Kaelis POV
I leave the kingdom exactly as I choose to—cloaked in silk and certainty, my posture flawless, my thoughts already arranging themselves several steps ahead of the present.
Fear is a language I stopped speaking long ago.
Vireen walks ahead of me, her stride unhurried, her back straight. She wears no sigils, no colors that would mark her allegiance to crown or coven. That, too, is deliberate. Vireen cleatly
has always existed in the margins—useful, unclaimed, quietly indispensable.
She does not look back to see if I follow.
She knows I will.
The road thins quickly once we pass the last watchtower. Stone gives way to packed earth, then to a path that seems to appear only because we are walking it. The air changes. It grows heavier, older, as though it remembers things the k
