by K L Hagaman
Because it very much had been.
In that moment, she’d felt the depth of his heart when he’d looked at her that way—his eyes somehow boring into her soul all he felt—sharing it with her so involuntarily and with such raw intensity. The sensation made her knees quake with an unfamiliar weakness. Was that truly how he felt for her? All the time? It was…
“Are you alright?” Kaden asked, alarmed, reaching out to steady her as his eyes painted over her in concern, oblivious to the episode and his part in it.
After a moment, Lilja caught her breath and was able to raise her face, though dazed. But when she came back around and could focus, looking up properly into his face with eyes anew as she understood the curious creature he was only more.
How often had she puzzled his heart, and in an instant she’d experienced...him. His loves and hates, his dreams and fears, his essence—all bathed in rich sincerity.
“Lilja?” Kaden hummed again when she didn’t answer him, taking her face up in his hands, growing unnerved.
“Kaden—“ Lilja started somehow, not really knowing where her words would lead her but knowing she wanted to try.
A sudden blast rattled the ground, causing them to cling to each other—bracing for balance as their sights fled to the ridge of wall the explosion had rang from.
The Faithful had arrived.
Tokū was out of time.
They were out of time.
“We need to fall back and protect the stones with the others,” Lilja called as the rubble rolled down the mountain in a deep-throated, crackling waterfall.
Together, they sprinted to the castle and charged through the corridors against the backdrop of increasing canon fire and the trembles of their destruction, occasionally bracing themselves against the rocked walls. But soon enough they had reached the barricaded corridor the collected stones dwelled at the end of, fortified by a hoard of soldiers before the thick, wooden doors that opened into the actual hall the magic resided in.
The pair were imparted spare blades by those posted there—guards dressed in their full uniforms, metal armor and helmets adorned with colored feathers signaling rank. The gifted weaponry accompanied the stone Kaden still kept in his pocket and the dagger Lilja wore on her hip.
Through the narrow windows that ran along the stone corridor they filled, the war being waged outside could be seen in graphic display. The Tokū watched in silence while clouds of cries echoed through a thick fog of dust and dirt as the wall of Tokū fell under heavy fire and their homes sank to the ground in heaps of debris more rapidly than any of them could have ever dreamed in any nightmare.
As the destruction raged on, Kaden and Lilja both knew such violence from a tactical standpoint was unnecessary—the Faithful had made their breach into the territory successfully. Masuku was simply flexing his muscles.
Kaden could feel her—the anger rising under the skin of his Princess and the way it boiled her blood. He took her hand for a moment to steady her, thumb brushing tenderly over hers despite the atrocities outside.
She held on to him true, but her eyes remained locked on the war drawing ever closer.
The Tokū were an easy slay for the Faithful. And they were being decimated.
“Do we go?” a soldier behind them voiced, breaking the silent tension of the corridor.
“No,” said another rather calmly, anchored by duty and charge. “We hold here for the stones, for those in the quarry, and for the other territories.” To defend what could fall them all.
Out of nowhere, Kaden felt a light headedness. The power of the opals beyond the door, Lilja’s aching heart, the vitality of the soldiers around him, the energy from the Faithful and their ill-intent and the hum of their crafts; it all collided with his heart in an overlapping moment.
He lowered his head, viridescent eyes closed off from the world as he fought to settle a rising surge inside him.
Another blast struck, this one making evident contact with the castle as the walls around them trembled under the fierce impact—the aged mortar just outside giving between long standing stones and crumbling to the floor.
“This is it! Hold your ground!” a Captain bellowed when the entrance of the castle could be heard splintering off its strong hinges as it was broken down. “With our lives!”
“With our lives!” came the thunderous roar of the Tokū as they charged down the hall.
Lilja and Kaden watched the soldiers rush past for a moment, taking the time to share one last look before throwing themselves into the mix.
The tangy clash of swords and the sour pips of gunfire overloaded the air. Turns had to be taken in the battle, for as wide as the corridor was, the troops were still far too large to fight shoulder to shoulder. But the line that receded most, time after time, was that of Tokū, the Faithful advancing onward with ease.
But the Tokū fought on—they fought valiantly and vehemently, showing no mercy or acceptance of defeat with each land of their blades. Trained, preened, groomed, they held their ground for an impressive time against the Faithful. But eventually, as those around them gave their lives and their numbers dwindled, Kaden and Lilja were forced to fight even harder—taking on growing numbers, three and four of their own people at a time, and the oppression only grew more severe as the last Tokū fell and they were left holding their own.
The floor of the halls had grown crowded with bodies and footing became no easy measure to be sure of.
Out of the corner of her eye, while fighting her own battle she knew she wouldn’t win—what would undoubtedly be her last—Lilja saw Kaden’s arm. It hung sickly, swinging eerily at his side having gone completely lame and lifeless as he waited for the next wave of assaults.
Then everything happened all at once to end all else from them.
A round was fired off at Kaden—the Faithful had been using their pistols sparingly in the ancient hall less the reverberations bring down the weakened castle atop them all. But apparently, Kaden had seemed worth the risk here at the end.
Lilja let out a sudden cry, her legs being swept out from under her before she even had time to warn her ocean. She hit the ground with a sick slap and found her side had been run through with a blade.
And the bullet struck Kaden.
It was a clean headshot.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Surge
Kaden had seen the shot fired—had known there was nothing he could do. But he didn’t even blink. If this was his death, there was no shame in it.
But he knew how angry Lilja’d be at him for dying…
It was strange how he felt nothing when the time came, yet how all around him the world seemed to explode.
He didn’t realize at first. He didn’t understand.
A burst of light, a surging wave of power glowing of a vexed and fiery vermillion, burst off his cheek the instant the bullet kissed his skin, and tore off down the hall with a deafening suction, stealing all sound before releasing it in vibrations akin to a cacophony of ships powering down at the same time. The blaze reflected almost blindingly off the lame blades cast on the floor in wake of their wielder’s death, each like a wavecrest of a crimson sea, catching the sun’s glow.
Every single soldier in the corridor—all the Faithful that had fought and stayed standing, all who’d laid waste over the innocent Tokū—were struck down by the searing blade of raw energy, collapsing in armored heaps.
And then, all the power that had burst from Kaden, snapped back in a blink with a violent and thunderous rush of hot wind that had the windows any glass, would have blown them out.
Then all fell still with Kaden’s hair
dancing in a dying breeze as he looked down a suddenly quiet hall.
Time was lost on him. Perhaps he’d been staring for a minute, but it had seemed like hours. The only way he’d known the reality of the seconds passed was the fact he was still winded.
With a slow turn, he looked over his dead and darkening arm to see Lilja, spared as
she lay on the floor—safe from the blaze that had been. And she was looking at him astutely. Aware and astounded. Astounded, and afraid?
“Are you alright?” Kaden barely breathed as he came for her, tossing his sword and falling on his knees by her side to look over her wound at the sight of it. The blade was still in her, but from the angle and position, he could tell it had struck nothing vital. But she needed help.
“What just happened?” was all she gave as her answer. Her eyes were wide before they narrowed on him. “What just happened?!” she begged to know.
Kaden’s mouth closed and he gave a thick swallow against a set jaw. “I…I don’t know…” he breathed, feeling a swell of panic. He could have hurt her. He would have killed her. And those men—had he done that? Had he killed them all? Soldiers he’d trained with—men he knew, and all in the blink of an eye!
“Are you alright?” Lilja finally cracked out, looking him over. He seemed traumatized, and rightly so, along with that arm of his looking lifeless yet painful. It was darkening every second, it seemed.
He just nodded, looking her over though his eyes were a little distant, hand tender as he explored her injury. But all the same, even with his care and gentleness, her head rolled back and she choked out a painful gasp at his touch.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed in a brief warning before he applied pressure to the hole in her side and slipped the blade out quickly, tossing it aside in a clatter of warm, blood-dressed steel.
Lilja’s mouth parted as if to scream, but no sound came. He hung his head at her side, giving her a moment to catch her breath—to return from the flare of pain. “We need to get you patched,” he started to plot.
“Well this is unexpected,” came a dry, sudden voice.
The pair looked up from the floor to see Masuku and a few others at the end of the hall, Dulamah and Colvin among them. They started their walk over the corpses, the latter two looking rather alarmed.
But Masuku…his mind proved more disturbed than ever as he barely blinked at the casualties. A wicked energy bled out of him and into the air with such palpability that Kaden felt his breath catch.
“How did you manage this?” Masuku wondered with a sickly impressed chuckle. They’d been laying easy waste to the Tokū with little loss up until this point; it was strange to think that they’d suddenly been able to make such a dent.
“Take hold,” Kaden instructed Lilja, ticking his head to her side before he removed his hand from her wound, damp with her blood. “And don’t move,” he voiced low as he rose to his feet, standing between his Princess and her uncle.
Lilja hadn’t the strength to argue and did as she was told, bracing her side to slow her bleeding. But she didn’t take her eyes off him—her uncle. The man who’d murdered her father. His face was still black and blue from Kaden’s fists that dark morning.
“I mean,” Masuku carried on cleanly. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” he asked in a high voice with a brow quirked in disappointment as he crossed over the last body. He drew his sword and used the edge to scrape some blood from his boot before flicking it back onto the floor. “Could have sworn I’d put you down outside Dorai.”
Kaden didn’t bat an eye as Masuku looked him over, intrigued by the lame arm when he noticed it.
“Did I at least do that?” he gestured with a point of his sword as he looked for some sort of consolation prize.
“Stand down, Masuku. I won’t warn you again,” Kaden claimed in threatening sincerity, ignoring all provocation. Taunts were an innocuous blade across the skin of a weaver’s son.
“I don’t think I’ll have to do much of anything if your Princess keeps bleeding like that,” he chuckled, folding a hand over his sword in front of himself, the hilt easy in his grip.
“The Accordance—“ Lilja tried to say from her spot on the floor.
“—is coming. I know,” her uncle finished, rather nonplussed. “Let them. By the time they get here I’ll have the stones.”
“The stones are mine,” came a smooth voice from behind Masuku. He turned his head sharply over his shoulder to find Oscine there, wading through the death at her feet towards them all like they were nothing more than dry leaves.
“Ours,” Masuku corrected.
Kaden’s eyes narrowed for a flit of a second, sensing all was not well in the land of villainy.
“Ya have served ya purpose,” she murmured, eyes dark beneath her stiff, wiry curls.
Dulamah, Colvin, and the other Faithful stepped back against the wall of the corridor as the weaver moved past them towards their Captain.
Masuku turned from the Princess and Keeper to face Oscine. He parted his lips in disdain, but before a bitter word could leave his mouth, the weaver flicked her hand, spitting, “Vries!”
Kaden’s brow knit as the phrase meant to suspend motion struck Masuku. The Captain quietly froze as the energy around and within him settled against a crackling sound of air. He’d become like stone as Oscine willed, his use having run out.
“Are you going to kill him?” Kaden asked a bit flatly. It was obvious now that she’d been using the man, and that use had run out—not that such a thing vindicated him. Masuku’s heart was still dark. He was still a broken man.
Oscine looked at Masuku and gave a slight shrug with one shoulder. “Maybe afta ya an ya Princess.”
The anger flared inside Kaden, and then, in a breath, before Dulamah, Colvin, Masuku, and Oscine, he ignited. His veins all but erupted, burning brightly, pulsing with his life as it pumped out from his enraged heart—light coursing through even his blackened limb.
The hall filled with an odd silence, and even Oscine stilled to stare for a moment at the unexpected sight.
“Me do what need to be dun to have mi stones an mi people taken care of,” she carried on a bit more cautiously, tilting her head slowly from side to side as she tried to weigh and measure Kaden. “An what it ya have dun?” she wondered of the power he was displaying—wondering if what she was seeing had something to do with that stone of his she knew he carried. Or maybe, it was from another particular stone that she knew sat in the room just behind him.
“Lilja…” he breathed in a dim tone, unanswering to Oscine as his good hand reached out towards his Princess. “Give me your dagger.”
Lilja looked down at her hip and his mother’s blade that rested there, holstered. She slipped it from its sheath and flipped the dagger in her palm to hand it to him by the handle.
“Ya mean to fight mi, keepa?” Oscine cracked, raising her hands in a sickly sort of gleefully anticipated preparation. He’d been a bit of an unexpected thorn in her side for a while now—his meddling with Masuku and the Faithful, his protection of the Princess, and now this…
“No,” he breathed, his mother’s dagger now at his side, his bloodied hand wrapped tightly around the steel. “I mean to kill you.”
“Kaden,” Lilja called in gentle warning—not for Oscine’s sake but his own, watching his glow blaze into something…darker. Something she’d have thought foreign to his heart. She didn’t like such a thing having any part of him.
“My babe,” came another voice, but not in warning. She was simply calling for the attention of her son.
Kaden’s eyes left Oscine for the first time since she’d entered the hall as he looked over his crippled shoulder to see his mother. She’d come from the other end of the corridor, from way of the quarry. She’d felt it and then seen it—the light, the surge moments ago, and she’d come for her boy.
She’d known it was him.
“What will rule your heart?” she asked him plainly as if they were toe to toe back in their garden in the forest, as if they were back home together, away from all this madness.
Kaden’s chest was rising and falling in deep breaths, his adrenaline coursing strong as a deep-seated anger and fear burned him on its rise to the surface—scorching him from within. “She took you. And she tried to take Lilja,” he retorted in a grave rumble.
“I did not ask what she did, my babe,” Nauraa hushed softly to his darkness. “I asked you what will rule your heart despite it?”
Oscine looked between the interruption and the Keeper, their audience of Wys still mute on the sidelines looking on in perpetual confusion and ever growing anxiety and curiosity.
“Nauraa,” Oscine voiced in a distasteful hum at the woman’s arrival, as if she was somehow familiar with the weaver.
Kaden’s lip curled and twitched the very moment Oscine breathed his mother’s name, and he moved to look back at the wretch and perhaps finally attack, but his mother stopped him once more with another tender call, and it was then that a literal thrum of energy filled the air—on odd sort of reverb that shook the soul.
“My babe… What will rule your heart?” she questioned more curtly. “Answer me now. Will it be fear and cruelty, like her? Or bravery and kindness?” Nauraa’s green eyes hung sweetly and softly in his own as they glowed in anger, ebbing and flowing with an energy born of deep-rooted pain...and maybe something more that was finally getting to breathe. “You get to decide,” she reminded.
Kaden’s jaw snapped tight to cease its trembling. Oscine had taken his mother from him—stripped him of home. And she’d done it to countless others and would ruin the lives of countless more if given the chance to keep breathing. Oscine was fear and cruelty. He couldn’t just…let her go.
“There’s always a choice,” Nauraa breathed, as if seeing his thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Choice
“Come now, Naruaa,” Oscine hummed, “Dunt tek away mi fun.” She’d been looking forward to this moment. To her stones. To her justice.
“Stop saying her name,” Kaden warned in a growl straight from his heart. He hated it.
“But why? Mi more than familiar with ya mada.”
Nauraa’s eyes moved cleanly to Oscine, but she showed no emotion that might ignite her boy further.
“When she fos get here, she fight so haad to get back to ya that mi had to tell har ya did dead to mek har stap,” Oscine hissed to lure her prey.
