Chương 66: Chapter 65 - Betrayal

The fire had burned down to coals before Rowan finally spoke. He sat cross-legged near the hearth, elbows on his knees, hands hanging loose between them. Nobody had asked him to start. He just did.

"I bonded when I was seventeen. Same as most everyone." His voice was flat, like he was reading off a list.

"Her name was Geriva. Two-headed snake, big as a cart. Bigger, by the end." Maren shifted forward on the bench, hands wrapped around a mug she'd stopped drinking from ten minutes ago. Ant said nothing, watching the way Rowan's fingers picked at a loose thread on his sleeve, over and over, the same three inches of fabric.

"I was good," Rowan said.

"Not bragging. It's just true. Best in the clan my age, maybe the best in a decade, they said. There was another boy—Matthew. Clan leader's son. We did everything together. Patrols, bandit sweeps, wild Kithren culls out past the tree line. Whatever needed doing." He paused.

"I always came out slightly ahead. Not by much. Just enough." The fire popped. Nobody moved to feed it.

"I didn't see it building in him. The resentment. His father praised me in front of him more times than I can count and I never—" Rowan stopped. Started again.

"I never thought about what that does to a person. Being second in your own house." Hazel had gone very still, a whetstone forgotten in her lap. She'd been running her thumb along the flat of it without noticing, and now even that had stopped.

"There was a tournament. Younger members, whole clan watching. Matthew and I made the final, which nobody was surprised by. We'd been fighting toward that final our whole lives without knowing it." A short, humorless breath.

"Should've known it too."

"The fight was close. Good, even. Geriva was pushing him back, I remember that clearly, we were maybe winning." He said we like it still counted for something.

"Then she slowed. Just a fraction, a half-step behind where she should've been. Small cuts, nothing that should've mattered, she'd shrugged off worse. But she kept telling me something was wrong. Kept telling me she felt weak and I told her to push through it because that's what we did, we always pushed through." Thomas's jaw worked but he said nothing. His hands, folded on the table, had curled into loose fists without him seeming to notice.

"I surrendered when I realized it wasn't the fight doing it. Ran to her. Matthew got carried on shoulders through the square. Hero. Leader's son, finally, finally the one they cheered for." He looked at the fire, not at any of them.

"She died in my arms." No shake in his voice. No tears, even.

"Didn't fight it. Didn't struggle. Just—stopped, the way you'd stop mid-sentence. She went out the way she lived. Fully in it, right to the end." Maren made a small sound, quickly swallowed. Her eyes had gone glassy and she blinked hard, once, twice, refusing to let it go further than that. Nobody looked at her. It felt like the kindest thing they could do. The silence stretched long enough that the fire's crackle felt loud.

"I didn't know enough. About poisons, about anatomy, any of it. I just held her and did nothing useful, and that's the last thing I remember doing before I decided I'd never be that useless again."

"Rowan—" Maren started, voice thick.

"Let me finish." His voice was tired, worn thin.

"It was the extract of a local flower. Nasty stuff, if you know how to prepare it. Matthew had laced his Kithren's claws in it before the final. Small doses build slow. If Geriva had backed off the moment she felt it, if I hadn't pushed, if either of us had an ounce less pride between us, she'd have shaken it off." His hands closed into fists, opened again.

"But we didn't. So she didn't." Hazel set the whetstone down on the table with a soft click, deliberate, like she needed her hands free for something and hadn't decided what yet.

"He poisoned his own clan's Kithren," she said, the words landing heavy in the room. Her voice had a rasp in it that hadn't been there before.

"His own clanmate's bonded partner. To win a tournament."

"Yes." Rowan didn't look up.

"You confronted him," Kalsar said, voice low, testing the words.

"Confronted the leader. His father." A short laugh, no humor in it at all.

"Tears in my eyes, if you want the whole picture. Told him I knew. He went white. I don't think he'd had any idea—give him that much—but what was he supposed to do? Punish his only heir? Strip him in front of the whole clan for killing another man's Kithren out of jealousy?"

"That's disgusting." Maren's voice cracked through the quiet like something breaking, louder than she'd meant it, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth for a second like she could take it back. She didn't.

"Treating a bond like that—like it's nothing —like Geriva was just a—a piece on a board he could knock over—""She wasn't a piece on a board." Rowan said it quietly, needing it said out loud, once, by someone.

"I know." Maren's eyes were wet now and she made no attempt to hide it, wiping at her cheek with the back of her wrist, furious at herself for crying over a stranger's grief from twenty years gone and unable to stop.

"I know she wasn't. I'm sorry. I just—" She didn't finish. Thomas spoke for the first time since Rowan had started, and his voice came out lower than usual, rougher.

"And nothing happened to him. The son."

"Nothing happened to him." Rowan looked up at that, finally, grief worn smooth in his expression, carried so long it had stopped being sharp and had just become weight instead.

"That's clan politics. That's how it works when you're the one who matters and I was the one who was useful." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Thomas's fist came down on the table, not hard, just once, a dull thud that made the mugs jump. He didn't apologize for it. Nobody expected him to. Rowan looked at Maren. His face eased, just slightly, the first softness he'd shown since he started talking.

"He gave me a choice. Leave, quietly, with enough coin to start over. Or stay and watch him find a way to make my life smaller until I left anyway." He shrugged, one shoulder.

"Wasn't really a choice."

"I took the money. Went into healing. Told myself it was so no one else would watch their Kithren die not understanding why. Some days I believe that's the whole reason." He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand, quick, like he was annoyed at himself for needing to.

"Still hurts. Even now. Probably always will." Kalsar leaned back, exhaled through his nose. His weathered face had none of its usual dry humor in it now.

"Well—""I know." Rowan cut him off before he could finish, voice suddenly harder, quicker.

"How does this help us. That's what you're thinking." He breathed once, deep, like he was physically pushing the old grief back down where it lived.

"After I qualified I needed work. No Kithren, no clan—people don't exactly line up to hire that. So I took what I could get. Some of it with people most clans wouldn't touch. Fighters. Strong ones. No banners, no oaths, nobody to answer to." He looked around the circle, gauging.

"That's where we might find people. Willing to fight for us, or at least willing to be paid to. I won't lie to you—it's a long shot. Some of them I wouldn't trust with a coin purse let alone a fight. But there's talent there. Wasted talent, mostly." Nobody spoke right away. The color had gone out of the room the way it does when a story lands somewhere it shouldn't have been allowed to. Hazel was the one who broke first, and it came out sideways, not aimed at Rowan at all.

"Matthew." She said it like she was testing the weight of it.

"Not because I'll do anything with it. I just wanted to say it out loud once."

"It doesn't matter now," Rowan said, quiet.

"He'll have inherited by now. Probably running that clan into whatever shape suits him."

"It matters," Hazel said, and didn't explain further. Raven broke it next. She hadn't moved through the whole telling, hadn't so much as shifted her weight, and when she finally spoke her voice was even in a way that felt deliberate, like she was holding something back by main force.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Rowan. Nothing I say fixes it. But I'll tell you this." She met his eyes.

"I'll gladly add this Matthew to my kill list." Ant blinked.

"You have a kill list?" His voice came out higher than he meant it to.

"I thought—you're a tracker. Not—" The look she gave him stopped him cold, mid-word.

"I don't fight in clan squabbles. I don't fight to prove anything to anyone." Her voice hadn't risen at all, which somehow made it worse.

"None of that interests me. But the ones who make my list—" she smiled, and it was not a comforting expression, "—it isn't pleasant for them." Ant said nothing else. Neither did anyone. Maren was still wiping at her face, and when she spoke again it came out unsteady.

"Rowan, I—I'm glad you told us. I know that could not have been easy, having to relive that moment." She hesitated, chewing at the inside of her cheek.

"I won't say sorry again. You've heard enough of that, I'd guess, from people who didn't know what else to say."

"I have," Rowan admitted. Something in his shoulders eased, just slightly, at that.

"Yours felt different, though. Thank you." Kalsar cleared his throat, straightening in his chair like a man resetting himself after a blow, though his eyes lingered on Rowan a moment longer than the gesture needed.

"So," he said.

"This village. Where." Rowan looked up, the old grief folded back somewhere behind his eyes, replaced with a tone more businesslike, more careful.

"Marrow's Hollow. Three, maybe four days from here, if the roads are dry." He hesitated.

"It's not a pleasant place. But it's where you go when nowhere else will have you." Nobody said anything for a moment. The fire had gone down to almost nothing, just a dull orange line under the ash.

"Then that's where we go," Kalsar said finally, but his eyes went to Ant as he said it, checking.

"Not all of us, though. Can't leave the base sitting empty, not after what just happened." He looked around the fire, weighing faces, and for a moment nobody hurried him.

"I'd say Ant. Me. Hazel. Rowan, obviously — you know the place, you know the people." He glanced at Ant again, waiting.

"Four's enough to travel fast and still hold our own if it comes to it. That sit right with you?" Ant held his eyes a moment, turning it over, then nodded.

"That works. Hazel and Rowan too, then." He looked to Hazel to make sure she was still in, and she gave a short nod back. Maren's head came up, and whatever she'd been about to say about the terms fell away.

"What if they attack the base again? While you're gone?" Nobody answered right away. It was the question none of them had wanted to be the one to ask, and now that it was sitting out in the open the fire seemed too quiet to fill the gap.

"Then we'd better be quick about it," Kalsar said. He said it lightly, the way he said most things, but his eyes had gone somewhere harder for a second before he let it go. Maren didn't look satisfied with that. She opened her mouth like she meant to push it further, then closed it again, pressing her lips together and staring into the fire instead. Whatever argument she had, she folded it away for later.

"I'll draft the recruitment terms tonight, at least," she said, quieter now, like she needed a task to hold onto.

"If we're bringing in people with no clan and no loyalty, we need something on paper before anyone shakes a hand."

"They won't read it," Rowan said. He wasn't unkind about it, just tired, the way a man gets when he's explained the same thing too many times to people who hadn't lived it.

"Half of them can't." He looked into the fire a moment, like he was choosing the next part carefully.

"Terms on paper won't be what pulls them in anyway. It's not coin they're short on, most of them can scrape that together well enough. It's a place. A clan that'll actually claim them." He glanced at Maren, his tone gone apologetic, like he hated correcting her right after everything else he'd already put on her tonight.

"Offer them that — a home, somewhere to belong instead of just being paid help — and maybe some of them come. Not all. But some." Maren didn't answer straight away. She sat with it, turning her mug slowly between her hands, not drinking from it.

"Then the terms should say that," she said eventually.

"Not just wages and expectations. What the clan actually offers them." Her voice had gone thoughtful, some of the earlier rawness settling into steadier ground, like the work was giving her somewhere to put it.

"Worth staying for, not just worth showing up for. I'll write it that way tonight." Hazel hadn't said anything in a while. She sat turning the whetstone over in her fingers, watching the firelight catch on the stone, before she finally set it flat against her knee.

"Whatever needs fixing or forging out there, I'll have my kit ready by morning." She didn't look up when she said it. There wasn't much left to say after Rowan's story that didn't feel small next to it, and packing a kit was at least something her hands could do.

"Good." Kalsar looked to Ant, leaving the last word to him. Ant nodded.

"Pack light. We move at first light." Ant hadn't spoken in a while. He looked at Rowan, who was staring into the coals like he was still somewhere else, three or four days and twenty years away.

"Thank you," Ant said.

"For telling us. I know it wasn't—" He stopped, not sure how to finish it without making it worse.

"It's fine," Rowan said, though his voice suggested it wasn't, not entirely, not yet.

"It needed saying, if we're doing this." He stood, joints cracking from sitting too long in one position, and looked around at all of them one more time.

"Get some sleep. Roads to Marrow's Hollow aren't kind, even when they're dry." He left the fire without waiting for anyone to answer, and the door shut soft behind him.