Chapter LVI
✦
The Forest — Day
"Haa… haa…"
Her boots dragged across the dirt, each step heavier than the last. She grabbed a tree trunk to steady herself, held it for a breath, then kept moving.
"Stop following me," Dren said, without glancing back.
Seraphine ignored him.
"Take me to her," she said, still breathless.
*Tch.*
"Listen to me—" She reached forward and grabbed his arm, pulling him around.
Dren spun — "*Shh*" — and yanked her behind him, blade already drawn.
The hound came from the left, jaws open and silent, already mid-air.
Dren's sword met it on the way down. The blade went clean through. The body hit the ground in two pieces, dark blood spraying across Dren's face in a wide arc.
"*Ahh!*" Seraphine stumbled backward, dropping to the ground.
Dren stood still, sword at his side.
*I could hear it moving. Didn't expect it to stray from the herd. I miscalculated.*
"Can you stand?" he asked, his back still to her.
"Yes." Her voice came out unsteady, processing.
"Did any blood get in your eyes?"
"No. What happened?"
"Might have gotten some—" He turned to face her. Stopped.
"—in mine," he finished.
His eyes had gone white.
Seraphine stared at him. "What in the hells."
Hours passed.
Dren moved through the forest alone, trailing his fingers along tree bark, navigating by sound and memory. His vision had reduced to scattered sparks of light against dark. He kept moving anyway.
Seraphine followed at a distance, watching him without a word.
"You'll hurt yourself," she said eventually.
A pause.
"Not like I care," she added quickly.
Dren smirked at nothing in particular. "Then why mention it?"
She closed the distance between them slightly. "I still need you alive. Until my daughter is brought back unharmed."
"Generous of you."
"A blind man is useless out here," she said.
"Temporarily blind," Dren corrected.
"How are you so certain it's temporary?"
He didn't answer that. Instead he found a tree by touch and sat down against it, settling like a man with nowhere urgent to be. He pulled a small sack from his side, uncorked it, and drank deeply.
Seraphine stood over him, watching.
"Those things," she said after a moment, as though she'd been holding the words and finally let them go. "What are they?"
"The real enemy," Dren said.
"What does that mean?"
"It means if we don't move before long, we both die." He lowered the flask. "You first, probably."
"You have it exactly backwards." Her voice was flat. "You're completely vulnerable right now. I could end you where you sit. Easier than anything." A pause. "But I won't."
Dren tilted his head. A slow recognition crossed his face.
"Like daughter, like mother," he said. "You sound just like her."
"*Don't.*" The word came out quiet and hard. "Don't you dare speak about her."
"Joking," Dren said. "Can a blind, helpless man not make jokes?"
She looked at him for a moment longer than necessary. Then she turned, dusted a patch of ground flat, and sat.
"We rest here. We move when it's safe."
Night came the way it always does in deep forest — slow until it isn't, then sudden and complete. Owls called from somewhere above. The smaller creatures of the undergrowth kept up their steady, indifferent chorus.
Dren lay facing the fire. Though the darkness in his eyes held, he could make out faint sparks where the flames were brightest — tiny pinpricks of orange and gold.
"Why."
Seraphine's voice was low. She lay on the grass, staring up through the canopy.
"Why," she said again.
"Why what," Dren said, though he already knew.
"My daughter." The wind moved through the trees. Loose strands of hair lifted off her face, carrying the tears that had started falling quietly, without ceremony. "Why her."
Dren was quiet for a moment. "Your husband wouldn't grant us safe passage through Greenwood. We needed leverage."
"That's your excuse."
"It's a reason. Not the same thing."
She sat up sharply. "Be *quiet—*"
"You'll alert the herd," Dren said.
"Be quiet."
The wind carried the words away. She stayed sitting, hands in her lap, looking at nothing.
"Is she alive?" she asked.
"Yes."
"How am I supposed to trust a man like you." It wasn't really a question. "A coward. Greedy. Selfish. A criminal."
"You and your husband wanted Boldr dead," Dren said, his voice even. "You and the entire Greenwood council. Too cowardly to do it yourselves — so you hired people like me."
"We are at *war.*" She turned on him, pointing. "A man like you would understand that."
"Thornhold and Greenwood," Dren said. "Two great kingdoms fighting over land—"
The slap landed clean across his face.
Dren went still. Touched his cheek slowly.
"You just slapped a blind man."
She slapped him again.
Again.
Again.
And again — open-handed, each one harder than the last, her breath coming fast and ragged.
"*Wait—*" He caught her wrists.
"*Give me back my daughter.*"
"I will."
A beat.
"I promise."
He said it simply. No weight on it, no theatre. Just the words, and the fact that he meant them — and somehow, blind in a dark forest with her hands caught in his, that was the thing that finally broke her.
She didn't make a sound.
But he could feel it anyway.
"Who are you?"
A voice from the dark — cautious, not hostile.
They both turned towards the voice
Ruined Settlement — Same Night
They were brought in by torchlight, escorted through what remained of a settlement. Half the buildings had been caved in, timber blackened, stone cracked. But fires burned, and people moved between them, and that meant survivors.
They drew stares and whispers as they passed.
Inside a large shed, a man sat beside a woman on a low bed, her face drenched in sweat, breathing hard and fast. A healer moved efficiently at her side. Two others brought water.
"Chief — we found them near the stream," the man who'd escorted Dren and Seraphine said.
The chief turned slowly. His expression was the kind that has been trained over many years to be frightening.
"Are you mad." His voice was ice-cold. "Can you not see my wife is in labor?"
"Sorry, Chief—"
"Out."
"Push," the healer said firmly.
"Nnngh — AHH!"
The woman's whole body arched, trembling between breaths, cries breaking the air of the shed.
"Sauuuul!"
The chief — Saul — crossed to her side in two steps, his expression entirely transformed. Every trace of authority gone, replaced by something soft and frightened and completely genuine.
"My dove, it's going to be fine—"
"Be quiet," she gasped, seizing his hand.
"My dove, you're going to break my—"
"Shut up. This is your fault."
Dren and the escort guard glanced at each other at the exact same moment, thinking the exact same thing.
"Please — maintain your breathing," the healer said.
"Take them out," Saul managed, and the shed door was closed.
The screaming continued, muffled through the walls — then faded, replaced by something else entirely.
A baby's cry.
The small crowd gathered outside the door came alive. Quiet celebration moved through them in waves, hushed laughter and clasped hands.
Dren and Seraphine sat tied to a post nearby.
Saul emerged, looked at Dren, and crouched down in front of him.
"Water? Food?"
"Is it ale?" Dren said, looking upward out of habit.
Saul studied him. "You're blind."
"Temporarily."
"You killed one of them," Saul said. "The reapers."
"You know about them," Dren said.
"We were hit three days ago. We only survived because we hid." Saul was quiet for a moment. Then he stood. "Untie the woman. She needs rest."
"Thank you," Seraphine said as the rope came loose.
"You're hungry," Saul said, not unkindly. "Gildo will get you something." He nodded to the man beside him, and Seraphine was led away.
Saul sat next to Dren. Held out the ale.
They passed it between them in silence for a moment.
"You're happy," Dren said.
"Baby and wife," Saul said. "Of course I am."
"You need to move your people out of here," Dren said. "More herds will come. More people will die."
Saul drank. "Didn't expect the Drought to be someone who cared about that."
"You know who I am."
"I was a mercenary before I changed course. I heard plenty." He glanced sideways at Dren. "The stories didn't do you justice."
"No," Dren agreed. "They didn't."
A pause. The baby's crying had softened somewhere inside the shed.
"The woman," Saul said. "Who is she to you? Wife? Lover?"
Dren considered this for a moment.
"My ticking bomb," he said.
Saul smirked. "Strange way to put it."
"There's a Golden Cloaks post a few miles north," Dren said. "Take your people there."
Saul looked at him. "I imagined you as nothing but a killer."
"I am a killer," Dren said. "I'll always be a killer."
The shed door opened. Saul's wife stepped out into the night air, the baby bundled against her chest, the healer close behind. The crowd around the door murmured warmly.
Saul rose.
"It's a boy," he said to Dren, unable to stop himself smiling.
"A boy," Dren said quietly.
The baby cried — and the sound pulled something loose in him without warning.
He was younger. Golden Cloak uniform, the fabric still stiff and new. He shouldered through a door — and there she was, on the low bed, holding a bundle against her chest, looking up at him with a smile that had nothing complicated in it at all.
"Wait — Chaster, hold on—" Another knight behind him, reaching.
"It's a boy," she said from the bed. Still smiling.
Dren stood in the doorway.
"A boy," he said.
The memory dissolved.
Hoofbeats. Fast, from the north.
"Golden Cloaks!" someone in the settlement shouted.
Ten riders came through at a canter, armour catching the firelight, eyes moving across the square. They pulled up in the center.
One of them dismounted and removed her helmet, shaking out her hair.
Saul stepped forward. "How can we help you?"
"We're looking for the Drought," she said.
"No one here by that name."
Every sword in the company came out at once, leveled at Saul's chest.
The settlement went still.
"Let's not be hasty — it's a celebration tonight. Ale for the road, at least," Saul said.
"Bring me the Drought," she said.
"Wait."
Dren's voice carried from the post.
Saul turned. "Oh brother."
Every Golden Cloak eye found Dren at once.
"I know that voice," Dren said, a slow smirk forming. "Is that you, Agott?"
Tch.
✦
— To Be Continued —