Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Weight of Intentions (Continuation)
The bracelet felt heavier than it should have as Kael adjusted it on his wrist. Bone smoothed by careful polish, woven with strands of dark hair and faint carvings of runes that almost glowed when the firelight caught them. He wore it deliberately, curious to see Druaka's reaction.
The opportunity came that evening. Druaka was sitting at the edge of the training field, her long ivory tusks catching the dying light, her broad shoulders hunched as she sharpened a blade too small for her massive hands. She looked up when Kael approached, and her pale eyes immediately dropped to his wrist.
The flinch of surprise was small, but Kael noticed. The faintest tremor passed over her lips before she schooled her face.
"You wear it," Druaka rumbled, her voice quiet for an ogre, as though she was unsure if she deserved to speak.
"I do," Kael replied, taking a seat on a fallen log beside her. Umbra settled in the snow a few feet away, golden eyes half-lidded but watching. "I wanted to understand what it meant."
Druaka's gaze lingered on the bracelet again. Her large fingers tightened around the blade, then loosened. "It means more than a token. It is… part of me. A promise."
Kael studied her for a moment, seeing past her scarred body to the woman beneath. Her frame radiated power, but her voice trembled with a weight far more fragile.
"Why give it to me?" he asked, though he already knew.
Her tusks shifted with a grimace that wasn't anger, but pain. "Because… you saw me when no one else would. You fought for me. You could have cast me out like the council wanted, could have left me in the mud where those men left me to rot. But you didn't. You risked everything—your people, your own life—to stand by what you believed in. No one has ever done that for me."
Kael was silent. He thought of her arrival, the blood, the fear, the heated debates. And then of her steady hands over Lyria's wound, light magic pouring from her palms even as exhaustion dragged her to the ground.
Druaka's voice grew quieter still. "I am grateful, Kael. Not just for saving me, but for seeing me as something other than a beast. When I was in chains, when I was broken… I thought I would never be whole again. You gave me back something I thought I had lost forever."
Her eyes finally met his. They were luminous, filled with a vulnerability that no one else would ever see. "My heart."
The words hung between them, heavier than iron.
Kael inhaled slowly. He had seen men die, seen kingdoms burn in his visions, faced monsters that could tear forests apart. Yet the weight of Druaka's confession pressed harder than any blade.
Before he could respond, the sound of boots crunching in snow reached them.
Lyria stepped into the clearing, her bow slung over her shoulder, her silver hair catching the moonlight. She stopped when she saw them—Kael seated, Druaka leaning close, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Kael," Lyria said, her tone careful, curious, but edged.
Druaka didn't look away. Her jaw tightened as though she'd decided that retreating now would be worse than pressing forward.
"I will not hide it," Druaka said, her voice rising with sudden boldness. "I gave you that bracelet because I wanted you to know my heart belongs to you. Not just out of gratitude. Out of… love."
The silence that followed cut sharper than any sword. Kael's fingers twitched against the bracelet, Lyria's eyes flicked between the two of them, and Druaka, breathing hard, waited for judgment like a warrior awaiting her sentence.