Kaelyn POV
The morning sun felt wrong on my skin.
I'd spent three days in forest darkness, and now light was too bright. Made everything too real. Made me see the mercenary camp for what it actually was. Not shelter. Not safety. Just another place where I didn't belong.
Corvin handed me a plate of food without asking if I wanted it. Bread. Meat. Dried fruit. Things I'd forgotten existed.
"Eat," he said simply. "Then we figure out what you can actually do."
I ate while watching the camp come alive around me. Men sharpening weapons. A woman with silver eyes standing alone, looking at the sky like she could read something in it. Someone cleaning armor. The rhythms of people who'd done this before. People who knew how to survive.
"You know anything about weapons?" Corvin asked.
"No."
"Combat training?"
"No."
"Riding?"
"No."
He studied me the way someone studies a problem they need to solve. "What do you know?"
I thought about my life before. About palace gardens and embroidery circles and being told what to think. About learning to smile at men I'd never met. About being small and quiet because that's what was expected.
"I know how to listen," I said. "I know how to move without drawing attention. And I know how to survive when everything is taken from me."
Corvin nodded slowly. "That's actually useful."
He introduced me to the team one by one. Markus with his scarred face and one eye that still watched everything. Dane with his bow and his quiet voice. Three others whose names blurred together because I was so focused on not looking terrified.
And then there was the woman with silver eyes.
"Lyria," she said, and her voice sounded like wind through old trees. "I handle navigation and strategy."
She studied me with those unsettling eyes, and I felt like she was reading something written on my skin. Something I didn't want to be read.
"You're running from something," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"Everyone here is running from something," Corvin said quickly. "That's how you know we're a good team. We understand each other."
Lyria smiled, but it wasn't a friendly smile. It was a smile that knew secrets.
By midday, Corvin took me to the edge of camp and showed me a wooden sword.
"Can you hold this?" he asked.
I picked it up. It was heavier than I expected. Made my arm burn after seconds.
"Good," Corvin said. "That's where we start."
Over the next hours, he showed me how to stand. How to hold my body. Not to fight, exactly. Just to position myself in a way that didn't scream helplessness.
"A sword is just an extension of intention," he said. "You learn to move like you mean it, you're halfway to surviving."
"And the other half?"
"Being faster than the person trying to kill you," Corvin said without humor.
The sun was setting when Kael arrived.
I didn't see him come. One moment I was alone by the fire, and the next he was simply there. Like the darkness had brought him.
He was taller than I'd realized the night before. Broader. His scars looked even worse in the firelight. But it was his eyes that stopped me. They looked ancient. Like they'd seen things that had carved away everything soft.
"Everyone," Corvin said, "this is Kael. He's our security expert."
Kael didn't acknowledge anyone. He just looked at me for a moment that stretched too long. Like he was trying to figure out what I was doing here.
Then he looked away.
I told myself the disappointment I felt didn't matter.
"We're hunting the same thing," he said to the group. His voice was rough and quiet and somehow filled the entire clearing. "Try not to get killed."
I stood up without thinking about it.
"Try not to let me," I said back.
Corvin laughed like I'd said something hilarious. But Kael didn't laugh. He just kept moving, and I watched him settle by the fire across from me like he was very far away even though we were only a few feet apart.
Later, after everyone else had eaten and dispersed to their tents, I found myself alone with Lyria.
She was sitting on a log, looking at the stars, and she gestured for me to sit beside her.
"You didn't tell them your real name," she said.
"Kai is my real name now," I said.
"Everyone gets a new name when they run," Lyria agreed. "Doesn't mean the old one stops existing."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything.
"You're stronger than you look," Lyria continued. "That's rare. Most people who run are broken in ways that don't heal."
"Are you?" I asked.
She smiled that strange smile again. "Oh yes. But I learned that being broken just means you have more places for power to fit through."
She stood up, and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw light move around her fingers.
"We leave at dawn," she said. "Sleep if you can. Your life is about to become very different."
I lay in my tent that night and couldn't sleep.
Not because I was afraid. I'd already been afraid. I'd already run. I'd already decided that whatever came next couldn't be worse than what I'd left behind.
I couldn't sleep because somewhere in the camp, Kael was awake too.
I could feel it. Feel him. Like he was a fire burning in the darkness, and I was drawn toward warmth even though I knew it would burn.
Around dawn, when the camp was just starting to move, Corvin found me.
"We need to talk about what's going to happen," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"The journey," Corvin said. "It's going to be hard. There will be moments when you think you can't go on. When you think you should have stayed in the palace or gone to that convent."
"I won't think that," I said.
"Yes, you will," Corvin said. "That's when you remember that you chose this. You chose to live instead of die. And that choice is what's going to keep you alive."
He studied me carefully.
"Kael is going to be hard on you," Corvin continued. "He's going to push you in ways that feel cruel. But that's not cruelty. That's survival training."
"Why?" I asked. "Why does he care if I survive?"
Corvin smiled like I'd asked a question he couldn't answer honestly.
"Because everyone deserves someone who believes they can be stronger than they think they are," he said.
Before I could ask what that meant, Kael appeared beside us.
"We're moving in an hour," he said to Corvin. Then to me, "You're riding with me. Get your things."
"Why can't I ride with someone else?" I asked.
"Because I need to keep an eye on you," Kael said. And then he walked away without waiting for a response.
As we packed to leave, Lyria caught my hand for just a moment.
"He doesn't know who you are yet," she whispered. "But he will. And when he does, you need to decide if you're going to run again or if you're going to stay."
Before I could ask what she meant, she let me go.
We rode out of the camp as the sun came up. Kael in front of me on the horse, silent and still and somehow making me feel safer even though nothing about him seemed safe.
"Tell me about yourself," I said after hours of riding.
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because knowing things about people makes you care about them," Kael said. "And caring about people gets you killed."
"I already care about living," I said. "That's not the same thing?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"It's not," he finally said. "But it might be close enough to start with."
We camped that night in a place where the trees were so old they seemed to remember everything. Kael made me train with the wooden sword until my arms screamed. Made me fall over and over.
But when I collapsed in exhaustion, he left water beside my tent.
Without saying why.