The Stranger Beneath the Storm
1124 Words
The rain hadn’t stopped.
By morning, the streets of Duskend were rivers of filth and memory. Merchants cursed behind shuttered stalls. Children waded through alleys with tin pans and soaked boots. The sun, if it rose at all, hid behind a gray so thick it swallowed sound. It was the kind of weather that made secrets surface—dripping, bruised, hungry.
Isabella didn’t sleep. Not really.
She’d tossed in her cot until the walls began to creak with cold, Kael’s face stitched behind her eyes like a wound that refused to close. His voice echoed in her bones, low and rough—You don’t belong in this place.
What had he seen?
Her glamor still held, she was sure of it. No flare of golden light, no scent of woodland magic to betray her. Yet the way he had looked at her—no, through her—left a hollow space behind her ribs that hadn’t been there before.
By the time dawn shivered across the motel’s cracked windows, she had scrubbed the lobby clean again. Not because it was dirty. But because her hands needed something to do.
She made tea from the dusty herbs Marella kept in a glass jar by the sink. Bitter stuff. Sharp. But it grounded her.
Until the silence broke.
The soft creak of a door hinge.
Room 3.
Isabella straightened slowly, cradling the chipped teacup like a shield.
Kael stepped into the hallway barefoot, steam rising from his skin as if the air itself resisted touching him. His coat hung open, revealing the plain linen shirt underneath—clean now, but worn thin at the collar. A long scar cut across the side of his neck, pale against his skin.
He didn’t speak.
Just stared at her.
“You made it through the night,” she said, voice taut as a wire.
His mouth tilted—half amusement, half something older. “Didn’t expect the roof to hold.”
“It barely did.”
Another pause. Then:
“Tea?”
She blinked. “What?”
He nodded toward her cup. “That smell—thornleaf and wintermint. Haven’t had that since…” He trailed off, his expression shifting for the first time. Not pain. Not longing.
Recognition.
She swallowed. “It’s nothing special.”
Kael’s gaze flicked to her hands. “Your fingers are shaking.”
She scowled and placed the cup down too hard. “You’re very observant for someone who just needed a bed.”
He said nothing, but his eyes lingered. On her hands. Her throat. Her eyes.
The gold one.
She turned her face away.
“You should go,” she said. “Storm’s slowing. Roads’ll open by midday.”
“I won’t stay long,” he replied softly. “But I need something. Someone.”
The words landed like a stone dropped in water. No ripples. Just depth.
She faced him fully. “You think it’s me?”
“I know it’s you.”
The stillness between them thickened.
Kael took a careful step forward. She didn’t move, but every part of her tensed like a wire wound too tight.
“I’ve been tracking something,” he murmured. “Not a person. A signal. Magic born of root and ruin. Something old and unfinished.”
She said nothing.
“It led me here. To this city. To you.”
“Maybe you’re mistaken,” she whispered.
He reached into his coat.
Isabella flinched. But when he pulled his hand free, it wasn’t a weapon.
It was a pendant.
Oval-shaped, carved from petrified wood and veined with silver so fine it shimmered like water. In its center, a green stone pulsed faintly—alive with rhythm. A heartbeat.
She stared at it, her breath caught.
“I found it buried beneath a burned-out chapel,” he said. “Wrapped in ivy. It led me across rivers, mountains, ashfields. Then it stopped here. The moment you looked at me.”
She stepped back. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything,” he said quietly. “Because this stone only wakes when it’s near kin.”
That word.
It hit like thunder.
She stared at him as if seeing him for the first time—not just the angles of his face, the strange tension in his shoulders, the ancient coin, the feline flicker of his eyes. But the resonance. The rhythm her own chest mirrored.
“I don’t have kin,” she said, but her voice cracked on the last word.
Kael tilted his head. “Neither did I. Until now.”
The silence that followed held too much weight to bear.
So Isabella turned and fled.
She didn’t stop running until her feet hit the edge of the riverbank, boots skidding through cold mud. The water had risen almost to the path. The air smelled of rotted fish and rain-slick stone.
Her heart pounded. Her glamor wavered.
She collapsed to her knees and plunged her hands into the cold mud, panting. Breathing.
Why now?
Why him?
Why her?
The wind howled above, rattling the trees that lined the edge of the water. Somewhere deep in the branches, a raven called out—twice.
Behind her, twigs snapped.
She spun, ready to strike.
But it wasn’t Kael.
It was Marella.
Her cloak was soaked through, her wild hair matted to her face. She didn’t speak, just looked at Isabella the way mothers look at daughters before telling the truth.
“Who is he?” Isabella asked.
Marella didn’t flinch. “He’s the reason the tree bloomed the night we found you.”
The ache inside Isabella sharpened. “You knew?”
“We guessed.” Marella stepped forward, voice quiet. “We never spoke of it because we were afraid. Not of you. For you.”
Isabella swallowed hard. “What am I?”
Marella kneeled beside her. “You’re a root that was never meant to be pulled from the earth. A story the old songs forgot. Half fairy, half lycan—but more than both.”
She looked toward the shadowed edge of the trees, where the storm had begun to lift.
“The Wild Court is stirring again,” she whispered. “And if Kael found you… others will, too.”
“Others?” Isabella echoed.
“Hunters. Heirs. Shadows with broken oaths.”
“What do they want?”
Marella looked at her—truly looked. And Isabella saw the fear in her eyes.
“They want to decide what you become before you do.”
For the first time, Isabella felt the truth settle into her bones.
She couldn’t hide anymore.
The storm wasn’t the beginning.
She was.
And the world had just remembered her name.
- Writer
