Chapter 9: Darius

Fog curls over the fields in lazy tendrils, the ground pulsing faintly beneath our boots. As soon as we were far enough away, I broke off and headed away from Elunara and the barn.

Vastian followed close behind.

I stand on the ridge overlooking the barn, the land quiet except for the low rustle of trees stretching into places I can’t currently reach.

The Hollow has moods, and today, it watches and listens.

“Where is he?” I don’t turn when I hear Vastian approach. I already feel him—solid, sharp-edged, the kind of man who never leaves a space untouched by his presence.

Vastian steps up beside me, eyes on the same treeline. “He’s watching. Learning. You know Khael. He’ll reveal himself to her when it’s time.”

I grunt in acknowledgment, jaw tightening. Patience has never been one of my strengths.

“You don’t trust him?”

“I trust him to be Khael. Which means I trust him to be reckless with his silence.”

Vastian chuckles, but it’s humorless. “He sees more than we do.”

Before we became trapped here, Khael was my shadow, and he is always watching.

Even when I can’t see him, I can feel the disturbance he leaves in the air. Like the way skin bristles just before a storm breaks.

It’s not that he’s hiding from me. He never does. But it’s in his nature to move in shadow, to flow around things instead of walking through them. And when he does move—when he chooses to be seen—he looks so... harmless. He’s deceptively soft around the edges. All charm and angled smiles and lashes too long for a man with blood on his hands.

But I know better.

He wasn’t born a ghost, but that’s what he’s become. A phantom forged in silence and sharpened by necessity. An elegant predator with the face of something you’d trust, just before he slips the blade in.

Khael was my enforcer long before this curse ever tied us to Hucow Hollow.

A shadow agent of the crown. He was never the sort you announce in court or list among your advisors. He was the one behind the curtain, cleaning up the things no kingdom wants to admit it stains itself with. When diplomacy failed, when whispers in dark rooms grew teeth, when threats didn’t listen to reason—Khael made sure they never spoke again.

He had a code, yes, but not the kind you’d pin to any knight’s crest. Khael’s morality bends and folds like smoke, curling around his own sense of right and wrong, never quite fitting anyone else’s mold. He kills when he must, never for pleasure—but always without remorse.

And then, just as effortlessly, he heals. That’s the contradiction of him.

There’s a duality he carries, a paradox stitched into his bones. One part ghost, one part ethereal guardian. He has hands that can cut a throat in silence and then turn right around to mend broken wings, coaxing birds back to life. It’s as if the gods couldn’t decide what purpose to give him, so they gave him both—destruction and preservation, perfectly balanced inside one body.

And now he tends the animals and the land.

There’s irony in it, sure. A man once tasked with erasing problems from kingdoms now spends his days carving sigils into wood and planting basil by moonlight. But he hasn’t lost his edge. No, Khael never dulls. He simply redirects. He watches over the Hollow, managing the unseen threads of magic that keep us both exiled and protected.

And now he’s watching over Elunara. Even though he isn’t present, he hears her slumbering thoughts.

She already belongs to him in the most intimate way.

Every dream Elunara has had since stepping onto this land has passed through Khael first. Because Khael can walk into dreams.

Khael had always been sensitive to lies, always able to see through the masks people wore. But with a single incantation, he can slip past a person’s defenses entirely—dive into their subconscious, pull secrets from their sleep like silk thread unraveling from a spool.

It’s invasive. Ruthless. But gods, it’s effective.

And for a woman like Elunara—so newly connected to this realm, still unaware of who she really is—Khael can see the pieces falling into place before even she does.

He’s seen her dreams. I haven’t asked him what he found there, not yet. Not because I don’t want to know—but because I know Khael will tell me when it’s time. He plays a longer game than the rest of us. And when it comes to Elunara, every step we take has to be precise.

She’s not ready. Khael and I agree on that, though I can tell it costs him restraint. She stirs something in him too—this knowing. This pull. It’s not just lust. It’s not even fate. It’s a recognition of something ours. And Khael, with all his mastery of emotion, all his control, is still susceptible to it.

We all are.

Still, he will play his role to perfection. The approachable one. The quiet guardian. The man she might trust first because he doesn’t posture like Vastian or press like I do.

But make no mistake—he’s watching her more closely than either of us. He studies her movements, her body language, her energy. And I know, without even seeing him, that he’s already cataloged every shift in her aura since the second she stepped through the veil.

Because that’s the other thing about Khael—he doesn’t just watch. He knows.

He knows when someone is lying. He can feel it like static across his skin. And though Elunara hasn’t lied yet, not exactly, I suspect there’s still much she’s unaware of inside herself. Not secrets kept, but secrets buried. And Khael… Khael has a gift for unearthing what others hide even from themselves.

There’s a part of me that envies him for that. Not the power—but the clarity.

He sees things purely. Stripped of emotion. Or maybe more accurately—he sees through emotion, past the noise of it, into the marrow of what matters. It’s probably why he was the first to realize that this land was shifting the moment she arrived. That the Hollow responded to her like it knew her.

And Khael was there, barefoot in the garden, pressing his palm to the dirt as if it could speak to him. Maybe it did. Maybe it still does.

Sometimes I wonder if he’s more connected to this land than even I am.

He certainly belongs to it now. As much as the animals. As much as the runes carved into the old barn walls. As much as the blood-bond that ties us all together.

He may wear a softer mask than Vastian or me, but underneath, he’s made of the same steel. Same ruin. Same curse. Just forged with different fire.

I glance toward the house. For more than a century, it sat empty. It was cleaned and repaired, but the three of us chose other accommodations.

I prefer the barn, although I sleep little these days. Vastian built a place for himself beyond the treeline. And Khael roams the land, always searching for ways to break beyond the cage that was made for us.

Vastian tilts his head toward me. “You aren’t agitated that she goes by Elle.” When I turn my head to glare at him, he corrects himself. “I mean, you’re bothered by that, but that isn’t what really gets you. She shortened her name out of ignorance. What sits with you is that somewhere down her line, someone who would know better shortened her last name from Moonstone.”