. "I need to tell you what Callum said last night."
The atmosphere shifts immediately, tension crackling between us like static before a storm.
"When did you talk to Callum?" Torric's voice is sharp, already shifting toward protective mode.
"At the lake. While I was..." Heat crawls up my neck. "Bathing."
The reaction is immediate and explosive.
