Kai Drakon's Arc

Chapter 24 of 30

Three weeks passed after Kai gave Ren the task. The peppers sold fast that season. Ren worked the stand each morning, counting coins, weighing crates for every stranger who stopped. Kai split his time between the field and the gate, close enough to watch his son but far enough not to crowd him. Nothing came. He almost let himself forget the rope was ever tied. Then one morning Ren stopped counting. Kai saw it from the rows. His son stood still at the stand, tail rigid, staring at a man in a gray traveling cloak. The man turned a pepper in his hand and did not buy it. He asked Ren something. Ren gave a short answer and looked away. The man leaned closer. Kai crossed the field fast. By the time he reached the stand, the stranger had gone, cloak vanishing into the road crowd. Kai crouched to Ren's level. "What did he ask you?" Ren's grin was gone. "Old elf things," he said. "He wanted to know if anybody in town sold carvings. Old stone ones. From the pines." Kai's chest tightened. "What did you tell him?" "Nothing." Ren met his father's eyes, flat and closed. "I don't tell secrets." Then, quieter: "He smelled wrong, Dad. Like cold metal." Kai stood and scanned the road. The gray cloak was gone. He gripped Ren's shoulder. "You did right. Watch the stand. I'm going to the pines." He found Seraphina at the field's edge that evening, where she always came. Silver hair, green eyes, the layered dress. She read his face before he spoke. "He came," she said. "A man in a gray cloak. Asked Ren about old stone carvings from your forest." Kai watched her. "Ren said he smelled like cold metal. He gave the man nothing." Seraphina went very still. For the first time in eight years, Kai saw fear cross her face. "Then it is here," she said. "The relic is in Mosswood, or the man who carries it is." "What is it?" She did not answer at once. When she did, her voice was low and even. "A thing that should never have left my people. In the wrong hands it wakes what should stay asleep." She looked toward the gate, toward the boy weighing peppers in the dusk. "Your son saw the one man I have hunted for years. That closes our debt, Kai Drakon. Truly this time." "And now?" "Now I stop hiding." She pulled her hood back, silver hair loose. "I have waited long enough. I’m going to the man now.”