Equito
The rain followed Equito long after she left the academy grounds. It came in sheets, soaking through her armor, turning the road to mud beneath her horse's hooves. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. The image of the courtyard was burned into her mind. The blood. The faces. The sound Seret made when the halberd went through him.
Kael's body lay draped over her horse, wrapped tightly in the dark cloth of her cloak. His weight was wrong. It was too warm for a corpse, and that unsettled her. She told herself it was just her imagination, that she had seen too much death to start doubting it now.
Still, something felt off.
Her horse snorted nervously as they entered the forest. The air was heavy with the smell of wet bark and earth. The rain softened to a drizzle, but the sound of water dripping from the canopy was relentless. She could feel the exhaustion in her bones, but she didn't stop. Orders were orders. The captain of the royal guard had been very clear. Retrieve the boy. Bring him to the capital.
She hadn't expected to kill him.
A part of her had wanted to believe he would surrender, that he would understand reason. But when she saw the look in his eyes, she knew there had been no reasoning with him. Whatever lived inside that boy was not human anymore.
Her fingers tightened around the reins. The horse made a low sound, uneasy again.
Equito's eyes flicked to the side. The trees were silent. Too silent.
She slowed the horse and listened. Only the rain. Only the creak of the saddle.
Then she heard it.
A faint sound behind her, muffled beneath the cloth. A breath.
She froze.
Her mind rejected it immediately. She had checked. She had felt no pulse. No movement. She forced herself to keep going. The capital was two days away. If she stopped now, she risked getting caught in the storm, or worse. The forest was filled with things that hunted when the rain fell hard.
Still, her heartbeat refused to settle.
She thought of the report she would have to give. The king's face when he learned his missing son had been found, only to die at the hands of his own knight. It would be a scandal. A tragedy wrapped in political fire. She would bear the blame for it. She could already hear the whispers of the court.
The rain thickened again. She pulled her hood lower and pressed on.
At some point during the night, she began to feel the warmth again. It was faint at first, a steady heat that seemed to radiate from the bundle behind her. Then it grew stronger. Her back was sweating despite the cold.
Equito turned slightly, glancing over her shoulder. The cloth was wet and heavy, clinging to the shape beneath it. She could see the faint outline of his arm beneath the fabric. It looked different now. The muscles seemed too tense, as if caught mid-motion.
The horse shuddered, tossing its head.
"Easy," she whispered.
But her voice sounded wrong to her own ears. Thin. Uneasy.
The wind shifted, carrying the faintest scent of iron. Blood again. Old and new, tangled together.
Equito stopped the horse and dismounted. The mud squelched beneath her boots. Her gauntlet brushed the edge of the cloak. She hesitated. Every instinct told her not to look. That if she unwrapped him, she would see something she wasn't ready for.
She forced herself to move anyway.
The fabric peeled back slowly. The rain had washed away most of the blood, but the wound in his chest was unmistakable. The halberd had gone clean through. There was no life left in that body. She knew that. She had seen it happen.
Still, her breath caught when she saw his face.
It wasn't peaceful. His expression had changed. His eyes were half open, and there was something in them. Not light exactly, but something close. Like embers beneath ash.
Equito swallowed hard and covered him again. She mounted the horse and urged it forward.
The rest of the night passed in silence. The forest thinned as dawn approached. Mist hung low across the road, curling around the trunks of the trees. When she finally stopped to rest, she built a small fire beneath a canopy of roots and leaned back against the saddle.
She didn't sleep.
At some point, she thought she heard him whisper.
It wasn't clear, just the faint brush of a voice carried by the rain. She told herself it was the storm. The crackle of the fire. Her mind playing tricks after too many days on the road.
But then it came again.
A low sound, like a breath drawn between teeth.
Her hand went to her halberd before she realized it. She didn't move. She just listened.
The sound stopped.
For a long time she sat there, staring at the bundle beside her. The firelight cast strange shadows on the fabric. For a moment she could have sworn she saw it move.
The horse shifted restlessly.
She decided she would not sleep that night.
When morning came, she packed her things and continued toward the capital. The mist had not lifted, and the sky was pale with exhaustion. Every step her horse took sounded too loud, too real. The road wound upward through a valley, flanked by sharp cliffs and narrow streams.
By midday she saw the first outpost of the capital. The towers were built of white stone, their banners limp in the damp air. Guards recognized her crest and waved her through. No one asked about the bundle.
She stopped only once to water her horse. When she looked up, she saw her reflection in the surface of the pool. Her eyes looked tired, but there was something else. A flicker of red at the edge of her iris. She blinked it away.
Behind her, the bundle shifted.
Just once. Barely a movement at all.
But she felt it.
She didn't turn.
The road to the capital stretched ahead, endless and gray. The city walls were still distant, but she could already see their spires through the mist.
She tightened her grip on the reins. The feeling of warmth behind her hadn't faded.
And somewhere deep in her mind, a voice she couldn't name whispered that she was not bringing a corpse to the capital.
She was bringing something else.