Page 85 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
‘Ya just vanished,’ Bryn pressed, his voice quiet but firm.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kage said after a pause. ‘It won’t happen again.’
Bryn nodded. He believed him without question. There was something about Kage Blackburn, something unspoken and steady, that made doubt feel unnecessary.
‘Where’s ya shadow?’ Bryn asked after a moment, glancing up at the starless sky. He was almost certain the crow had been absent before as well. He could not remember ever seeing Kage travel without it.
Kage stiffened.
‘He is on his own path right now.’
Bryn frowned, his silver brows lifting. Slowly, he moved closer and lowered himself onto the snow beside Kage, the cold biting through his clothes. He pulled some of his own furs across the wyverian’s shoulders without asking.
‘Are ya not cold?’
Kage did not answer at first. He remained still, firelight dancing across his sharp features. Bryn wondered if his words had gone unheard but after a long moment, Kage sighed, the sound weary and unguarded.
‘I’m not feeling quite myself as of late.’
‘What happened to ya?’ Bryn asked softly, as though the question itself might frighten the prince away if spoken too loudly.
Kage was silent for a long moment. The fire popped between them, sparks lifting briefly into the night before dying. At last, he spoke, his jaw tight, the words honed sharp with restraint.
‘I saw your sister,’ he said. ‘In the Underworld.’
Bryn’s body went rigid. Heat surged up his spine, flushing his neck and ears, and suddenly his hands were shaking. He dragged the furs tighter around his shoulders, gripping them hard, as if he might still his trembling through force alone.
‘I don’t understand,’ he murmured, eyes fixed on the flames. He did not dare look at Kage.
‘Your sister is dead,’ Kage said.
The words landed like a blade, but dull and familiar. Bryn had known this already. He had spoken it aloud himself, had carried it like a stone in his chest for longer than he cared to remember. And yet hearing it again, days later, from Kage’s mouth, left him strangely hollow. Confused. Was this cruelty? Or something else entirely?
‘I know me sista is dead,’ Bryn replied, his voice rougher than he intended. ‘Me whole family is dead.’
Except for Eirwen, perhaps,a traitorous thought whispered through him.
The edge in his tone made Kage tilt his head. For the first time, their eyes met—one pair black as the deepest night, the other blue as an open, unforgiving sea.
Before Bryn could say another word, Kage reached for his hand.
The cold shocked him. Not the sharp bite of winter air, but something far worse. Unnatural, bone-deep, like pressing bare skin to ice without fur or glove. Bryn jerked back with a sharp inhale.
‘Why are ya so cold?’ he asked, already moving, tugging the furs tighter around Kage’s shoulders, as if wool and hide might undo whatever wrongness clung to him. The wyverian prince only let out a low chuckle, breath ghosting into the night.
The sound made Bryn still.
‘Because I’m…’
Bryn waited, heart thudding, leaning forward despite himself, desperate for the rest of it. But the words never came. Kage fell silent, and Bryn exhaled, the disappointment settling heavy in his chest.
‘We were always doomed, you and I,’ Kage said instead. His voice sounded empty, scraped hollow by something unseen. ‘From the very beginning.’
Bryn opened his mouth, a dozen questions rising at once, but he never spoke them.
Kage turned fully towards him then, closing the small distance between them. And before Bryn could think, before he could brace himself for whatever truth might follow, Kage leaned in and pressed his mouth to Bryn’s.
The world stilled. The fire crackled. And the cold was suddenly forgotten.
