Page 16 of Scorched By Fate

The air thickened between us. My tail flicked, carving a line through the heated silence. “I don’t doubt you,” I said finally. “I doubt the wisdom of this.”

Darrokar tilted his head, the movement as deliberate as every measured step he’d taken until now. “Do you?”

I hated how clearly he could see through me. Beneath my objections, my resistance, the truth pulsed too close to the surface: It wasn’t just the danger of the Harrovan mountains that made my chest tighten with every second of this discussion. It was her. Selene. The thought of spending days—and nights—alone with her, her scent driving every instinct to places I couldn’t afford to go. I doubted myself more than I did the world beyond Scalvaris.

But some truths wouldn’t be spoken here. Darrokar didn’t press further, though his gaze stayed sharp.

“I trust you,” he said instead, his tone deceptively simple. “So will you trust me?”

“Trust doesn’t make mountains less deadly.”

“And doubt weakens resolve,” he countered, his arms crossing over his broad chest. “Which will you carry into this mission?”

I closed my fist against the stone table, letting the heat seep deep into the muscles of my arm before I finally forced the words from my throat. “Fine.”

Darrokar gave a single nod, one that somehow carried more weight than the anvil in my forge.

“Good,” he said simply. “You leave at dawn. Report to Selene tonight and ensure she has what she needs. I’m trusting you with this.”

I didn’t respond beyond the sharp lash of my tail against the stone as I turned toward the chamber’s exit.

As I stalked into the tunnels, the heat of the council chamber faded behind me. But the ache in my chest—sharp, heavy, and distinctly hers—burned hotter still.

The airoutside the healing caverns clung to me like ash settling over scorched earth. This small alcove, cut into the outer wall of the tunnels, was a place meant for reprieve—a moment of peace amid chaos. The world here didn’t burn; it breathed. Quiet. Cool. Patient.

And yet, the tension in my chest pulled taut as I took in the figure sitting against the ledge.

Selene.

She was curled in on herself in the way someone does when fighting sleep too long, her legs drawn up, arms hooked loosely around her knees. Her dark hair, usually pulled back tight like she was braced for battle, hung limp in loose waves over her shoulders.

The lines of her posture screamed weariness, but her eyes, locked on some unseen point in the dim haze beyond, glinted with a determination I doubted even her own body could quench. Shadowed though they were above the pale hollows of her cheeks, they burned, defying everything around her, even herself.

Her head tilted, her shoulders stiffening an infinitesimal amount. It wasn’t defiance, just awareness. Preemptive defense, perhaps. This woman was carved of sharp edges and blunt truths.

“What are you doing here?” she murmured. Her voice was low, roughened at the edges, yet calm. Steady. Like someonewho wasn’t surprised anymore by disappointment circling back for another hit. “Come to give more bad news?”

The bitter edge under her tone cracked something in my chest I hadn’t realized was fragile in the first place.

“I come with orders,” I said, stepping fully into the meager light.

Her lip quirked, the shadow of that sharp humor pressing through exhaustion. “Figures.”

Her head peeked to the side, sparing me a glance cut from steel and smoothed by something too soft for either of us to name. Whatever she was bracing for—criticism, dismissal, more endless pressure—it sat coiled behind that glance, an invisible wall built brick by goddamn stubborn brick.

I lowered myself to the stone beside her without asking. My tail curled once, instinctively tucking to the side so it wouldn’t crowd her space. Selene shifted, not away but inward, crossing her arms like she had to build another barrier between herself and whatever weight she’d been forced to carry all day.

I waited. She would speak when she wanted to and not a moment before.

It didn’t take long.

“One of them died.” Voice flat. Heavy. Not cracked or broken, but brittle, like glass about to shatter under its own strain.

Every muscle in my body stiffened. “Who?”

“A young one. Yaris.” She exhaled hard, fingers dragging briefly through her hair before falling limply at her sides again. “He wasn’t … he wasn’t doing well by the time we got to him, but I thought—I thought maybe …” Her voice trailed off, unfinished, swallowed by the vast emptiness carried in her too-quiet breath.

She shook her head sharply, but not to erase what she’d said. Just to shove it somewhere else, some dark corner she wasn’t going to look at long enough to let it sink fully in.

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