The Fallen Princess: Unbound

Chapter Twelve

“Then why,” the voice asked softly, “did you come home?” The words drifted out of the mist like breath from a mouth Zaria couldn’t see, quiet enough that they shouldn’t have carried, and yet they landed with the weight of something spoken in a place that had been waiting a long time to speak.

Koen went still beside her. Not stiffened, he was always controlled, but stilled in a way that made the forest feel louder around them. The drawn bows didn’t tremble. The men holding them didn’t shift. Even the mist seemed to pause, as if listening for his answer.

A figure stepped forward from the cave mouth. At first, Zaria saw only a shape in pale haze, cloak, hood, the suggestion of hair caught at the shoulders. Then the mist thinned, and she saw a woman’s face beneath it.

Older. Not ancient, but marked by years lived under canopy shadows. Skin sun-browned and wind-worn, cheekbones sharp, eyes the same deep, natural red as Koen’s. Her gaze settled on Koen like hands.

Zaria felt Koen’s fingers twitch beneath hers. Not enough to move her grip. Not enough to betray him to anyone watching. Just enough to tell her the truth: whatever he had buried, it had just been struck.

The woman took another step, slow and deliberate, as if she didn’t trust the space between them not to break. She didn’t look at Zaria. She didn’t look at the bows. She looked only at Koen’s face.

“Koen,” she said, and the name sounded different from anyone else’s mouth, softer, not indulgent, but intimate in the way only a mother could make a name into a prayer. Koen didn’t respond.

His expression stayed calm, almost blank. But Zaria could feel something stirring behind it, a pressure he was forcing down, the way a man pressed a wound and pretended it wasn’t bleeding.

The woman stepped closer again, ignoring the archers as if they were part of the cave wall. Her eyes searched Koen’s features with an attention that was almost painful to witness. Mapping him, measuring what time had done to him, what someone’s hands had taken.

And then she seemed to find it. Not a scar. Not a mark. An absence. Her mouth parted slightly, not in shock but in a kind of quiet injury, as if she’d walked toward a fire expecting warmth and found only ash.

“What has happened to my boy?” she asked. No tears. No theatrics. Just a question so deeply wounded it didn’t need emotion to make it devastating. Koen’s throat worked. He swallowed once, slow, as if the simplest answer sat like a stone behind his teeth.

He still didn’t speak. The mother’s eyes flicked, briefly, to his searching for something she remembered. Whatever she found there made her shoulders tighten. Her hand lifted, as if she wanted to touch his cheek, to reassure herself he was real...

...and then she hesitated. She didn’t step back fully. She didn’t recoil. But she paused, the way you paused when you reached for someone and realized they might not reach back. Koen’s eyes remained cold, not cruel.

Hollow, as if he’d learned too young that warmth could be used against you. A shadow moved behind her. Another figure emerged from the cave, cutting through the mist like a blade. This one didn’t move with careful grief.

They moved with purpose and anger that had been sharpened into something hard. A woman. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dominant in the way Zakai was dominant, without needing to perform it.

One arm was bare despite the damp chill, inked from wrist to shoulder with dark markings that looked like ash-and-sap tattooed into the skin. The ink crept up one side of her throat and vanished beneath her collar, and it spread across one side of her face in branching patterns that made her look half-painted, half-cursed.

Her red eyes swept over Koen with no softness at all. She didn’t recognize him. Or if she did, she refused to show it. Her mouth curled, not quite a smile. “So the ghost returns.” She spat to the side, the gesture sharp with contempt, and cursed under her breath.

“Son of Voryn,” she said, and the name came out like venom. The archers tensed at the sound, as if speaking it aloud was a risk in itself. Zaria felt Koen’s hand tighten once in hers, not in fear. In restraint.

The tattooed woman’s gaze snapped fully onto him. “Why are you here?” Koen remained silent. The woman’s jaw flexed. “Do you even know what your father has done?” Koen’s chin dipped once. A single nod.

The tattooed woman’s eyes flashed, rage, grief, old betrayal fused into something violent. She closed the distance in two strides and hit him. Hard.

The c***k of it echoed against stone and mist. Koen’s head snapped to the side. His body absorbed the blow with unnatural control; he didn’t stagger, didn’t fall, didn’t lift a hand to defend himself.

Zaria’s breath caught, sharp and immediate. The woman’s arm drew back for another strike and Zaria moved. She stepped between them before the second blow could land, her cloak swinging wide, her hood slipping as she lifted her arm to block.

The tattooed woman’s hand halted inches from Zaria’s face. For a heartbeat, no one breathed. Because Zaria’s hood had fallen back enough to reveal her hair, white as frost, and the faint, subtle glow beneath her skin that wasn’t visible in daylight but did something strange under warded mist.

The air seemed to recognize her. The forest pulse shifted. The archers’ eyes narrowed. Then widened. A whisper ran through them like wind through reeds. “Mystic,” someone breathed. Zaria held the tattooed woman’s stare, steadying her voice. “Enough.”

The woman’s gaze dropped to Zaria’s hands, to the way Zaria still held Koen’s hand, not romantically, not possessively, just anchored. Then her eyes lifted back to Zaria’s face. “And you,” she said, slow and dangerous. “Why are you here?”

Zaria’s throat tightened. She could feel Koen beside her, still and silent, taking the anger without flinching. She could feel his mother behind the tattooed woman, watching with wide, wounded eyes, a kind of dread settling in her expression as she realized Koen had not come home alone.

Zaria inhaled, bracing to answer... Koen spoke before she could. “The book,” he said. His voice was calm, too calm, but it cut through the tension like a clean line drawn in ink.

He turned his face slightly toward the tattooed woman, red eyes steady, and for the first time since they’d stepped into the village ruins, he looked like someone who had decided to act instead of endure.

“We’re here for the book,” Koen repeated, louder this time, not for Zaria but for the archers listening. “To stop Voryn. To stop what he’s doing.” The tattooed woman stared at him as if he’d spoken blasphemy.

Then her gaze flicked to Zaria again. “And you expect us to hand it over.” Koen’s mouth tightened. “I expect you to understand what happens if Voryn finds it first.”

The mother’s eyes shifted between them, Koen and Zaria, her expression tightening with a fear that wasn’t just for her people. It was personal now. Because Koen had returned carrying something that could bring Voryn’s attention down on them all.

The tattooed woman’s lip curled. “You left,” she said, voice low. “And now you return with strangers and demands.” Koen didn’t deny it. He didn’t explain either. He was taken. He had no choice but to leave.

Zaria could feel the heat of what he wasn’t saying. The devastation he was holding down so tightly it was changing the shape of his breathing. A rustle sounded from the brush behind them. Then footsteps. Then the unmistakable scrape of boots being forced through thorns.

Zakai and Aldric were shoved into the clearing at arrowpoint by two more archers who moved like shadows. Zakai’s expression was stone-calm, but his eyes were sharp, tracking every weapon, every angle. Aldric’s hands were raised, palms open in theatrical surrender.

He glanced at Zaria, then at Koen, then at the line of bows and the tattooed woman, and somehow still managed a grin. “Well,” Aldric said brightly, voice pitched like he was addressing a polite dinner table, “this is either a very warm welcome or the worst guided tour I’ve ever been on.”

One archer jabbed him forward with the butt of their bow. Aldric winced. “Rude.” Zaria’s mouth twitched despite the tension. Beside her, Koen didn’t react, but she felt the slightest shift in his posture, as if Aldric’s noise was grounding in its own annoying way.

The tattooed woman’s gaze flicked to Zakai assessing. Then back to Zaria. Then to Koen. “You’re not walking into our sanctuary armed and untested,” she said. Koen’s mother flinched at the word sanctuary, like it was fragile.

The tattooed woman lifted her hand sharply, and the archers tightened formation around them. “Bind their hands,” she ordered. “Not with rope.” Her eyes narrowed. “With iron.” Koen’s mother spoke suddenly, voice strained. “No...”

The tattooed woman didn’t look at her. “You know what Voryn does to gifted blood.” The mother’s lips pressed together, pain swallowing whatever argument she’d wanted to make. Zaria’s pulse hammered. “We’re not here to harm you,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

“We’re here because your hiding has worked, until now. Voryn is moving again. People are marked. Scouts vanish. Oaths are being issued.” The tattooed woman’s eyes flashed. “And you think a book fixes that.”

Zaria held her gaze. “I think it gives us a chance.” For a moment, the only sound was mist curling out of the cave mouth and the forest’s slow heartbeat. Zaria felt the warmth of Koen’s hand in hers, the only steady thing in a place that wanted to swallow certainty.

Then the tattooed woman stepped aside. “Inside,” she commanded. The cave mouth yawned wider than it should have, mist thickening as if it wanted to hide what lay beyond. A draft rolled out, cool, damp, carrying the scent of stone and something older, something resinous, like sap hardened over bones.

Zaria’s grip tightened around Koen’s hand. Still not affection. A promise of don’t leave me in this fog. Koen looked at her once and nodded again, immediate and quiet. Then, with bows tracking their every movement, they were marched forward and into the mist

...into the mouth of Koen’s past. And behind them, the forest swallowed the light like it had never existed at all.