Page 28 of Frostforge, Passage Six
Marr nodded, his scarred face softening slightly as he approached the gangplank."This way, if you please," he said, his natural Southern accent likely a comfort to the displaced Verdant Port citizens.
As the refugees were led away, Kaine found himself momentarily alone with Wolfe.On impulse, he asked, "Have you received any word of Greenspire?If she isn’t here, do you know where…."
Wolfe's pale eyes fixed on him with a cold intensity that made him suppress a shiver."Wherever Greenspire is," she said, "she's in disgrace.Abandonment of post is a serious offense, Ember."She paused, then added, "Report to the archives once you've cleaned up.I want preliminary translations by nightfall."
With that, she turned and strode away, leaving Kaine alone on the dock with the weight of his deception heavy on his shoulders and the chill of foreboding seeping into his bones.
***
Pine needles crunched beneath Kaine's boots as the convoy wound its way through the forest toward Frostforge.Each breath seared his lungs, the thin mountain air a stark reminder of how quickly the body forgot.Just weeks in Verdant Port's humid, sea-level atmosphere had softened him, made him a stranger to these heights he'd once navigated without thought.
He sucked in another painful breath, his chest burning with the effort.Behind him, the Southern refugees struggled even more visibly, their faces flushed and glistening with sweat despite the cold.Only the Northern guards moved with ease, their bodies acclimated to this rarefied existence at the edge of what humans could endure.
Frost-tipped pines towered on either side of the path, their ancient trunks wider than a man's embrace.Weak sunlight filtered through their branches, casting dappled shadows across the needle-strewn ground.The scent of resin hung in the air, sharp and clean, so different from Verdant Port's salt-heavy atmosphere.There, the air had tasted of brine and decay, of too many lives pressed too close together.Here, each breath was a knife of clarity, painful but purifying.
Footsteps quickened behind him, matching his pace.Kaine didn't need to turn to know who had joined him—the distinctive rhythm, the barely perceptible jingle of ice-steel charms woven into leather armor, the subtle scent of Northern pine oil used to waterproof boots and blades.Senna.
"You look terrible," she said by way of greeting, her voice pitched low enough that only he could hear."The South doesn't agree with you."
Kaine glanced sideways at her.Senna's face revealed nothing, her features composed in the impassive mask Northern warriors were taught to wear from childhood.But her eyes—silver-gray as winter clouds—held something softer than her words suggested.
"Good to see you too," he replied."I trust Frostforge has been quiet in our absence?"
"Quiet enough."She adjusted her stride to match his longer one."Though there have been more Warden sightings along the coast.Nothing like what you found at Verdant Port, but...concerning."
They walked in silence for several paces, the distance between them filled with unspoken words.Years of shared history, of expectations and disappointments, of paths that had once aligned and now ran parallel at best.Kaine focused on the rhythm of his steps, on controlling his breathing in the thin air, on anything but the woman beside him.
"I'm glad you're back," Senna said suddenly, her voice dropping even lower, losing its formal edge.The admission seemed torn from her, reluctant but sincere."When Wolfe announced the fortress-whale mission...I was worried..."
She didn't finish the sentence.She didn't need to.They both knew the mortality rate for such missions approached certainty.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Kaine said.
Senna shrugged her shoulders in a manner that suggested disagreement; Kaine felt his spine stiffen.
Whatever lay between them now, Senna had once been the center of his world—or at least, the center of what his world was supposed to become.
They had been paired by tribal matchmakers in his sixteenth year, her fourteenth.A good match, the elders had declared.Her father's prominence in the tribal council was balanced by his mother's ancient bloodline.Both of them are skilled in Northern crafts, and both are strong enough to survive the Reaches' brutality.They'd spent two years in each other's orbit, learning each other's ways, preparing for the joining ceremony that would bind their lives and bloodlines.
Then he'd killed his father.
The memory still burned like acid in his veins.The drunken rage that had been building for days.His father's hands on his mother's throat.The sound of his mother's gasping breaths.The single, terrible blow that had ended one life and irrevocably altered three others.
Five years in a Northern prison followed—five years of cold stone and colder silence, of learning to forge metal because working the bellows kept him warm, of wondering what had become of his brother, of Senna, of the life he'd been meant to live.
When he'd been transferred to Frostforge, he'd assumed Senna would want nothing to do with him.A marriage to him would no longer signify status within the Reaches' society—in fact, it would make her a social pariah, just as he had become.He had expected her cold shoulder, her disdain, perhaps even her hatred.
He had not expected her continued interest, her fierce protection of what she still viewed as hers.And he certainly hadn't expected her obvious jealousy when Thalia entered his life.
Kaine glanced at her now, noting the new scar that bisected her left eyebrow, the tightness around her mouth that hadn't been there before.Senna had grown harder in his absence, more contained.Or perhaps she had always been this way, and he simply hadn't noticed, too caught up in tribal expectations and traditions to see the person beneath them.
"You're thinking about her," Senna said, her voice flat.“Aren’t you?”
"I'm thinking about a lot of things," Kaine replied, neither confirming nor denying.His feelings about Senna were too complex, too bound up in his checkered past to ever be fully investigated.Especially now, with worry for Thalia gnawing at his insides like a starving wolf.
"She's resourceful," Senna said after a moment."Greenspire.Reckless, but resourceful."The words seemed to cost her something; each one was pulled from deep within."If anyone can survive whatever's out there, it's her."
The unexpected support caught Kaine off guard.He studied Senna's profile, searching for some hint of mockery or deceit, but found only resignation beneath her stoic expression.
