"The Dawn that Rose from Fire"

Day 17 of Novel November- Kaelen and Alenyah deal with the fallout

Chapter 10

She awoke lying on a table in the feast hall, eyes staring at the beams of the ceiling. People were shouting, and her head pounded. Groaning, the Fey’ri rolled onto her side. Someone had wiped the blood off her face.

Her body felt heavy, her throat dry, and when she moved, pain flared sharp and immediate down her spine.

A shadow shifted beside her.

“Don’t move,” Kaelen’s voice said — low, rough with something she didn’t recognize at first: fear. His hand was steady against her shoulder, but she could feel the tremor in his fingers.

He stood, striding away, shoulders and jaw set. Althea plopped in front of her and took her hand. Her face was grave and pale.

“You offered to help us!” Seth and Foxran were a wall of muscle and stone between Captain Erwin and Alenyah. “Is this what you meant? Everything is gone. She burned it.” Her voice cracked with grief.

“The blight is destroyed-” Seth muttered. Erwin sneered, trying to push past them towards Alenyah, as even more people crowded into the hall, their despair evident. Foxran caught the woman around the shoulders with his obsidian lined arms and shoved her backwards.

“Enough,” Foxran barked. “She saved your lives. The blight would have taken the Keep in weeks.”

“Saved us?” someone cried. “We have no food left!”

Around them, the Watchers murmured, their voices rising like a tide. A man shouted, “The Singer cursed us!” and spat.

Guilt surged hotly in Alenyah’s veins, as what she could hear of the Song of the Watcher’s roared with wrath. She tried to sit up, but the room tilted, and nausea whirled in her gut. Tavren caught her, helping her upright, concerned. Their pale face tensed, and they leaned forward, checking her pupils, thumb pressed to her need to check her pulse.

Bloody gauze sat beside them on the weathered table. She tried to turn, put her feet on the ground and stand. Seth and Foxran had their arms spread, and the shouting grew.

Kaelen suddenly reappeared beside her, holding a horse blanket. He tossed it around her shoulders before glancing at Tavren.

“Is it safe to move her?” He asked, mouth thin. His dark hair had come undone from his ponytail and hung about his sharp cheekbones. Tavren hesitated.

“I am not sure.”

Something shattered, and Althea gasped. Kaelen’s hand drifted to his sword hilt.

“We’re leaving,” he said. He reached out, flexed, and lifted Alenyah into his arms. Her head, heavy, leaned against the warmth of his shoulder lulled by the steady beat of his heart. She could see Captain Erwin staring at them sourly.

“You should,” she said. “Before someone decides you owe us more than an apology.”

The words landed like stones.

Alenyah swallowed hard, her voice shaking. “I didn’t mean to—”

Kaelen spun on his heel, already striding towards the double doors. Seth and Foxran fell into place flanking him, hands on weapons, as Tavren and Althea brought up the rear.

The group moving as one — a fragile, protective unit bound together in the aftermath of destruction. Outside, Berin had gathered the mounts and Valka, everything saddled and prepared. The Courtyard was silent. The wind had died, as though afraid to stir the ash. No birds sang. The snow hissed underfoot, brittle and hollow.

“Can you ride?” Kaelen asked, pausing before Valka, who was frantically snipped and trying to lap at Alenyah’s face. Pushing the Fylgja’s head away, she hesitated.

“I’ll try.”

His amber eyes scanned the courtyard warily, unwilling to relinquish her among so many desperate people. She felt the weight of his scrutiny, and the heaviness in her chest grew. More people were spilling out into the courtyard.

He cursed, lifting her onto Valka. Dizzy, she almost slid off the other side, but his broad hand grabbed her thigh steadying her. The others had mounted, hands on weapons. Foxran pushed Althea out the front gate first. Kaelen swung himself upon his gelding, staying even with Alenyah, one arm half outstretched should she fall.

Swallowing, she wound her hands into Valka’s fur and leaned forward.

“Go, girl,” she murmured. Seth emerged last, face devastated. She felt his eyes on her, and his judgement.

The gates of Veilwatch closed behind them with a final, echoing clang. Alenyah’s stomach knotted as she watched the ruined fields. I destroyed everything. How could I have thought I could fix it? Her hands itched to reach out, to undo what she had done, but she could not.

The party rode until the Keep was a shadow on the horizon before making camp. Tavren helped her off Valka, and seated her against an outcropping of rocks as Foxran started a fire. Kaelen face the way they had travelled, eyebrows furrowed. His hand twitched against his sword. Althea plopped beside her, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against Alenyah’s arm. She wanted to pull away. What if that destruction came for them next? She had healed corruption never conquered it like that before.

“I don’t know if it’s safe to be near me right now,” she mumbled to Althea quietly. The Rhea snorted.

“Tosh, I’d be cinders by now if you were dangerous,” she announced. “I am not going anywhere.” To make her point, she unbuckled her satchel pulling a blanket to sling over their laps and her finger loom.

The fire crackled as Foxran sparked some dry wood he had pulled from dead bushes dotting the landscape. His eyes lit up triumphant. Seth and Tavren finished getting the horses settled, and all too soon, everyone was gathered around the fire, around Alenyah. Kaelen was last.

She stared at the ground till his leather boots entered her vision. Her gaze dragged up his muscled legs and crossed arms until she met his eyes. He looked furious.

“What. Happened.” He bit out.

Anger surged through her, and she rose, clinging to the stone. Althea bristled, rising with her. He didn’t get to talk to her that way, especially when she hadn’t even wanted to go on this journey with them in the first place. She tilted her chin upwards, squashing down her guilt.

“I did what you wanted,” she snapped. “I tried to heal the corruption in the fields.”

“That?” He pointed back towards the Keep. “That was no healing. That was destruction, worse even than any blight of Menerith!”

His words hammered her, and she leaned against the rocks behind her, still unsteady. Shoulders taut, he leaned back and turned away.

“Maker above,” he breathed heavily. “You could have died. You would have ruined everything!”

“I am only valuable to you if I can save the Crags, then?” Alenyah bared her teeth at him. Seething, she clenched her fists.

“Well you certainly aren’t valuable if you’re dead!”

If only she had her knife in her hand, she would throw it at his head. It wouldn’t kill him, probably.

“If only your father had thought of that before he killed my mother!”

Kaelen’s face twisted in fury, and he started to lunge for her, but Berin shoved his way between them, both arms outstretched. Althea snagged Alenyah around the waist with her slender arms, holding her back. The Fey’ri was too weak to fight, but damn it all, she’d try. The pair struggled towards each other for a moment, before weakness had Alenyah sagging towards the ground. Foxran seized Kaelen, pulling him away towards the fire.

“Enough!” He shouted.

Alenyah’s vision blurred. The world tilted in shades of grey and crimson. Althea’s hands were still around her waist, steadying her, whispering something, a soft, useless comfort she couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears.

Her throat burned. She wanted to scream that she hadn’t meant to destroy the fields, that she hadn’t wanted to live in a world where everything she touched turned to ash. But the words stayed lodged beneath the weight of her guilt.

Kaelen turned away at last, pacing toward the fire with stiff, angry strides. His shadow stretched long and sharp across the snow.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” she said, tilting her head skyward. The Stoneborn stiffened, but turned his back on her, shoulders taut.

She continued.

“I have healed sickness before. The fields were so large, I wasn’t sure I could do it.” She looked at her hands. “But it wasn’t the size of the fields, and it wasn’t the Song I chose. It was my strength.” She closed her eyes. “I failed. It has never fought me like that before. The darkness wanted beneath my skin, and it tore at me. I had to destroy it, or the corruption would have destroyed ME.”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the wind sighing through the rocks. Kaelen’s head lowered, and though he didn’t turn, the tension in his shoulders eased—just enough that she could breathe again.

But he stayed turned away, the curve of his shoulder lit faintly by the fire. His silence pressed down like weight.

Berin cleared his throat, and Alenyah looked towards the Rhea. He was rubbing his hands together anxiously. “The question is why this happened,” he said. “You mentioned this has never happened before. So is the corruption different…or is it you?”

She stiffened. “I don’t know.”

Althea’s eyes danced back and forth between them. She muttered, “Those poor people…”

Alenyah buried her face in her knees, and quiet fell among them all. Althea rubbed her shoulder before twitching the blanket more securely around her. No one spoke for a long while, feeling the weight of the frost and the ruined fields.

Tavren broke the quiet. “We can only move forward. Alenyah tried to heal the fields, and we all failed to protect them. The only way to save everyone is to get rid of the Great Wyrm. Until we fail at that, we keep going. We haven’t lost yet.”

“Well said,” Althea smiled. Alenyah shuddered, wiping tear stains from her face. Even with hope, they still sat until day turned to dusk and Kaelen ordered them all to rest.



By morning, the fire had burned to embers. Frost glittered across the ashes, and a gray dawn pressed low over the camp. Alenyah stirred beneath her blanket, sore in every limb, the memory of light and screaming still caught behind her eyes.

When she tried to sit up, a shadow moved. Kaelen was already there, crouched beside her with a steaming tin cup in hand.

“Drink,” he said quietly.

She hesitated, half expecting the sharpness of last night’s anger to return. But his voice was gentler, low enough that the others couldn’t hear. His gaze stayed on the ground as if the sight of her still pained him.

“Thank you,” she murmured, accepting the cup. Her fingers brushed his, brief, accidental. He didn’t pull away.

“I am sorry, too.” He whispered. “I let yesterday get the better of me.” His amber eyes seared hers. “It won’t happen again.”

She tried to smile, but her lips barely moved. “I’ll hold you to that.”

She flushed a little embarrassed. “I’ll also try…not to hit you.”

He chuckled, and her gaze shot to his face. It changed him, warming the edges of his usually guarded expression. Something in her chest eased, and the guilt she’d been carrying slipped just a little further from her shoulders.

“Likewise,” Kaelen said, the corner of his mouth still curved in a grin.