Shadow Soul (Narun Book 1)

by M. J. Bavis

  “It wasn’t the Council who foresaw it.”

  I scoffed. “Great, you’re telling me all this is based on some—”

  “It was Kailen.”

  The name knocked me with the force of a sledgehammer. The pain flooded in from the hole in my chest, spreading with each pump of blood further into me. Like fire it burned, taking life as it consumed and roared into larger, hungrier flames.

  Someone pleaded for my attention, but the ringing in my ears was too loud, too demanding.

  My Kailen.

  Chapter 27

  Death. Pain. Torture. Capture. Fear.

  My insides wanted to crawl out of me, out of the moment, out of the fate they were faced with.

  Kailen was on his knees a few feet from me, his head bowed, arms tied behind his back. Blood trickled from a wound in his forearm and dripped in heavy drops from his mouth. The soldier behind him kicked him in the side and I tensed up as if feeling the stab in my ribs.

  “Stop it! Stop hurting him!” I shrieked, before taking a hit in the face from a soldier in front of me. The man behind me, holding me still, tightened his grip. “Let him go!”

  “Useless.” The ginger-haired soldier in front spat on the ground. “Don’t waste your breath. The only thing waiting for him is a long, agonising death. Unless he tells us what we need to know.”

  My whole body shook out of fear. The thought of them torturing him was excruciating.

  How did this even happen? It had been a standard mission, minimum risk. Yet here we were faced with the unspeakable. Faced with…

  No, they couldn’t take him away from me. Not him. I couldn’t breathe without him.

  The ginger-haired soldier laughed at me. “Aww, little girl, shaking in her boots… I thought they raised warriors in Narun.”

  The other soldiers joined him in laughter and I screamed and thrashed as the soldier behind me licked my neck, sliding his hand up my stomach.

  “Kali…don’t—” Kailen started, but his captor kicked him again.

  The Ginger placed a hand on my throat, squeezing it until I couldn’t scream even if I wanted to. “I have a proposition for you, Kali…” He pulled out a knife, letting the cool blade rest against my temple.

  I gagged for air.

  “Renounce your King and join us”—the soldier’s breath was offensive on my skin— “and your boy won’t suffer anymore.”

  Kailen struggled against his captor and shouted something at me, but I could only focus on the oxygen draining out of my lungs and the tiny blood vessels popping in my eyes.

  I gasped loudly as the soldier released my throat, and I swallowed chunks of air at once.

  “What do you say, little girl?” He pulled on my hair, tilting my head, so I could see the blade on Kailen’s throat, his eyes in anguish. I felt everything inside of me crumble. And I cried. Like a little girl.

  The soldier was right. I wasn’t a warrior.

  “Please… let us go,” I sobbed. I was weak. Everything about me screamed ‘weak’. How had I not known all this before? Kailen had been the strong one and the thought of losing him—I’d be nothing.

  “Join us and he won’t suffer.” The ginger soldier repeated with a nasty drawl in his voice. “Simple as that.”

  Kailen shook his head. But he knew.

  No one could save us. They had us. They would decide our fate. They would make Kailen—

  “I’ll join you,” I heard myself saying. The voice of reason was bound and locked up in the back of my brain.

  “Kali, no, don’t listen to them!” Kailen’s orders were muffled by an elbow smacking his mouth. I ripped myself free, only to be caught by the ginger soldier.

  “A-a-a,” he tutted. “Not so fast, little girl. I fear I can’t simply take your word for it, no more than you can mine.” His eye twitched at every other word while his fingers dug into my jaw. “Renounce the King…by killing one of your own. Or your partner and yourself will watch each other writhe in pain for a very long death.” He jerked up his chin, and the soldier behind Kailen forced him to stand.

  Kailen’s swollen face met mine and the pieces that were already shattered inside of me pulverized. I felt the pain he felt. I felt the sorrow burdening him. Yet his greatest weakness was me.

  He feared for me.

  The soldier picked up Kailen’s sword and wrapped my fingers around its handle. “Kill him. It’s the only way to guarantee he won’t suffer in our hands.”

  There was no hope left. I couldn’t watch Kailen suffer. I couldn’t handle the knowledge that he would suffer.

  But I could never take his life.

  “Kill him and I’ll believe you have renounced the King of Narun,” the ginger soldier whispered by my ear. “The King of Gorah will welcome you and no harm will come to you. You can end your partner’s sufferings now.”

  To my surprise, Kailen stood still. Without objection, he looked at me with eyes that tried to communicate an ocean of emotions. Maybe he wanted me to do it. Maybe he was begging me to do it.

  I swallowed, tasting blood, loosely holding the sword, its point touching the ground. My eyes flickered to the soldier holding onto Kailen and I saw my chance. The soldier was distracted—unprepared.

  I had to try.

  I tightened my grip and turned to the ginger-haired soldier.

  “With this kill,” I said in a voice that sounded too robotic and pitched to be mine. “I renounce the King.” I grabbed the sword with both hands, swivelled, and plunged the blade into the soldier’s stomach.

  “Kali…” Kailen spluttered, blood dripping from his mouth.

  My breathing stopped as my eyes shifted from my arm, along the sword, and into Kailen’s pierced stomach.

  A noose tightened around my heart.

  I pulled the sword out, causing Kailen to drop to his knees. The sword fell to the ground with a thud.

  What was happening?

  I staggered back, struggling for breath, desperate for a thought that made sense. How? How was it possible? How could I…? I hadn’t…? Had I…?

  NO.

  I lurched to grab a hold of Kailen’s arms, his warm blood soaking my clothes. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see what my eyes were seeing.

  It could not be true.

  “Kali—”

  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter 28

  Hands shook me, cupped my face, forcing me to look past his beautiful face in my mind’s eye into a face that was…not his.

  “Kali, listen to me, you need to listen!”

  The sweet smell of peat brought me back to reality. I was on the floor, not sure how I ended up there.

  “Look at me.” The voice, Leo’s voice, beckoned me, and then reason dawned. As quickly as it had gone, it returned.

  “How dare you speak his name?”

  Leo’s fingers dug on my shoulders, his eyes desperate to lock into mine. “You need to listen to me carefully,” he said. “It wasn’t just the Council who sent me here, it was Kailen. He asked—begged me to find you! He made me promise I wouldn’t give up on you no matter what.”

  I shook myself free from Leo’s hold. How could he feed me such lies? “This is low even from you.” My teeth ground against each other. “Using him to persuade me? Have you no shame?”

  “You’re not listening! This was Kailen’s plan! He saw the future, he saw what was coming, and he took it to the Council and convinced them too. He’d seen his destiny, and yours. It had to happen. For the sake of Narun, for your sake. You were everything to him.”

  My chin quivered as I fought the stinging in my eyes. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not, I ca—”

  “You’re lying, and you know how I know? Because he’s dead! He’s gone because of me! I killed him, I ran a sword through him.” The tears flooded, spilling down my cheeks salty and warm. My muscles shook, unable to control themselves.

  “You didn’t kill him, Kali! I know that’s what you think, but—”<
br />
  “You don’t know what happened that day. You don’t know anything!” I swung my arms, but Leo caught them into his firm grip.

  “I know everything, Kalika.” He sounded forlorn. “I know because I was there. Since the day Kailen had his vision, he took me under his wing and convinced me to spy on you two training, so I’d learn how you fought.” Leo took a quick breath and lowered his voice. “I was there for years, Kali. I saw how you loved him and he loved you, how he protected you, how he would’ve done anything for you. I was there because he was preparing me to take his place. He knew what the outcome of the battle was going to be that day and he knew what it would do to you, but he’d seen there was no other way. He made me promise—” Leo’s eyelids closed, the crease between his eyes deepening, and then he looked at me again.

  “He made me swear to watch over you and I did, because he was like a brother and I would’ve done anything for him—just as I would for you.” Leo's voice crumbled until it was nothing but a pained whisper.

  “For years, Kali, I’ve looked from the side-lines, torn by the desire to be with you and the agony of knowing what would have to happen if I ever were to be with you.”

  I was numb to his confession. How could I even begin to digest his words?

  “Kali, you didn’t kill him.” Leo was still on his knees in front of me, gripping my wrists. “He went to the battle knowing what would happen. He even knew you would blame yourself and it tore him apart, but he couldn’t tell you the truth; you would’ve done everything you could to stop him and get yourself captured by the Gorahites. He’d seen the road you both had to walk.”

  “It was by my hand he died from—my sword, my mistake,” I croaked barely audible.

  Leo released my wrists and pressed his fingers to his temples. “No, it wasn’t.” His arms dropped to his sides. “He pushed the soldier aside and ran into your sword because he needed you to think he was dying. It was the only way to…to stop you from following him. He couldn’t fool your gifting, he had to be wounded, lethally wounded.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Leo’s chin lowered. “He didn’t foresee he was going to get killed that day. He saw his capture by the Gorahites.”

  The sledgehammer pounded into my chest a second time. I couldn’t move lest my skin shattered into millions of pieces.

  “I watched him dying; he lay on the ground, life ebbing away from his veins.” The memory was fresh in my mind. It had never left. “He couldn’t have survived it.”

  “You saw what he needed you to see. What you didn’t know was that one of the soldiers was a Healer. As you know, Kailen would’ve known that. He told me he was gifted with the ability to pick up on people’s skills.” He had picked up on mine straight away.

  “The soldier knocked you unconscious, so he could heal Kailen for interrogation in Gorah. They wanted him alive—it was all a part of their game.” Leo let out a pained grunt. “Kailen had seen me coming, ready to attack, but I couldn’t reach you until they knocked you out. Kailen demanded I take you to safety first, and I did. But when I returned, they’d taken him. They were gone. The body you saw burning when you came to wasn’t his.”

  The smell of burning flesh returned to me, making me physically nauseous. None of it made sense.

  “Why are you saying these things? He died that day and I am responsible for his death! Me, only me. I was his partner, and it was the sword in my hand that killed him—” My fingers wrapped around my neck, pulling at an invisible rope strangling me. “I couldn’t even face his funeral. I had to get out of there, I had to leave.”

  “No, Kali,” Leo said gently. “Kailen died sixteen days later, in Gorah, by the hands of his captors.”

  I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. I couldn’t shut myself away from this. I couldn’t silence the questions. I couldn’t fight the doubt. I couldn’t shake the image of my dripping sword as I pulled it out of Kailen’s pierced stomach.

  Sixteen days. I could’ve saved him. Instead, I was fleeing like a coward.

  No. It couldn’t be true.

  “Stop messing with my head!” I held my skull as if to stop it from exploding into pieces.

  “I realise this is overwhelming to take in, but Kailen was adamant everything had to happen as it did, for the sake of the future. It’s the truth,” Leo said quietly.

  The truth? What was the truth anymore? There had been so many lies the truth would’ve got tangled in their web long ago. Whose truth mattered anyway? Mine? Leo’s? Would either change anything?

  It would change everything.

  My breath paced itself to the thud in my temples. This had to be a dream. Some strange, parallel reality. A fantasy. A figment of my imagination. Anything, but the truth. The truth could not be this.

  “Kalika, please, I know this is hard…” Hard? Had a word ever carried such meekness to it? “Try to understand. Kailen only wanted to protect you and the future of Narun, and so did I. I still do. It took him a long time to convince me to go along with his plan, but once he had won the Council over… I didn’t know what else to do.” Leo shook his head like it would undo what had been done. “Kailen kept saying it was for the greater good. Eventually, I began to see the bigger picture, and believe in it.”

  “Leave me alone,” I snarled.

  “Kali—”

  “Stop calling me that!” I pulled my shoulders in. “That was his name for me.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

  Lifeless, I stared at Leo. “Leave me, Elikai.”

  “I don’t think you should—”

  “Go away, now.”

  Defeated, Leo retreated outside as my head buried itself into my hands.

  Too much.

  *

  It was dark when the door opened, bringing in a gust of wind. I recalled little of the light retracting from the room. I hadn’t moved. How could I? Where would I have moved to? What reason was there to move? What place was there to go to that could change how I felt?

  I was a statue, cemented to my faith.

  Yet my mind stormed furiously, as it had ever since Leo left the room. It ached physically from the vastness of my thoughts.

  Could it be true? If it was, everything I had believed in had been turned on its head. The past, every memory and every feeling with it, had been changed, snatched from me and exchanged for something…much crueller.

  Could the man I’d known since I joined the Guard—who I’d grown to love, who I’d fought along with, and shared life with—have hidden such a secret? Could he have deceived me? Had he ever even loved me? Had anything he’d said been true?

  A floorboard creaked nearby. Leo kneeled close to me.

  “How do you feel?”

  How did I feel? Betrayed. Wronged. Used. Confused. Guilty. Angry. Furious. Numb. Hurt. Lost. Every emotion under the sun and then some.

  “What do you think?” I croaked, staring at my open palms.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “What’s there to talk about? How do I even know you’re telling the truth?”

  He didn’t reply. I wasn’t really expecting an answer anyway. Half of the ‘confessions’ hadn’t even started to process through my brain. First, I needed to establish whether to believe him or not.

  “When did he…when did Kailen see the—?”

  “A year or so before he was captured.”

  I blinked rapidly to shun away the tears. A year. “That’s when you first met him?”

  “No,” Leo admitted. “I’d known him for a little longer.”

  “How come he never mentioned you?”

  Leo wavered. “Kailen wanted to keep it that way. Maybe he knew on some level—”

  “Knew?” I glanced at him, my fingers curling. “You’re saying that when we talked about our future together he was never even gonna go through with it? That all along he was actually preparing you as my next partner? That’s sick, Leo.”

  “It’s complicated.” Leo rubbed the
back of his head. “He didn’t see us like that. He just saw the bigger picture—purpose.”

  “But that’s not how you saw it.” I shot back, my insides being wrung out to dry. At least I now had an emotion to channel on: anger.

  “I never meant to fall for you, Kalika.”

  “I can’t bear the sight of you.” I angled away from him, staring at nothing.

  “I know you’ll need time to think this over, but—”

  “No. No buts,” I said. “I don’t want anything to do with you. Ever.”

  “In time—”

  “No, Leo, don’t you see?” I spat, Leo’s dejected face doing nothing to melt the ice in my eyes. “I love Kailen. I’m responsible for his death and it doesn’t matter what you say. I could’ve saved him. You should’ve saved him! You should’ve fought for him, gone after him, or at least, told me so I could follow him. Instead, you left me with a charred corpse—”

  “I did follow him! That’s why I left you because no matter how many times Kailen told me not to interfere, I couldn’t leave him! I needed to try, but I was too late. I only caught one of the soldiers. That’s how I know what happened before I found you.”

  So he knew. He knew I was a coward and a traitor.

  “Then answer this: how could I possibly return and start over after all this?”

  “Because that’s what he wanted! It’s your destiny, your calling. You can’t turn your back on everything you are and who you’re meant to be! How do you think he’d feel if he could see you now? See who you’ve become? See that his sacrifice was for nothing?”

  The arrows punctured through my skin like I was made of feathers. I slapped his cheek. He took it. I slapped him again and picked myself up from the floor.

  “I’ve nothing more to say. Either drive me back, or I’ll walk home.” I felt the burn of Leo’s stare on me; a spot on the wall received my full attention. Waves of silence continued to hit ashore.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  Chapter 29