> There are names that travel faster than the wind — not because they are spoken, but because they are feared.
Kael Raventhorn was such a name. In the northern kingdoms, his name meant silence. In the east, it meant ruin. In the west, it meant power. And in the villages that slept between the black rivers and forested hills, it meant nothing at all — until he came walking out of the fog, half-dead and bleeding.
---
The rain had not stopped for three days.
The woods around the village of Virehollow were thick with the smell of wet earth and forgotten things. A silver mist clung to the trees like ghosts that had forgotten how to disappear. Most had taken it as a bad omen — but Liora, as always, walked the edge of the woods with a basket in her arms and mud on her hem.
She didn't believe in omens.
She believed in wounds, in roots, and in herbs that worked only if you begged them sweetly.
Her fingers were stained green from the crushed marigold, and her lips moved softly as she murmured to herself — until she saw it.
A body.
Half-concealed in the ferns, facedown in the mud. Blood smeared across the leaves like paint, trailing back through the undergrowth.
Liora dropped her basket.
Cautiously, she approached, her breath trembling against the cold air. The figure was large — a man, maybe. His long coat was soaked and dark, his black hair tangled. She couldn't see his face, only the pale line of a scar running from his jaw to his throat.
He wasn't dead. Not yet.
His chest moved, shallow and slow.
And then — his hand twitched.
"Saints above," she whispered, falling to her knees. "You're alive…"
She reached for his shoulder, but the moment she touched him, his hand snapped up and gripped her wrist like iron.
His grip was steel.
Liora let out a sharp breath, not from fear, but from the sheer coldness of it — like his skin had been bathed in winter. His eyes, now open, burned red beneath wet lashes, and they locked onto hers with terrifying clarity.
"You shouldn't have found me," he rasped — voice like smoke drawn from the heart of a dying fire, rough and broken and ancient.
Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
Then, as quickly as he'd grasped her, his fingers loosened. His hand dropped into the mud with a soft splash, and the fire in his eyes dulled like coals losing their glow.
She stared at him for a heartbeat. Then two.
And then she moved — fast and sure, her hands running over his shoulders, checking for wounds beneath the heavy cloak. Blood soaked through the side of his shirt, dark and slow-moving. A deep cut ran along his ribs, too clean for an animal, too ragged for a soldier's blade.
Not recent, but dangerous.
"You're not dying here," she muttered under her breath, half to herself, half to him. "Not in my woods."
With effort, she hooked her arms beneath his and dragged him into a clearer patch of ground. Her back ached, her boots slipped in the mud, and her heart thundered with fear — not just for him, but for the strangeness of it all.
Who bleeds this much and still speaks like that?
Who has eyes like that?
Who feels like the air around them changes when they open their mouth?
---
By the time she reached her small cottage at the forest's edge, her dress was ruined, her arms bruised, and her breath uneven. She half-dragged, half-carried him across the threshold, laying him down on the wooden floor beside the fire. He hadn't stirred again, but he was alive. Barely.
Liora rolled up her sleeves, lit two candles, and went to work.
She cleaned the wound first — he flinched even unconscious — then stitched it with careful hands. She brewed crushed poppyseed in tea to numb his pain, though she doubted he would drink it even awake. Something about him didn't seem to know weakness.
As she worked, she kept looking at his face.
There was nobility there, carved into the angles of his jaw and the set of his brows. But it was cold nobility — the kind that didn't bend to kindness. His skin was too pale for a laborer, his coat too fine for a common traveler. And the sword at his side, even stained and rusted, bore the crest of the High Houses — a silver wing crossed with black flame.
She knew that symbol. Everyone did.
But that house had fallen fifteen years ago, burned to ash after the Crimson War.
And if that was true…
Her heart stumbled.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
He didn't answer.
But something in the air shifted — like a storm pulling in through the cracks.
---
The next morning, he woke.
She was asleep in the chair beside the fire, her head tilted against her arm. A curl of hair fell across her cheek, and the flickering flame painted her in gold.
Kael blinked slowly, his breath shallow.
He remembered the forest. The wound. The girl.
And now, here he was, in a cottage that smelled of thyme and ash — safe, untouched, and alive.
That hadn't been part of the plan.
His eyes moved to the woman.
She had saved him. No questions.
She had saved him. No questions. No fear. Just… warmth.
But warmth was dangerous.
Kindness was worse.
He closed his eyes again — just for a moment.
And when he opened them, he whispered the word he hadn't said in years.
"…Liora."