Page 16 of Crown of Storm and Silence
The calling leads me toward the river that winds through the village center, where late afternoon shadows dance across the water's surface in shifting patterns. I follow the pull of my shadows, moving closer to whatever has been driving my magic to distraction for days—whatever survived the recent violence that scarred this place.
And then I see her.
She emerges from a cottage at the village's edge, moving with that same fluid grace, that dancer's elegance that always made watching her a privilege rather than a casual pleasure. Dark hair catches the afternoon light, falling in waves around shoulders I remember tracing with reverent fingers in moments when the world narrowed to just the two of us and the space between heartbeats.
But it's the gentle swell of her belly beneath the simple dress that stops my world completely.
Time ceases. My lungs forget how to function. My heart—what's left of it—simply stops beating as if someone has reached into my chest and squeezed it into silence. The shadows around me freeze mid-writhe, my magic itself shocked into stillness by what my eyes refuse to process.
Pregnant.
The word ricochets through my skull with a brutal force, each repetition carving deeper wounds. The memory I've tried so hard to forget crashes over me, the conversation that revealed everything and destroyed us both. The moment I should have embraced instead of feared.
"No, I—" She hesitates, her hand rising unconsciously to rest on her stomach. "I was considering more generally. About children...and their fathers."
Something cold slithers down my spine at her words, at the small protective gesture of her hand. A suspicion begins to form, unwelcome and terrifying.
"What of them?" I ask, my voice suddenly hoarse.
"I was wondering..." She looks up at me, something vulnerable and hopeful in her expression. "How you felt about them. About the idea of...of having them. Someday."
The world seems to tilt beneath my feet. Children. She's asking about children. Our children. A possibility I've never allowed myself to contemplate, not since?—
Isil's face flashes before me, her joy when she told me she was carrying my child. The darkness that rose within me, the control I lost, the shadows that lashed out in panic—the terrible consequence of that instant of vulnerability.
Horror floods through me, my shadows responding before I manage to stop them, darkening violently as they whip around the room in agitation. I step back from her, desperate to put distance between us as memory overwhelms me.
"Kaan?" she questions, confusion and the beginnings of fear in her voice.
I try to respond, to explain that it's not her I fear, not our potential child, but myself, my capacity for destruction when faced with such vulnerability. But no words come, only a strangled sound of denial.
Her eyes widen as she misinterprets my reaction completely. Through our bond, I feel her sudden panic, her protective instinct flaring. She backs away, her hand still covering her stomach in a gesture that now seems unmistakable.
"I…I just remembered," she whispers, her voice strained as she edges toward the door. "I need to speak with Banu again. About tomorrow's...attire."
I reach for her, finally finding my voice. "Nesilhan, wait…"
But she was already carrying one. Even as I stood there paralyzed by my own terror, even as I watched hope die in her eyes and felt her pull away through our bond, my child was growing within her. She must have known—must have felt the first stirrings of life and realized the impossibility of her situation.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush so violent it doubles me over. She was pregnant when she left. Pregnant and terrified and alone, choosing to face the unknown rather than tell the monster she'd married that he was going to be a father.
How long had she known? How many nights had she lain beside me, one hand secretly pressed to her belly, planning her escape while I lost myself in the taste of her skin?
Comprehension dawns, bitter and absolute. Of course. The pull I've been following, the calling that's driven my shadows to near-rebellion for days—I thought it was her, thought somehow our severed bond was trying to reform itself across impossible distance. But it was never her at all.
It's the child. The life growing within her, carrying my blood, my power, my essence, wrapped in innocence and new possibility. That's what my shadows recognize, what calls to them as a beacon across the void. Not the woman who no longer remembers loving me, but the innocent life that carries half my soul without knowing it.
She was pregnant when she left.
This is why she fled. Not just fear of what I was becoming, but knowledge of what grew within her. She ran not just from me, but from the future that child represented—being bound to me forever through blood and shadow, raising a child in a world where I painted landscapes in shades of beautiful destruction.
She chose to face the unknown rather than tell me I was going to be a father.
6
The Stranger She Fears
Kaan
