by K L Hagaman
Kaden’s brow moved to a knit and he made to stop her, shaking his head a bit, thinking he maybe knew what she was going to say—something crazy along the lines of having failed him and how
that had played into his—
“I withheld the truth from you,” Nauraa carried on.
Kaden slowed in his attempt of interruption and straightened in a bit of attention. And it was then he noticed how offbeat she was…
She was nervous. Kaden had never seen her nervous.
“I take it by now you know you are not a weaver.” They’d talked of much the night before last, but not of that.
Neither had known how to. And maybe, in truth, neither had wanted to. They had both simply needed time to be together. To catch up in other ways. Simpler ways. To bask in the simple blessing of the other’s company.
Kaden’s eyes narrowed inquisitively, waiting for her next words carefully.
“You are Towen,” she said of what they both knew with a meek smile.
Kaden took in a deep breath and hunched over a little, his hand working over his face as he adjusted to the thought that she had known.
“How?” he wondered, his hand falling to his knee as he gave it an anxious rub. How was he Towen? Why hadn’t she told him? Why—
“Your father,” she said cautiously.
His father.
Never, not even once, had she uttered a whisper of him.
After a moment’s pause, Kaden nodded the faintest bit, urging her to go on.
“I was in Shinrin myself,” Nauraa started to explain in quiet tones. “With my own father, your grandfather, before he passed. We were exploring and learning more of magic in ways we’d never dreamed—the Towen teaching us. Some of our scrolls are from there, actually,” she added with a flicker of a smile at the thoughts of their once home in the quiet forest—their collection on the wall.
“And that’s when I met Rooin. That’s your father’s name…” she shared. “Rooin Ashe.”
Nauraa trailed off for a moment then, thinking of how to tell their son everything that was to follow. She’d wrestled with the same challenge when Kaden had been a boy but had let such a task go when she’d thought he had been taken from her and there would never be need to find those words of explanation. But now, here it was again. She was face to face with the truth, and she didn’t know how to out it without inflicting…a sort of damage upon her son. More damage. She hoped so deeply he did not find her withholdings deceitful.
She’d simply made the mistake of thinking they had more time. He’d just been so young. So terribly young.
But in the end, Nauraa decided that after all this time, it didn’t matter how the truth was said, just that it was.
“He was of Shinrin, and a Towen…”
Nauraa’s eyes trailed about her son’s, and his own returned the sweep, a graveness overtaking them.
“What happened?” he asked in a low tone, sensing something most unpleasant on the horizon of her tongue—something that would explain the absence of Rooin in their lives today. Something to explain…everything.
With a plain explanation, her voice was gentle, but the truth was not.
“The Darkness took him, my babe.”
Kaden’s heart dropped before she even hushed the next words.
“…He became a Darkling.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Mother
A Darkling. A thing of legend.
Darklings were Towen turned nightmares—people driven to madness by an oversurge of magic within them that they were unable to contain and control.
The air had long left Kaden’s lungs, and only at their burning did he think of breathing to refresh them.
“And what became of him?” the son of Rooin asked, even though he already knew how the stories of such creatures ended.
How they had to.
There was only one way.
Nauraa’s eyes glistened with a heartbreak no words could touch to explain nor mend.
“The others relieved him of his burden,” she hushed gently with a weighty cast of her gaze when the memory became too much for her to bear.
“They drained him of his magic and it killed him, you mean,” Kaden spoke quietly, though that anger within him started to burn again. Like the mined stones he’d seen discarded in the hall, stripping a Towen of their magic left one as nothing more than a husk. An empty shell.
It was certain death.
But a Towen with a ravaged conscience was a dangerous thing. They were wild and unpredictable. They tormented the world as the magic tormented their mind.
It was a sickness that only grew. A sickness that held no cure.
“I couldn’t stay in Shinrin after that. I understand what the Towen had to do. Why they had to…” She’d seen her loves insanity first hand and the havoc born of it. But Rooin was still her husband. Her love. “I couldn’t stay and see, every day, the faces of the ones—” who’d killed him. Who’d taken him.
The Blackness had ravaged him so quickly, she’d not even had time to tell him the news of what was to be their son.
Nauraa couldn’t go on anymore after that. Her words were simply stuck in her throat as the tears filled her eyes and eventually overflowed.
Kaden left his bed and moved to kneel on the floor before her, reaching up with his good arm to hold her. She slipped off the chair and into her son’s embrace and together, they simply…sat. And grieved.
After a time of healing silence, Nauraa broke once more with one last confession.
“After that, I was always afraid that if you were to ever show any signs of the Blackness that they might take you, too, my babe.” And she just…couldn’t let that happen. Not after the Towen had stripped her of Rooin. “So I fled with you.” And they made their home away from all. Safely hidden, so she’d thought.
Kaden’s arm slipped from around her and he raised his hand to her face to steady her. “It’s alright. We’re here. We’re together.” They’d made it. Found each other. They were whole.
Nauraa’s eyes filled with tears once more, and with a blink, they cascaded down her face in a free rush as she looked to the monster of blackened flesh that was his arm.
“As is the Darkness.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Darkling
“What?” Kaden breathed, slipping back from her. His heart hammered thunderously when he caught her eyes on his arm.
“My babe,” Nauraa shook her head apologetically, a fear behind her eyes that unsettled his core.
“It’s just a wound,” he said of the limb and it’s darkening. He’d been in Shinrin for its care, after all. If there had been any hint of any Darkness, surely they’d have said something. Done something.
Nauraa didn’t know what to say. She’d seen the Darkness first-hand. She knew its manifestation. She knew…
“It may have been just a wound, but I think the Darkness has carved a path to you from it. Kaden,” she said as her eyes balanced in his, that he might listen to her reasoning. “When you were hurt, I think your body responded reflexively to keep itself going. I think it drew upon the magic inside you as a Towen—that it depended on it that you might live.” That his body had handed more of itself over to the magic inside of him to sustain itself than it should have.
It had disrupted his balance. That’s how the Darkness started.
She felt it. And she knew he did, too.
“That’s all just—” he rattled off dismissively, not wanting to believe any of it as his mind tried to rattle up some excuse or alternative reality.
“Kaden,” his mother hushed him
passionately. “Your arm should be dead right now. Rotting away. But it’s not. It’s there. It’s breathing despite having no use. What do you think is keeping it there?” she urged him to see the truth.
To acknowledge what he already knew in his heart.
“So what if it’s magic sustaining it?” he debated with her as he tried to hash it all out in mo
re reason. “Like you said, I’m Towen. It’s in me. That doesn’t me it has to overrun me—”
But Nauraa was shaking her head softly for him to stop. This was so similar to the arguments she’d had with his father in the beginning.
Kaden stopped, leaning back as he pulled his hand down his mouth, upset, disturbed...but believing.
“If you return to Shinrin like this, my babe, with the Darkness…”
“They’ll relieve me of my ‘burden’,” he returned quietly, knowingly, closing his eyes.
His moon…
Lilja came before even the thought of his own life.
“I have to leave,” Kaden breathed distantly as his heart fell into a depth of hurt no one could understand.
Nauraa must have known, too, as she cast her eyes down between them. It was why she’d come to him, that he might leave before Shinrin caught word of the happenings in Tokū. To find safety from the Towen.
“I can’t stay with Lilja. With you. Not when I could hurt you,” he had to convince himself of the truth. He had to hear himself say it. Hurt them like those soldiers. Like when he’d lost control with Oscine. The Darkness would explain…
But he wanted a chance, perhaps selfishly against humanity’s well-being, to…control himself. To stave off the Darkness if he could.
To return himself to balance.
To return himself to his Princess.
He could do this…for her. He had to.
His mother’s gentle hand running back through his golden tendrils woke him from his thoughts, and his eyes slowly swept up to hers, damp with hurt.
“I know where you can go,” Nauraa whispered.
“Where?” he asked, broken in both heart and soul at the thought of parting from her again—from his mother and his Keeper.
But the reality was clear. Kaden had to flee. Even if the Towen, by some miracle, didn’t come for him, he could hurt those he loved most…
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My forever Moon,
I don’t expect you to understand something I can barely make sense of myself, but I expect you to know that I love you. Deeply. Desperately. And that I would not be gone from you if not to protect you.
I will find a way back.
By the blood in my veins, I am yours. Forever, Lilja.
Forgive me.
—Your Ocean
Acknowledgements
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My husband, Daniel. I struggle with how to say thank you for being so wonderfully supportive, not just with my writing, but through every aspect of life. I truly love you more every day and have no idea where I’d be without you.
And a very special thank you to my lovely and fantastical editors! Sean McMahon, the best Bets to ever bet. Gilbert Diaz, mi hermano! And Theresa Decker, the bomb-diggity.
Your excitement to work on this book has made my heart so happy. You are some epically wonderful humans!
xoxo……xoxoxoxoxoxoxo!
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Twitter.com/hagaman_kl
www.katiehagaman.wixsite.com/mysite-1
