Chapter 4: Mother's Warning
The door swung inward.
Arya’s heart seized. She scrambled for the blanket, yanking the rough wool over herself and Kaelen, a pathetic shield. He was already moving, rolling off her and onto his feet in a single, pained motion, placing his body between hers and the door. Naked, bleeding, half-crippled, he still looked like a king ready for a last stand.
The figure in the doorway wasn’t a hunter.
It was her mother.
Gia stood frozen, one hand still on the latch. Her eyes, the same warm brown as Arya’s but worn thin by years of worry, took in the scene: the tumbled bed, the discarded clothes, her daughter’s flushed and tear-streaked face barely visible behind the bare-shouldered, fiercely protective form of a strange, devastatingly handsome man. The scent in the room was unmistakable.
For a second, no one breathed. Arya saw the shock, then the immediate, crushing understanding flatten her mother’s features. It wasn’t disgust. It was worse. It was a deep, weary sorrow, as if she’d been expecting this particular disaster for years.
“Mother—” Arya’s voice cracked.
Gia’s gaze snapped from Kaelen’s glowing amber eyes to Arya’s. All urgency. “They’re coming. Old Man Bren and the others. They found blood by the creek, half a mile east. They’re circling back this way. They’ll be here within the hour.”
Her voice was low, factual. It cut through the panic like a cold knife.
Kaelen didn’t relax his stance. “Who are you?”
“I’m the woman who’s about to save your life, dragon-prince, so you’ll close your mouth and listen.” Gia’s tone was shockingly sharp, laced with a command Arya had never heard from her. She stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind her. She didn’t look at their state of undress again. Her focus was absolute. “They have the magistrate’s son with them now. He’s brought a cart. They don’t plan to kill you in the woods. They plan to cage you and parade you through every town from here to the capital. You cannot be here.”
“How do you know what I am?” Kaelen’s voice was a dangerous whisper.
Gia’s eyes flickered to the small, leather-bound book on the nightstand—her mother’s herb journal. “My mother didn’t just collect recipes for gout. She was the village wise woman. She knew the old tales. She knew the signs. A scaled beast falling from the sky in a ball of fire? The whole village saw it. And I know my daughter.” She looked at Arya, her expression softening for a fractured second. “I saw the extra bread missing. The honey. The way she’s been drawn to this place since you fell. A mother knows.”
Arya felt a sob build in her chest. She clutched the blanket tighter.
“You need to go. Now,” Gia continued, turning back to Kaelen. “Your own people are looking for you. I’ve seen the lights in the northern sky at night, the wrong color for stars. They’re close. You need to get to the high ridge—the one with the three lightning-struck pines. The air is thin there. The magic… it thins, too. They’ll sense you if you call.”
Kaelen’s mind was working, Arya could see it. The prince assessing the intelligence, the source, the risk. “You would betray your own people for a monster?”
“You’re not a monster.” Gia said it with the same stubborn certainty Arya had used. “And my people are about to make a terrible, vengeful mistake. One that will bring consequences none of them can imagine. Your kind does not forget an insult. If they cage you, your father will burn this valley to ash.” She took a step closer, her voice dropping. “This isn’t kindness. It’s survival. For all of us. Now move. Your clothes.”
He moved. The princely dignity was gone, replaced by a swift, ruthless efficiency. He scooped up his trousers, wincing as he stepped into them. Arya just watched, numb, as he fastened them, then pulled the borrowed shirt over his head. Every movement was a goodbye.
Gia turned to the small pack she’d brought, pulling out a wedge of wrapped cheese, a handful of dried apples, a waterskin. “Take this. The ridge is a half-day’s hard climb north. Follow the river until you see the red stones, then cut west up the goat path.”
Kaelen took the supplies, stuffing them into his pockets. His eyes found Arya again. “She comes with me.”
“No.” The word left Gia and Arya in the same breath, but for different reasons.
“She’s not safe here,” Kaelen snarled, his hand flexing at his side. “If they suspect—”
“If she disappears with you, they will know for certain,” Gia interrupted, her voice steely. “They will come for our family. For her father, her brother. They will tear our farm apart looking for answers. She stays. She has a life here.”
“A life?” Kaelen laughed, a hollow sound. “A life of poverty and fear and being sold to the highest bidder? I saw the man your husband brought to look at her last spring. I heard the bargaining through the window. Don’t talk to me about her life.”
Arya flinched. She’d never told him that. He’d just been listening, from the woods, from the dark.
Gia’s face paled, but she didn’t back down. “It is her life. Not a story. Not a fantasy. You have a throne to return to. A duty. Do not make your last act here the destruction of everything she knows.”
Kaelen looked like he wanted to argue, to burn his way through reason. But the truth of her words was a weight he couldn’t shift. He was heir to the Ember Throne. He had a kingdom in chaos, a political marriage waiting, a war possibly brewing. Dragging a human village girl into that wasn’t salvation. It was a death sentence of a different kind.
His shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of him, leaving only a raw, aching loss.
Gia saw it. Her own rigid posture softened a fraction. “I will give you a moment. Just a moment. They are coming up from the south. Go out the back, into the thicket. And do not look back. For her sake, do not look back.”
She turned and left the room, closing the door with a soft, final click.
The silence she left behind was a physical thing, thick and suffocating.
Arya finally let the blanket fall. She stood up, her legs trembling, and pulled her trousers up, lacing them with fumbling fingers. She couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him, she would shatter.
He crossed the space between them in two strides. His hands came up, cupping her face, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“Come with me.” It was a plea, stripped bare.
She shook her head, tears spilling over. “I can’t.”
“You can. Fuck the ridge. Fuck the throne. We’ll go east, to the coast. They’ll never find us.”
“And your people? Your father? The war you said was coming?” Her voice was a thin thread. “You would abandon them? For me? You’d grow to hate me within a year. And I’d hate myself for letting you.”
He knew she was right. The conflict tore through his eyes, the gold churning like storm clouds. He was a prince bred for duty. The fantasy was just that—a fleeting, desperate dream spun in a dusty cottage.
He rested his forehead against hers. Their breath mingled, fast and ragged. “I have never known a courage like yours. Or a heart like yours. This… this was not meaningless.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I will come back for you.” The words were hot against her lips. A vow.
“Don’t,” she begged. “Don’t make a promise you can’t keep. Don’t give me that hope. It’ll kill me slower.”
He kissed her then. It wasn’t like the others. It was soft, unbearably gentle, a seal and a sacrament. She could taste the salt of her own tears, the unique flavor of him, the desperation. She memorized it. The pressure, the slight scratch of his stubble, the way his lower lip fit perfectly against hers.
He broke the kiss, his eyes drinking her in one last time—the freckles, the redness around her eyes, the set of her mouth. He swiped his thumb under her eye, catching a tear.
Then he turned.
He didn’t say goodbye. He just walked to the bedroom’s rear window, the one with the loose shutter. He pushed it open, the grey morning light swallowing his form. He hesitated, one hand on the frame, his knuckles white.
“Look after her,” he said, not turning around. His voice was rough, meant for Gia in the other room.
Then he was gone. A shift of shadow, a whisper of movement through the deadfall outside, and the forest absorbed him.
Arya stood rooted, staring at the empty window. The chill morning air rushed in, washing over her skin, raising goosebumps. It erased the last traces of his warmth. She heard nothing. No farewell roar, no beating of mighty wings. Just the normal, indifferent sounds of the waking woods.
It was over.
The bedroom door opened. Gia entered, her arms full of bundled linens. She moved swiftly, stripping the bed with a brutal efficiency, ignoring the stains, the scent. She balled the sheets and tossed them into a corner.
“Get dressed properly. Put on your other shirt from the pack,” Gia instructed, her voice devoid of emotion. “Wash your face with the cold water from the jug. You’ve been crying over your grandmother’s memory. You stayed here last night to feel close to her. That’s your story. You stick to it.”
Arya didn’t move. She felt hollowed out, a gourd scraped clean.
“Arya.” Her mother’s voice cracked like a whip. “Now. Unless you want that boy’s fate to be for nothing.”
The word ‘boy’ sparked something. Anger, faint but vital. “He’s not a boy. He’s a prince. He’s more than any of them will ever be.”
Gia stopped her furious work and looked at her daughter. The sorrow was back, deep and endless. “I know he is, my heart. That’s the tragedy of it.”
She came over, and with a tenderness that contradicted her harsh tone, she helped Arya into a clean, rough-spun shirt. She smoothed her wild hair back from her face, her fingers lingering. “You have his scent all over you. The soap won’t hide it from a hunting dog. We’ll need sage. Lots of it.” She busied herself, lighting a bundle of dried sage from the embers in the main room, filling the bedroom with pungent, cleansing smoke.
Arya stood passively, letting herself be orchestrated. She washed her face. The water was bitingly cold. She watched as her mother scoured the room, erasing evidence. The act felt like a violation, like she was helping bury something alive.
“Why did you help him?” Arya asked, her voice flat.
Gia didn’t pause. “I told you. For the valley.”
“That’s not all of it.”
Her mother’s hands stilled for a moment on the hearthstone she was scrubbing. She stared into the lingering smoke. “When I was a little older than you, a creature came down from the north. A wolf, but not a wolf. It had a broken wing. Like a bat’s. It was cornered by dogs behind the blacksmith’s.” She spoke to the ashes. “My mother, your grandmother, she took it in. Healed it in secret. She told me some lines aren’t meant to be drawn in the sand. That the world is wider and stranger than our fears. When she let it go, it looked back at her. Just once. There was… understanding in its eyes. Not animal understanding. Something else.” She finally looked at Arya. “I saw that same understanding in his eyes when he stood in front of you. He was ready to die for you. That’s not a monster. That’s a person. And we’ve slaughtered enough of those.”
Arya had no words. Her grandmother’s secret, her mother’s quiet defiance—it was a legacy she never knew she carried.
A heavy fist pounded on the cottage’s front door.
The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet.
“Arya! Gia! You in there?” It was her father’s voice, gruff and edged with an unfamiliar panic.
Gia’s eyes locked with Arya’s. The story, she mouthed silently. Then she called out, her voice shifting into a wavering, grief-touched tone Arya had never heard her use. “We’re here, Jerrick. We’re here.”
She walked to the main door and opened it.
Arya’s father filled the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking the light. Behind him, outlined against the grey morning, stood Old Man Bren, his face a roadmap of bitterness and sharp focus. Two other hunters lurked behind him, one holding the leash of a tense, sniffing hound.
Jerrick’s eyes swept over his wife, then found Arya standing in the bedroom doorway. His gaze was a mix of relief and simmering anger. “What in the cursed hells are you two doing out here? The whole village is turned out.”
“We came last evening,” Gia said, wiping her hands on her apron as if she’d been cleaning. Her voice was perfectly pitched, weary with pretended grief. “Arya was low. Missing her Gran. I thought a night in her space would… help.”
Old Man Bren pushed past Jerrick without a word. His boots were muddy. His eyes, pale and piercing, scanned the main room, then snapped to the bedroom. They took in the stripped bed, the smoky air, Arya’s red-rimmed eyes.
“Smells strange in here,” he growled, his voice like grinding stones.
“Sage,” Gia said mildly, gesturing to the smoldering bundle. “For cleansing. For the memory.”
Bren wasn’t listening. He strode into the bedroom. The hound followed, straining at its leash, its nose to the floorboards. It sniffed around the bed, whined, then began snuffling eagerly toward the back window.
Arya’s blood turned to ice.
Bren saw the open shutter. He was at the window in two steps, peering out into the thicket. “This was open?”
“It sticks,” Arya said, her own voice sounding foreign to her. “The latch is broken. I opened it for the air.”
Bren turned from the window, his eyes drilling into her. They dropped to her neck, and Arya realized with a jolt of terror that the high collar of her shirt had shifted. A darkening bruise, a love bite from Kaelen’s feverish mouth, was visible just above the fabric.
A faint, cruel smile touched the old hunter’s cracked lips. He knew. He might not know the whole truth, but he knew the mark for what it was.
“Grieving, were you?” he said, the words dripping with vile implication. “Looks like you found some comfort.”
Jerrick, standing in the doorway, flushed a deep, dangerous red. “You watch your tongue, Bren.”
“My tongue sees what it sees,” Bren shot back, not breaking his stare from Arya. “The beast was here. Recently. The hound confirms it. And your girl… she’s been keeping more than her grandmother’s memory warm.”
The other hunter with the dog spoke up. “Tracks outside the back. Deep, heavy. Favoring the left side. Matching the wounded prints by the creek. It went that way.” He pointed north, toward the ridge.
Arya’s mind screamed. They know. They know.