Chapter 2: The Pull
1103 Words
The canoe sliced through black water like a blade.
Ifeoluwa’s arms burned from the effort, pole digging deep, muscles screaming every time she pushed. The festival lights were already shrinking to pinpricks behind her, swallowed by the humid night. She could still hear the drums—distant thunder now—but the real sound pounding in her ears was her own pulse.
And his.
It thrummed against her ribs in perfect, mocking sync. Every beat reminded her: he was close. Closer than he should be. The golden threads under her skin pulsed hotter with each stroke of the pole, as if the bond itself was angry, she’d dared run.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
Nothing but dark river and mist.
Yet she felt him. Not just the heartbeat—the heat. A low, steady burn spreading from her wrist up her arm, across her chest, settling low in her belly like a warning she refused to name. She clenched her teeth and poled harder.
The river narrowed here, banks crowding in with thick mangroves and spirit-wards carved into the roots. She knew these channels better than most—smuggler’s veins, hidden shortcuts the council patrols rarely bothered with. If she could reach the twisting fork at Three-Mouth Bend before he caught her scent, she might lose him in the maze.
Might.
The threads tightened suddenly, sharp as a whip-c***k. Pain lanced through her sternum. She stumbled, pole slipping, canoe lurching sideways. Water sloshed over the edge, cold against her calves.
“Damn you,” she hissed—to the bond, to fate, to him.
A low splash answered from upstream.
Not far.
She froze, listening.
Then she saw the glow.
A faint crimson ember moving between the trees—steady, deliberate, cutting straight toward her position like it knew exactly where she was. Because it did. The bond didn’t lie. It pointed like a compass needle, and she was the north.
Ifeoluwa dropped low in the canoe, heart slamming so hard she tasted iron. She reached for the dagger at her thigh—small comfort against an Ember Lord—but better than nothing.
The glow stopped at the water’s edge.
A silhouette stepped onto a low-hanging root, tall and unhurried. Moonlight caught the crimson edges of his robe, the faint scars that shimmered like cooling lava under his skin. Kayode.
He didn’t shout. Didn’t need to.
His voice rolled across the water, quiet and certain.
“You’re making this harder than it has to be.”
Ifeoluwa’s laugh came out jagged. “Funny. I was thinking the same about you.”
He tilted his head, studying her the way a hunter studies something already caught. “Turn back. Or keep running. Either way, the threads will drag you to me eventually.”
She gripped the pole tighter, knuckles pale. “Then they’ll have to drag a corpse.”
Something flickered in his expression—annoyance, maybe, or the ghost of regret. Hard to tell in the dark.
“I’m not here to kill you, Ifeoluwa.”
Hearing her name in his mouth sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with fear. The threads flared in response, warm and insistent, like fingers tracing her collarbone.
She hated it. Hated him more.
“You don’t get to say my name,” she snapped. “You don’t get to act like we’re already—”
“Bound?” he finished. One brow lifted. “We are.”
The word landed like a stone in still water. Ripples spread through her chest.
She shoved the pole down again, hard. The canoe shot forward, carving toward the narrowest gap between the mangroves. Branches clawed at her arms, drawing thin lines of blood. She didn’t care.
Behind her, she heard the soft splash of boots hitting shallow water.
He was moving.
Fast.
The bond screamed—a sudden, searing tug that nearly yanked her overboard. She caught herself on the edge, gasping. The golden threads were brighter now, visible even through the fabric of her wrapper, glowing like molten wire against her dark skin.
She could feel his frustration bleeding through the connection. Not anger. Something colder. Resignation.
“You’ll kill yourself before you lose me,” he called, voice closer now. Too close.
“Then at least I’ll die free.”
Silence for two heartbeats.
Then his voice, lower, almost gentle.
“No one dies free when the rivers die with them.”
She rounded the bend at full speed, throwing her weight into the pole. The canoe skidded into the fork—left channel wide and slow, right one choked and fast. She chose right without thinking, letting the current snatch her.
For a second she thought she’d made it.
Then the water ahead erupted.
A wall of steam and ember-light rose straight from the riverbed, blocking the channel like a gate of fire. The heat hit her like a fist. The canoe rocked violently.
Kayode stepped out of the mist on the opposite bank, arms crossed, robe barely stirring in the unnatural wind his power had summoned.
The threads between them snapped taut.
Visible now—golden ropes of light stretching across the water, connecting her wrist to his.
He didn’t move closer.
He didn’t have to.
“You can fight me,” he said. “You can hate me. But you cannot outrun what’s already inside you.”
Ifeoluwa stared at the glowing tether, chest heaving.
Then she looked up at him—really looked.
Not the myth. Not the Oba’s monster.
A man. Tired. Burning from the inside. Eyes that held centuries of watching things he couldn’t save.
For one heartbeat, the bond showed her something else: a flash of his memory. A woman’s face—hers?—screaming as flames consumed her. His hands reaching. Too late.
Pain. Not hers. His.
She shoved it away, furious.
“Don’t,” she snarled. “Don’t show me your guilt to make me feel sorry for you.”
Kayode’s jaw tightened.
“I’m not asking for pity. I’m asking you to live long enough to decide what this bond means.”
The fire-wall flickered, weakening just enough for the current to pull at her again.
He was letting her go.
For now.
Ifeoluwa gripped the pole, torn between rage and the sick, traitorous curiosity blooming under her ribs.
She poled once—hard—sending the canoe shooting down the narrow channel.
But she didn’t look back this time.
She didn’t need to.
The threads still sang between them.
And they both knew she’d hear his heartbeat all night.
- Writer
