Chapter Two — The Weight of Quiet
1591 Words
Dawn tried to arrive, but the sky hadn’t quite decided whether morning was permitted.
A thin wash of pearl light pressed against the windows of the west tower, soft enough to pass for mist. The storm that had stalked Corvin’s sleep all night hovered just beyond the keep’s wards—not raging, not demanding—only waiting.
The waiting was what unsettled him.
Storms never waited.
He had risen before the servants and washed in silence, the chill water doing nothing to steady him. He dressed with an old warrior’s precision: dark linen shirt, storm-woven coat, silver-buckled belt. The dagger at his hip hummed with restless energy, but unlike every other morning, it did not bite his skin for attention.
When he opened the chamber door, the quiet followed him.
Nyx stood by the window.
Not hovering. Not shrinking. Standing, as though the world had shaped a place for her in the stone overnight. Bare feet, borrowed cloak, hair tumbling like smoke down her back. The light brushed her skin and seemed to linger there, reluctant to leave.
She did not look celestial this morning; she looked present—as if she had decided to inhabit the body she’d fallen into.
“You should still be resting,” Corvin said.
She didn’t turn immediately. She watched the horizon as though reading it.
“When I close my eyes, I dream of falling,” she replied. “I’d rather stand.”
He took a step closer, not enough to invade her space, just enough to see the faint silver threading beneath her skin had dimmed to a whisper. She looked less made of light today, more made of flesh—and something in him tightened at the thought.
“You’ll need strength,” he told her.
Nyx finally looked over her shoulder, expression unreadable.
“I am learning what strength costs here.”
Isolde arrived without knocking, as she always had.
The healer’s braid was damp, her satchel full of clinking vials, and her eyes—though kind—held a sharpness this morning they hadn’t had the night before.
“Good,” she said briskly. “You’re awake. Both of you look like unfinished business.”
Corvin arched a brow. “I slept.”
“Poorly,” Isolde countered. “I can smell exhaustion like other people smell wine.”
She placed a bowl of steaming broth in front of Nyx without ceremony, yet her gaze flicked at the woman’s face with something too complicated to name. Not hostility—Isolde wasn’t petty. But there was territory in that look. Territory she hadn’t needed to defend in years.
Nyx dipped her head in gratitude, graceful and restrained.
Isolde did not return the gesture.
Kael appeared moments later, as though the morning was incomplete without him. He leaned in the doorway with practiced nonchalance, rain still clinging to his knuckles.
“If anyone’s keeping track,” he announced, “the sky looks offended. Whatever fell from it last night left a bruise.”
Nyx lifted her eyes to him—and Kael, for once, forgot to speak.
It was a subtle thing: a stall in breath, a blink too long, the faint tilt of his shoulders as though bracing against impact. Not lust. Not awe. But recognition—the dangerous kind, the kind that made men volunteer for wars they didn’t need to fight.
Corvin noticed.
Isolde noticed him noticing.
Nyx neither noticed nor pretended not to.
Kael cleared his throat. “I’m Kael. Second to Corvin. Harder to impress than I look.”
Nyx accepted the introduction with a soft, distant smile. “Nyx.”
“Just Nyx?” he asked lightly.
“For now.”
Kael’s grin deepened, but Corvin cut across the moment.
“You’ll eat before you speak philosophy,” he said, and Nyx lowered herself to the chair with a grace that made the gesture look ceremonial.
They ate in a silence that felt like fragile glass.
Corvin stood at the edge of the room, hands clasped behind him, posture rigid. Commanding a battlefield had always been easier than standing in a room with one woman who steadied storms just by breathing.
Nyx lifted a spoon, hesitated, then tasted the broth. The smallest crease formed between her brows.
“It tastes like earth,” she murmured.
“That’s where food comes from here,” Kael said. “Not light.”
She glanced at him, curious. “This world presses. I feel the weight of it everywhere.”
Corvin spoke before he meant to.
“It’s not the world. It’s being here.”
Nyx considered him—not as a ruler, not as a threat, but as something she was trying to understand.
Isolde set down her satchel with unnecessary force. “She needs rest. Questions later.”
Nyx didn’t look away from Corvin.
“I don’t rest well in a place that watches me.”
“This keeps watch over everyone,” Isolde replied sharply. “You’re not special to its walls.”
Corvin’s eyes shifted to Isolde.
There. Jealousy—not romantic, but protective. As though Nyx were a stone dropped into still water, and Isolde didn’t like how the ripples bent toward Corvin instead of her.
Isolde had spent a lifetime patching the cracks in him. She didn’t yet know whether Nyx would widen them or seal them shut.
Nyx’s smile was polite, but not meek. “You’ve guarded these halls a long time.”
“I was here before the curse,” Isolde said flatly. “I intend to be here after it.”
Kael raised a brow at Corvin, amused at the territorial edge.
Corvin ignored him.
When Nyx rose, Kael surged halfway to his feet—instinct, interest, maybe something else—but Corvin reached her first, not touching, just close enough that the air between them changed temperature.
“You’re unsteady,” he said.
Nyx looked down at her hands, still threaded with faint silver sigils.
“I am unaccustomed to bodies that don’t listen.”
Kael stepped closer, offering his arm—casual, but eager. “I can—”
Nyx moved past both men without taking either hand.
“I only need space.”
Her voice was soft, not defiant, but firm enough to leave the offer hanging.
Kael lowered his arm slowly.
Isolde’s eyes narrowed at the exchange.
Corvin stood very still.
Nyx paused at the window again.
Outside, clouds churned like animals pacing a fence line, uncertain whether to run or kneel.
“They’re waiting,” she whispered.
“The storms?” Corvin asked.
Nyx didn’t answer directly. “Whatever lives in them.”
Isolde stiffened. “Careful with words you don’t understand, girl.”
Kael exhaled through his teeth. “She’s here one night and the sky’s already acting domesticated.”
Corvin stepped beside Nyx, the space between them small enough to feel rather than see.
His hands remained at his sides, but lightning stirred beneath his skin—so subtle only he could feel it.
“The storms do nothing they don’t want,” he said.
Nyx looked up at him, eyes dark as twilight water.
“And you believe they want you?”
Corvin’s jaw tensed. “They obey.”
“No,” she said softly. “They accompany.”
For a moment—only a moment—it felt like she’d peeled him open without touching him.
Isolde stepped forward, head high, tone cool as river stone.
“You speak boldly for someone who hasn’t earned the right to dangerous truths.”
Nyx bowed her head, but not submissively—more like someone acknowledging a hunter, not a teacher.
Eventually, Kael broke the quiet with a clap of palms.
“Well. This room is too full of feelings for my taste. I’ll be on the training grounds. Nyx, if you want to learn how to walk without looking like the world is too loud, I’ll show you later.”
He meant it lightly.
He also meant it.
Nyx did not promise she’d come, but her eyes lingered on him with interest—not for his attention, but for what he might help her understand about this body.
Kael smiled like a man already imagining stories.
Isolde saw it.
Corvin saw Isolde seeing it.
Kael left with a swagger that wasn’t entirely performed.
Isolde went next, with a hand on Corvin’s arm, deceptively gentle.
“Do not forget,” she murmured, voice meant for him alone, “some doors open only to swallow what’s inside.”
She held his gaze a moment too long, then swept out before he could answer.
Nyx and Corvin were alone again.
The quiet returned, but this time it wasn’t soft—it had shape, edges, consequences.
Nyx touched the edge of the cloak Kael had given her fingerprints, fingertips smoothing the fabric as though learning its texture.
“You all carry weight differently,” she said. “Some with pride. Some with pain.”
“And you?” Corvin asked.
Her eyes shifted to him, slow and deliberate.
“I carry light. It isn’t the same thing.”
The storm outside pressed closer to the window, curious.
Corvin watched her for a long moment—long enough to feel the ache beneath his own ribs return, not from the curse, but from awareness.
“We’ll speak again later,” he said.
Nyx nodded, but her gaze lingered on him as though memorizing something she did not yet understand.
When he finally turned away, the storm followed him.
- Writer
