Chapter Three — Teeth in the Quiet
1425 Words
The day unfolded slowly, as though time itself were reluctant to disturb whatever strange balance the night had left behind. Draegor Keep rarely knew stillness—storms, soldiers, wolves, curses—but this morning it held its breath.
People noticed.
Servants carrying buckets paused to watch Nyx pass through the north courtyard, whispering behind their palms—not in fear, but in that tense, reverent fascination reserved for omens. Horses snorted and turned their heads to follow her, ears pricked. Even the banners above the inner walls hung unnaturally still, as if the wind refused to turn its back to her.
Corvin saw all of it from the ramparts. He wasn’t hiding. He told himself that leaders observed from a distance.
The truth was simpler. He didn’t trust being nearer.
Nyx stepped into the training yard, Kael beside her, speaking low and easy. They made an unusual pair: she moved like a creature unsure where her body ended, and the world began; Kael, like someone who had always belonged everywhere.
“Slow your step,” Kael said, circling her lightly. “You walk as though the ground should rise to meet you.”
Nyx stopped, lifted her foot, and set it down more deliberately—testing weight, not mimicking it. The movement wasn’t tentative. It was intimate, as if she were greeting the earth rather than stepping on it.
“It doesn’t feel natural to give myself to it,” she murmured. “To be held.”
Kael’s brow arched. He had the kind of face that hid secrets behind a grin, but something unguarded flickered there now.
“Here,” he said gently, “letting the earth hold you means you’ve arrived.”
Nyx considered him—not just his face, but the space he occupied. She had a way of looking at people as if she could see the years beneath their skin.
“You choose belonging easily,” she said. “Some never do.”
Kael’s smile faltered, softened around the edges. “I choose faster when the company’s worth it.”
Corvin’s grip tightened on the stone railing. He didn’t look away, but his jaw locked, and a single muscle ticked beneath his eye.
The storm clouds overhead thickened, darker than a clear morning could justify.
Isolde arrived from the infirmary with a basket of dried herbs, her stride clipped and full of purpose. She slowed when she saw Nyx—too slow, too composed.
“You’ll tire her if you keep her on her feet,” she said to Kael, her voice calm but sharpened by something unspoken. “She fell between worlds last night. Gravity is heavier for her than for you.”
Kael wiped an arm across his brow, unbothered. “She’ll manage. She’s stronger than she looks.”
Isolde’s lips thinned. “Strength is not measured by how long a person stands. Sometimes it’s measured by knowing when not to.”
Nyx offered a diplomatic smile. “I don’t mind learning.”
Isolde turned fully to her then, and for an instant the healer’s mask slipped—not hostility, not dislike, but something older and more territorial. A quiet warning: You have not earned the right to change him.
Nyx held Isolde’s gaze without flinching.
“I don’t intend to be a disruption,” she said softly.
“Oh, child,” Isolde murmured. “Disruption rarely intends itself.”
Kael whistled low. “That was poetic. Also terrifying.”
Corvin finally descended from the battlements, not because he wished to, but because the wind had begun to misbehave. It curled toward Nyx instead of toward him, bending in soft, reverent movements as though the world had misinterpreted its allegiance.
He joined them in three long strides, boots sinking into the earth with a familiar weight.
“You shouldn’t be outside the walls yet,” he said to Nyx, his voice low enough that Kael rolled his eyes behind him. “There are dangers here you don’t understand.”
Nyx glanced at the sky instead of him. “There are dangers everywhere. Here they simply have names.”
She did not step closer, but she didn’t step away either. Their proximity sent a ripple through the wind—small, but undeniable. Shadows near Corvin’s boots shifted like restless hounds.
Kael watched the exchange with that same tightened expression. Not jealousy—at least not yet—but awareness. A man taking stock of another hunter.
Isolde watched them both.
Nyx moved again, slower this time, learning how to fold her weight into motion instead of gliding above it. Kael guided her with patient precision, placing a palm briefly at her elbow to adjust her stance.
He shouldn’t have needed to touch her to correct her posture.
He did anyway.
And Nyx noticed—her breath catching just slightly when he did.
She looked beautiful like that.
Not fragile.
Not divine.
Human.
Corvin hated how that made something inside him tighten.
He stepped closer than necessary, the air around him shifting temperature like the moment before thunder speaks. Kael felt the shift and moved his hand away smoothly, a little too casually.
Nyx, unaware of the cause, steadied herself with a hand on her cloak.
“What is it like,” she asked quietly, eyes on Corvin, “to hold power that answers you even when you do not call it?”
Corvin’s pulse thudded once, painfully.
He lifted his palm, not fully, just enough that light trembled beneath his skin—runes flaring dark silver, lightning trapped beneath flesh. The wind rose at his feet, circling him in hungry spirals.
He closed his fist. The light died.
“It isn’t holding power,” he said. “It’s containing it.”
Nyx’s expression softened—not pity—recognition.
“The world inside you never sleeps,” she whispered.
He forced himself to look away.
The horn sounded before anyone could speak again.
Low. Strained. Coming from the southern gate.
Kael spun, blades drawn, before instinct turned to thought.
“That wasn’t a drill.”
Isolde’s face drained of color, though she masked it quickly. “None of the patrols are scheduled there. Something crossed the ward.”
Nyx’s hand went to her throat, not frightened—alert.
“I came alone,” she said.
Corvin’s voice sharpened. “Things don’t need to walk alongside you to follow your path.”
The horn blew a second time—then cut off abruptly, as though the wind had swallowed it whole.
Warriors around the yard froze mid-motion.
Corvin turned to Kael. “Signal the inner guard. We move now.”
Kael nodded once and sprinted toward the barracks.
Isolde reached into her satchel and drew a thin, curved blade etched with silver sigils. So she had not come merely as a healer today.
Nyx watched the treeline with a kind of mournful focus, like someone reading danger in music rather than in movement.
Corvin stepped in front of her, her voice low enough that only she heard.
“You stay behind me.”
Nyx’s answer was quiet.
“I don’t think behind exists in whatever is coming.”
A cold wind slithered through the forest. Leaves fell upward instead of down.
The trees ahead trembled—not with footsteps, but with pressure, as though space itself were bruising.
No birds cried. No branches snapped.
Something large moved without sound.
Kael reappeared, two blades strapped across his back, eyes burning.
“Whatever it is,” he said, breathing quickly, “it’s not trying to hide. It’s trying to arrive.”
Corvin nodded once. “Weapons up.”
Isolde stepped close to Nyx, sharper now, protective in a way that bordered on possessive.
“If it’s here for you,” she murmured, “so help me—”
Nyx touched her arm, a soft gesture that startled them both.
“I don’t want anything harmed on my behalf.”
Isolde didn’t answer. Her grip on the blade only tightened.
They reached the treeline.
Silence pressed against them like a second skin.
Nyx’s breath fogged, though the air was warm. Corvin felt the storm behind him rise—not to strike, but to witness. Kael tensed at his side, a warrior’s patience stretched taut.
Isolde whispered a word beneath her breath.
The forest inhaled.
Then something burst from the shadows, and sound returned all at once.
The quiet was shattered.
Corvin moved first.
Nyx didn’t scream.
Then something burst through the treeline, and the world ceased being quiet at all.
- Writer
