Her breathing slowed.
She blinked again and looked at him. He hadn't moved. He still sat with his usual poise, the back of one hand lightly brushing a carved fork as he chose another petal. His jaw moved with unhurried grace. He drank from a wooden cup with the ease of soone who'd done it a hundred tis.
But he was larger now.
And smaller. At once sothing impossibly old, and still the sa annoying professor who once tossed a blackened chira liver at her during dissecting lab and said, "See? Elegant."
She laughed. It ca out broken, a single huff of breath, but it was real. Then she looked around.
The elves had noticed.
Several of them watched Draven now with narrowed eyes. Their expressions unreadable, but their postures… not relaxed. Calculating. Weighing.
She leaned toward him, whispering from the side of her mouth. "They're staring."
"Yes."
"Do sothing."
He picked up a slice of luminous plum, inspected it like an artifact, then took a bite. Juice glimred on his lip for a mont before he dabbed it away with a cloth. "I am. I'm eating."
She rolled her eyes and reached for her own cup. The bark felt warm from the fire, resin-scented and faintly sticky. She tipped it, letting the barkwine roll over her tongue. It tasted of rain-soaked mint, followed by an after-sting of pepper that made her sinuses flare open. A small shiver ran up her spine—pleasant this ti, almost grounding. She set the cup down and flexed her fingers. No tremor. Good.
The al drifted on in a hush broken only by the pop of pine pitch in the fire and the muted rustle of cloaks. Elves ca and went, refilling platters with paper-thin shavings of star-root or laying down bowls of glistening seed mash. Each motion flowed like choreography: no wasted steps, no clatter of utensils. Sylara caught herself tracking their movents the way she'd observe a caged predator—looking for tells, asuring speed, wondering how quickly those graceful arms could break bone. It didn't help that every pair of moonlit eyes she t reflected uncanny focus, cool and steady as lake water before dawn.
She swallowed another mouthful of stew and, for lack of better comfort, tapped out a familiar counting rhythm against her thigh: catalog bones, ligants, strike zones. Old habit from cage-taming days. One through seven, calm. Eight through twelve, calr. By the ti she reached fourteen, the air pressing on her lungs felt manageable again.
Across the embers, Draven lifted a translucent slice of sothing that glowed at the edges—plum or exotic fungus, hard to tell—and held it to the firelight as though evaluating mineral purity. A few nearby elves paused in their serving to watch what he might divine from a single piece of fruit. Sylara almost laughed; only Draven could turn eating into an augury.
Eventually, Velthiri approached their side of the fire. Her steps whispered through the moss, but the hush of the glade shifted around her arrival the way water folds around a prow. She carried a slender decanter whose bark ridges shimred with runic script; with practiced grace she poured barkwine into hollowed cups, the stream catching ember glow before disappearing into dark vessels. She did not ask permission; offering and acceptance were assud.
Her frost-bright gaze swept the pair like a cold wind slling for smoke. "We offer fire," she said, voice low yet carrying. "You sat. You did not fall."
Sylara tipped her head, unsure whether to bow or shrug. "We're honored?" she ventured, and hated how tentative it sounded.
"You endured," Velthiri clarified, as though endurance were currency. "It is enough for speech."
The surrounding elves reacted with the faintest ripple. So shifted from foot to foot; others lowered their hoods, revealing pointed ears adorned with seed-gems that caught firelight like distant constellations. They drifted closer, still keeping a respectful crescent of space between themselves and the outsiders, but the air ward with conversation potential—as though the clearing itself leaned in to listen.
Draven t Velthiri's eyes without a flicker of deference. "Then let us speak."
She studied him in silence long enough for Sylara to count three of her own heartbeats. The priestess's inspection felt like standing beneath a glacier overhang, waiting to see if it would calve. Finally she asked, "You're adventurers?"
Draven's shoulder twitched with a smile too slight for his mouth. "Is that what we look like?"
"No." The reply carried a dry edge.
"Then we're doing it right."
A ripple of amused breath passed through the elves nearest them. Sylara couldn't tell if it was genuine laughter or surprise that a human dared banter. Before she could decide, another figure stepped forward—a man as weathered as driftwood, his skin browned and netted with fine wrinkles. Thorned beads hung against his collarbone, each thorn capped in dulled silver.
"Do you take quests?" he asked, voice sandpaper over oak.
Draven didn't hesitate. "We trade in results."
Sylara leaned back, flashing a quick grin that crinkled her goggles' straps. "And pretty things," she added. "I collect weird beasts, he collects headaches."
Soft chuckles—impossible to tell if with them or at them. Velthiri, expression unreadable, sipped her wine before speaking again. "Then perhaps you'll consider a challenge we do not offer lightly."
The fire dimd as though clouds crossed an unseen moon. Sylara noticed several elders leaning forward, cloaks whispering over moss. Bowstrings eased in their sheaths, not in relaxation but in subconscious anticipation, like serpents inhaling before a strike.
"A Guardian Beast dwells beneath our southern canopy," Velthiri began. Her voice lost none of its chill but held an undercurrent—respect or affection, Sylara couldn't tell. "It is kin. Not pet. Not prisoner. But it will not bond."
One of the younger lorekeepers inhaled sharply, as if the ntion alone risked conjuring the creature. Sylara's curiosity sparked like flint. She could practically feel Draven filing away every tonal nuance.
He asked, "You tried?"
Velthiri nodded once. "We offered many. It refused all."
The thorn-bead elder spoke next, gaze distant as though seeing mories painted on the night sky. "It tests will. Accepts voice, rejects claiming. Each refusal grows… sharper."
Sylara cocked her head. "Has it killed?" She expected a litany of casualties, scars on trunks bigger than houses.
"Only trees," Velthiri answered. "Yet roots scream. Sap flees. That is enough."
Draven's eyes narrowed the way they did when equations aligned. Sylara knew that look: he'd recognised sothing. She imagined hidden HUD text scrolling behind those gray irises—probability branches, affinity variables, fail-states charted down to the heartbeat.
In the flicker of a single ember he'd folded lifeti knowledge of this realm—half from experience, half from that uncanny well of mory he never fully explained—around one truth: hidden affinity quest, high fatality, rare yield.
The silence stretched. Heat from the fire lapped gently at her shins; the barkwine buzzed pleasantly in her blood. Sylara realized the entire clearing now hovered in stillness, watching the pair for answer. If she said no, would they force it? If she said yes, did Draven already see the path?
He looked at her then—first ti since the shift that cald her nerves—eyes glinting with the excitent she recognized from cage-taming days: face of a man who'd spotted possibility where others saw risk. Sylara felt a thrill spark through her gut, equal parts dread and delight.
She blinked, not hiding her skepticism. "So… you want us to pet your angry wolf?"
The words landed like a stone dropped into clear water—concentric ripples of quick laughs and indrawn breaths spreading through the elven semicircle. So covered their smiles with sleeves; others stiffened, offended on behalf of an unseen guardian. Velthiri's lips parted, whether in reprimand or amusent, Sylara couldn't tell.
But Draven's low chuckle cut through before anyone else could react.
Velthiri's jaw remained sculpted ice. "Ta," she repeated, each syllable crisp enough to chip stone. "Not command. Share breath, not bridle. If you can."
Reviews
All reviews (0)