The Soul’s Chorus

Chapter 13

The morning after the broken string was cold and brittle. A sharp wind had swept through Silvathorne, scouring the sky a pale, hard blue. The shame of the previous night clung to the manor like frost. Chloe had been excused from all gatherings. The unofficial word was she needed “quiet reflection.” The true meaning was she was in disgrace.

Kaelen felt the change like a drop in pressure. The servants all actively avoided her door. The few pack members they passed in the corridors averted their eyes, not from pity now, but from active suspicion. The cut on her hand was small, bandaged with a strip of linen, but it was a mark everyone had seen.

He followed her on her morning walk, the three-step distance feeling like a canyon. She moved like a ghost, her grey dress blending with the path, her bandaged hand held stiffly at her side. She did not go to the gardens. She went straight to the Weeping Sentinel, parting the green curtain and vanishing inside.

Kaelen stopped at his usual post. He could hear nothing from within, not even the scratch of dirt. Just the sigh of the wind in the high branches. He imagined her in there, sitting in the silent, green filtered light, bearing the weight of an omen she did not deserve.

He had spent the night thinking of the river stone. It was a smooth, dark grey oval, worn by years of cold water, he’d found it years ago on the border stream. It fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, cool and reassuringly heavy. A stone was steadfast. It endured. It was not easily broken.

It was a risk. A direct answer to her wolfsbane. If she rejected it, or worse, showed it to Corbin, it was proof of a connection. But after seeing her shattered face in the hall, he had to say something. Words were impossible. So, a stone.

When he was certain she was deep in her solitude, he moved. He stepped softly to the edge of the leafy curtain. From his pocket, he drew the river stone. He bent and placed it carefully on the moss just inside the curtain, where the green shadows began. A place she would find it when she left. A silent word in a language of objects.

He returned to his post, his heart thudding against his ribs. He had just crossed a line from observation to participation.

---

Chloe sat with her back against the great trunk, the bandage on her hand a stark white in the dim light. She replayed the twang, the sting, the whisper. Corrupts even music. The words had seeped into her bones. Maybe they were right. Maybe her very presence was a curse, breaking beautiful things.

She was preparing to leave when she saw it. A shape that didn’t belong. A smooth, dark stone sitting on the emerald moss like a fallen egg.

Her breath caught. She crawled forward and picked it up. It was still cool from the morning air. Heavy. Solid. She ran her thumb over its surface. It was worn perfectly smooth, every sharp edge taken by time and water. It was the most comforting thing she had held in years.

Kaelen. It had to be. No one else came here.

It wasn’t a flower or a note. It was a stone. What did it mean? Strength? Permanence? A reminder of the world’s solidity? Or was it a simpler message: I am here. I am steady.

She clutched it in her bandaged hand, the solidity of it grounding her. For a moment, the whispering voices in her mind stilled. But then, the pain in her hand throbbed, and the memory of the silver chain’s burn flared. His message was kindness, but her reality was pain. To answer with something equally kind felt like a lie. He needed to understand. Not just her sadness, but her reality.

She looked around her sanctuary. Her eyes fell on the thorned vine that climbed the Sentinel’s far side. It was a wild, nasty thing, with curved spikes as long as her thumbnail. One thorn, near the base, was particularly cruel-looking, black and sharp.

Carefully, she reached over and broke it off. It pricked her fingertip, a bright bead of blood welling instantly. Good. It was honest.

She placed the smooth river stone back on the moss. Beside it, with infinite care, she laid the long, black thorn, its point aimed away from the stone, not threatening it, but existing beside it. Your stability. My pain.

Then she slipped out the other side of the Sentinel’s curtain, a path she rarely used, and made her way back to the manor alone, the stone’s memory warm in her mind, the thorn’s prick stinging on her finger.

---

Kaelen waited a long time after she left before he approached. He pushed aside the leaves.

The river stone was there. And beside it, a thorn.

He knelt. He did not touch the thorn. He stared at the two objects lying together on the moss. The message was devastatingly clear.

He had offered stability, endurance. She had acknowledged it, but answered with a piece of her world’s sharpness. The thorn was pain, yes. But it was also protection. A defense mechanism. It was the silver chain. It was the snapped string and the whispers. It was the entire hostile architecture of her life.

She wasn’t just saying “I hurt.” She was saying, “This is what I am made of now. This is what surrounds me.”

He picked up the river stone. It was still slightly warm from her hand. He then picked up the thorn, holding it by its thickest end, careful of its point. He placed both in his pocket, the stone and the thorn together. He couldn’t leave them here. This conversation was theirs alone.

As he walked back, the two objects bumped together in his pocket with a soft click-scrape. A sound that echoed in his soul. Their silent dialogue was no longer a question. It was a partnership of understood truths. He knew her pain. She knew his offered steadiness. And now, they both held the sharp, dangerous fact of each other’s reality.

The gilded cage now had a secret, living language growing within it, spoken in stones and thorns. And Kaelen knew, with a certainty that both thrilled and terrified him, that he would do anything to keep that fragile, silent conversation alive.