Kai Drakon's Arc

Chapter 25 of 30

Kai followed Seraphina toward town at dusk. She walked fast, hood down, silver hair loose for the first time in eight years. "You don't have to face him alone," Kai said. "I owe you nothing now. Let me help anyway." She did not slow. "Then keep to my left and stay quiet." They found the gray cloak near the road that ran to the tavern. The stranger stood still when he saw Seraphina. He reached inside his cloak. Kai stepped between them, but he did not have to strike. From the shadows, a young soldier moved first—blond hair, purple eyes, a blade already drawn. Victor. Kai knew him well. Victor guarded the castle now, hiding from his old post, working nights to stay unseen. He had a wife and a baby girl at home. He should not have been here. Yet he pinned the stranger's arm before the man could pull the relic free. "Drop it," Victor said. His voice was flat and cold, but his grip did not shake. "You've been asking the wrong questions all week." The stranger twisted. Kai grabbed his other arm. Together they forced him down. Something hard fell from the cloak and rolled on the dirt—a carved stone, gray and old, warm to look at and wrong to touch. Ren's words came back to Kai. Cold metal. He kicked the stone toward Seraphina. She knelt and lifted it. Her hands stopped shaking the moment she held it. "Eight years," she said, quiet now, the way she always got when it mattered. "This is it. The thing he carried out of my forest." Victor bound the stranger's wrists with a length of cord. "Seraphina sent word," he told Kai. "She said a man would come with something stolen. I owed her. She delivered my daughter." He hauled the stranger up. "There's a cell below the old castle. Nobody uses it. He'll keep there." They marched him through the town gate. The moss-covered castle rose ahead, its stone towers dark, fireflies drifting in a slow ring around the walls. Victor led them to a low door and down a stair Kai had never seen. The dungeon smelled of wet rock. The stranger said nothing as the iron door closed on him. Seraphina held the relic against her chest. "It's done," she said. "He's caged. The stone is mine again." Kai watched her face. The fear was gone from it. But something else had taken its place—a hard set to her jaw he did not like. "And the man?" Kai asked. "You'll question him?" "I will." She turned the stone in her fingers. "He did not steal it for himself. Someone paid him." She looked up, and her green eyes were steady. "Someone with a crown." Then she walked back up the stair, and Kai understood the fight was not over. It had only found its true shape.