A Bargain In The Dark
1276 Words
The silence after the Wardens’ retreat was almost unbearable.
Lyra stood against the ravine wall, breathing hard, her body trembling from the chase. The shard still burned in her satchel, warning of unseen threats even as the danger faded.
Kael watched her quietly, his blade lowered but still ready. In the pale light, his features were stark—sharp cheekbones, storm-dark eyes, hair that fell in loose strands across his brow. There was authority in the way he stood, yet also restraint, as though he were holding himself back from saying too much.
Finally, Lyra found her voice.
“You had no right,” she snapped, though her voice cracked. “Interfering like that—you’ll bring them back on me twice as fast.”
Kael’s brow arched. “You’d rather be dead?”
“I’d rather not owe anyone.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Then consider the debt unpaid. Those Wardens won’t stop hunting you. They’ll send more.”
She bristled, clutching her dagger. “Then I’ll keep running.”
“Running won’t save you.” His tone was calm, but there was weight in it, like stone grinding against stone. “They know what you carry now. The shard will draw them. You’re a beacon in the dark.”
Her stomach turned. She hated the truth in his words. The shard had been strange enough before, but since the Creed attacked her village, its pulse had only grown stronger, like it wanted to be found.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “And what would you know of it? You speak as if you’ve seen it before.”
Kael’s gaze flicked to her satchel, then back to her. “I’ve seen enough to know that thing doesn’t belong in the Creed’s hands—or yours.”
Her grip on the dagger tightened. “Then why save me? If you want it, you could’ve let them kill me and taken it from my corpse.”
His expression darkened, unreadable. “Because you wouldn’t understand what it means. Not yet.”
Not yet. The words itched under her skin.
Lyra stepped away from the wall, trying to put distance between them, but Kael followed, keeping just close enough that she couldn’t ignore him.
“Listen to me,” he said, voice low. “The Creed won’t stop. They think killing you will end their fear of the Veil, but they’re wrong. Whatever is breaking that sky—” he gestured upward, to the shimmering fracture above them, “—is tied to that shard. And you. Whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t want any part of this.” The words ripped out of her throat before she could stop them. “I never asked to be cursed. I never asked to be hunted like an animal.”
Kael’s eyes softened slightly, though his tone stayed hard. “No one asks for fate. But that doesn’t mean you can outrun it.”
They stared at each other in the gloom, her anger like sparks against the steady iron of his calm. She hated him in that moment—for knowing more than he revealed, for speaking of fate as if he had any right, for saving her when all she wanted was to disappear.
But beneath that hate was a flicker of something else. A pull she couldn’t name.
The shard throbbed again, and she cursed under her breath.
“Fine,” she said at last. “Suppose I believe you. Suppose I accept that running won’t save me. What then?”
Kael’s gaze didn’t waver. “Then you need an ally. Someone who knows how the Creed hunts. Someone who can keep you alive long enough to find answers.”
Her laugh was sharp, bitter. “And you’d volunteer? A man who appears out of nowhere, slays Wardens like it’s nothing, and demands I trust him?”
He tilted his head, almost amused. “You’ve survived on your own this long. You should know trust has nothing to do with it. Survival does.”
Lyra’s throat went dry. He wasn’t wrong. But every instinct screamed that walking beside him would be as dangerous as facing the Creed itself.
She studied him in silence, her heart beating too fast, the shard burning at her side like a second voice urging her to choose.
Finally, she slid the dagger back into its sheath.
“I don’t trust you,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” Kael replied smoothly. “You only have to keep up.”
Before she could answer, a horn blared in the distance—low, haunting, unmistakable. The sound of a Creed hunting call.
Lyra’s blood ran cold.
Kael’s hand went to his sword. “They’ve doubled their patrols. We need to move. Now.”
And without waiting for her reply, he turned into the darkness of the ravine, forcing her to decide—stay behind and face the Creed alone, or follow the man who was both her savior and her greatest unknown.
The shard pulsed once, hard, as if mocking her hesitation.
Cursing under her breath, Lyra ran after him.
The ravine narrowed to little more than a slit of stone, forcing Lyra to stumble after Kael, her palms scraping against the jagged walls as she ran. The hunting horn echoed again, closer this time, its mournful call bleeding through the night like a wound.
She wanted to scream, to tell him to slow down, to demand why she was letting herself be dragged into the dark by a stranger she should have left behind. But every time she faltered, she heard the Creed’s steps behind her—the crunch of armored boots, the rattling of their chains—and she knew she had no choice.
Her breath came ragged. Her chest burned. And still Kael didn’t stop.
At last he pulled her into a shadowed alcove carved into the cliffside, pressing her back against the stone. His hand clamped over hers, steadying her shaking fingers as the shard’s glow bled faintly through the leather of her satchel.
“Quiet,” he whispered, so close she felt the heat of his breath.
The sound of the Creed patrol swept past them—torches flickering, armor clinking, voices murmuring curses into the night. Lyra pressed her lips together, hardly daring to breathe, every muscle wound tight as a bowstring.
The torchlight faded. The patrol moved on.
Only then did Kael release her, stepping back into the gloom. His eyes caught what little starlight filtered through the c***k above, and for an instant they looked almost inhuman—silver, sharp, unyielding.
“You see now?” His voice was soft, but it cut through her like steel. “Alone, you’ll be dead within a day.”
Lyra’s heart thundered, not from fear of the Creed this time, but from something far more dangerous—the knowledge that he was right.
Her hand brushed against the satchel where the shard pulsed like a second heartbeat. The choice weighed heavy on her tongue, bitter as blood.
At last she swallowed, forcing out the words.
“Then we run together. But only until I find my answers.”
Kael inclined his head, a faint curve of something—approval, or perhaps amusement—tugging at his mouth.
“Agreed. For now.”
The hunting horn sounded again in the distance, but Lyra barely heard it. Because in that moment, she knew her life had shifted forever—tethered to a man she did not trust, a shard she could not control, and a fate she could no longer outrun.
- Writer
