Kai Drakon's Arc

Chapter 23 of 30

Eight winters had passed since the elf woke the seed in Kai's field. The farm thrived now. Rows ran green and heavy from the cavern to the road. At the town gate stood a small stand of split logs, and behind it stood Ren, eight years old, black hair loose, blue tail curled around a crate of peppers. He sold what the farm grew. He knew every price by heart. But Kai had never forgotten the debt he owed Seraphina Silverleaf, the silence she asked and he had kept for eight years while she came and went from the pines. He wanted it settled. A debt with no payment was a rope, and he was tired of the rope. He found her at the edge of the field near dusk. Silver hair, green eyes, the same layered dress. She watched Ren count coins at the stand. "I owe you," Kai said. "Eight years I've kept your secret. I don't like owing what I can't pay." Seraphina did not look at him. "You have paid. Every year you said nothing." "That's not payment. That's just not talking." She turned then, careful and even. "Silence is the only coin I asked for. You have given it. The debt is closed." Kai shook his head. "Then let me give you something real. Anything. Name it." A long quiet. She looked past him, to the boy at the gate weighing peppers in his small hands. "There is one thing," she said, quieter now, the way she went when a subject cut close. "I am tracking a relic taken from my people. It moves through towns like this one. If it passes through Mosswood, I will need eyes I trust. Your boy sees every stranger at that gate." Kai's jaw tightened. "You want Ren watching for you." "I want him to tell me if a certain man comes to buy. Nothing more." She held his eyes. "That would close it. Truly." Ren jogged up then, a coin between his teeth, tail whipping. "Sold the whole crate," he said. He looked at Seraphina and his grin flashed sharp canines. "Hi Ms. Seraphina!" Kai looked at the elf, then at his son. He did not want the boy inside her business. But he wanted the rope gone more. He crouched to Ren's level. "If a stranger asks after old elf things at your stand, you tell me. Just me. Understand?" Ren shrugged. "Sure." Then, flat, closed: "I don't tell secrets anyway." Seraphina smiled. "Then we are even, Kai Drakon." She stepped back toward the trees and was gone. Kai stood with his son among the heavy rows. The debt was paid. But he had traded silence for a task, and now Seraphina's hunt ran through his own boy at the gate. He did not yet know what she was hunting, or what it would bring to Mosswood.