Chapter 139

The chase repeated itself again and again, close enough to taste and yet never quite within reach, each near-catch ending with Marten slipping away like smoke. Kennard moved like a flash through the trees, springing off bark and rock, landing with a thud that sent leaf litter scattering. Every time he came down, he bared claws and teeth and hurled himself at Marten with the kind of violence that belonged on a battlefield, not in a forest clearing.

The old-growth trees, rooted so deep they looked as if even a typhoon could not budge them, shuddered anyway. Branches whipped as the two bodies slammed through undergrowth and rebounded off stone.

Marten darted back, breath steadying, and let out a humorless laugh. “I called you here to talk, and you come at me like you’re trying to rip my throat out.”

“If you wanted to talk,” Kennard snarled, “you should’ve done it before you kidnapped Elena.”

“Still this,” Marten shot back, eyes narrowing. “Can’t you do something about that temper? You didn’t forget why you came here, did you?”

“Shut up.”

Kennard refused to play along with Marten’s pointless baiting. He needed an answer, not a sparring match. He needed to know why Marten had summoned him here, and exactly how the White Fox Tribe intended to seize the imperial capital.

But the moment Marten’s face was in front of him, the image of Elena kept rising, unbidden and brutal. Elena half-dead in his arms. Elena burning with fever. Elena slipping away while he stood helpless at her bedside. The rage that followed that image was a living thing, clawing at his ribs, demanding blood.

Each time they collided, leaves fell in flurries like snow, shaken loose by the violence of their bodies. Marten would appear as if he were right there, within reach, only to twist aside at the last instant, gliding away with infuriating precision.

He had always been like this.

Marten had trained beside Kennard since they were boys. He had learned the same sword forms, run the same drills, sparred on the same training grounds until their lungs burned and their arms shook. He was as fast as Kennard, and far more flexible. If Kennard was tempered steel, Marten was a lithe arrow that bent with the wind and still struck true.

Catching him was not easy.

But Kennard was not the kind of man who stopped because something was difficult. Speed and grace meant nothing if Kennard managed to latch on even once. One bite, one raking sweep of claws, and the contest would end. That was all he needed. One clean moment.

So he watched. He followed Marten’s feints with ruthless focus. He memorized how Marten used the terrain, how he shifted his weight when he sprang off a tree, how his shoulders rolled before he dove for a rock ledge. He burned the pattern into his mind until Marten’s movements left a ghost-image behind him.

Then, after another twisting retreat, another mocking escape, Kennard caught him.

He surged forward, closed the last distance, and snapped his jaws down on Marten’s flank.

Marten’s breath tore out in a strangled sound.

Kennard used the bite as leverage, whipping his body and hurling Marten through the air. Marten hit the ground hard, rolling, his dark fur streaked red-brown and clogged with leaves and dirt. He tried to scramble upright, but his foreleg buckled and he collapsed again with a harsh, broken exhale.

The wound was deeper than Kennard had intended.

Or perhaps deeper than Kennard had admitted to himself he wanted.

Blood flooded out, hot and dark, soaking Marten’s fur before spilling into the soil.

Marten stared up at him, teal eyes wide with disbelief. “Are you actually trying to kill me?”

“You touched what was mine,” Kennard said, voice low and vibrating with restrained violence. “Did you think you could do that without being ready to die?”

He forced himself back into human form, bones and muscle reshaping, his breath coming hard through his teeth. He advanced slowly, each step deliberate. Marten shifted too, dragging himself into human shape with a grimace, then immediately clamped a hand over his bleeding side.

Blood slipped between his fingers in steady, unstoppable streams.

With his free hand braced on the ground, Marten began to inch backward.

Kennard looked down at him with contempt. “You’re scared over an injury like that?”

“I didn’t spend my life rotating through battlefields like you,” Marten snapped, teeth clenched as he fought the pain. “Isn’t that obvious?”

Kennard crouched close enough to see the fine sheen of sweat already forming on Marten’s brow. “So everything you learned. All those years of training. Are you telling me it turned into nothing? With your sword and your footwork, you could have earned honors. Instead you’re scrambling back like a coward. What’s your game this time?”

Marten lifted his head, veins visible at his temples, and glared up with eyes so sharp they looked like cut glass. “I called you to give you information. I have no intention of dying to your teeth.”

“That’s something you should’ve considered before you started this,” Kennard said.

He seized Marten by the hair and yanked his head back. In the same motion, he grabbed the injured side and squeezed.

Marten’s scream ripped through the trees. His whole body jerked, muscles locking, jaw tightening so hard the tendons stood out.

Kennard did not loosen his grip. He held him there, face close, breath mingling.

“You were going to hand the empire to filth like the White Fox Tribe,” Kennard growled. “How can you do that unless you’ve lost your mind?”

The thought tried to crawl up from somewhere deep and traitorous. That this was Marten. That there had once been something between them worth remembering. Kennard forced it down like bile.

He should have ended it at Teradmorrette. He should have severed it cleanly when he had the chance. He had hesitated out of a softness he refused to admit, and that softness had nearly killed Elena.

Now it was threatening the empire itself.

Kennard’s fingers tightened. Marten choked, breath stuttering.

“For the love of everything,” Marten shouted, grabbing Kennard’s collar with shaking hands, “listen to me!”

Kennard’s eyes narrowed. “You think I’m going to let you play me again with that snake tongue of yours?”

“And do you even know what that ‘snake tongue’ has been doing all this time?” Marten spat back.

“I don’t need to know,” Kennard said. “I don’t even need to care.”

The blunt certainty seemed to drain something out of Marten. He let out a ragged, humorless laugh, then winced, pain twisting his face.

“Fine,” Marten rasped. “If what you want is my life, then kill me. Right now. But—”

He poked Kennard’s chest with the tips of his fingers, each tap infuriatingly intimate.

“Don’t forget this. The only reason you got this far is because of me.”

Kennard jerked Marten’s hair harder. “You dragged me to this miserable place and you want gratitude? You’re not sane.”

Marten’s neck bent back, stretched to the point of strain. His voice came out harsh, but his eyes stayed locked on Kennard’s. “Elena’s in danger. You’re going to kill the White Fox Tribe and the emperor, aren’t you?”

“You didn’t need to ask,” Kennard muttered.

Then, with a cruelty that made his own stomach twist, he shoved his fingers into the wound he had made with his teeth, probing deeper.

Heat and slickness coated his fingertips. Torn flesh yielded under pressure.

Marten convulsed with a strangled groan. “Ah—”

“Just kill me!” Marten screamed, breath turning into frantic gasps. “If you’re going to do it, do it!”

Kennard wanted to.

He had wanted to from the second he saw him. That had been the only thought in his head, clean and simple and satisfying.

And yet something ugly and instinctive kept crawling up inside him, whispering that Marten was acting wrong. Too wrong. Like a man who had walked into a noose and was annoyed it wasn’t tightening fast enough.

The feeling wouldn’t leave. It slid down Kennard’s spine like cold water.

“Why aren’t you fighting?” Kennard demanded, voice sharp. “You’re acting like you came here looking for a place to die.”

Marten’s eyes flashed. “Now you care what I think? You said you didn’t need to know anything.”

“Kennard.”

The way Marten said his name made Kennard’s pulse jump with irritation.

His fingers pressed harder. Marten bucked, slammed his fist into Kennard’s chest.

A dull thud sounded, but Kennard didn’t move.

Finally, after a moment that stretched too long, Kennard yanked his fingers out.

Blood surged, thick and sudden, pouring from the gaping wound as if it had been punctured by a rod. Kennard flung Marten’s head away as if disgusted by himself, then stood.

Marten fell back, clutching his side with both hands, chest heaving with each ragged breath.

Time passed, measured only by the wind and Marten’s uneven exhalations.

At last Marten braced an elbow on the ground and dragged himself toward the nearest old tree. He slumped against it, head tipped back, sweat shining on his pale face. He had bitten through his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, and it trailed down his chin.

Still holding his side, Marten lifted his gaze to Kennard, and his voice came out thin, as if he had to pry the words out one by one.

“I’m going to put you on the emperor’s throne.”

Kennard stared at him in silence, as if the sentence had been spoken in a foreign tongue.

Marten’s mouth twisted in irritation. “That’s your reaction? That’s it? Do you have any idea how long I’ve—how much I’ve—prepared—”

He chuckled hoarsely, then grimaced as pain caught up and dug its teeth in again.

“Damn it. First you bite me, then you dig into it like you’re trying to tear me open.”

His head listed slightly, fatigue dragging at him.

“Say something.”

Kennard still couldn’t find the words. The absurdity of it sat on his tongue like ash.

Then he managed, coldly, “Does imprinting make you share thoughts? You and Hazel spouting the same nonsense. It’s laughable.”

Marten’s lips curled. “You two make a perfect pair.”

“I don’t know what you’re planning,” Kennard said, voice rising with impatience, “but with or without you, I was going to take the throne to protect Elena.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Marten said, and there was that infuriating twist of satisfaction again. “My point is, you’re here because of me.”

“Explain it properly,” Kennard snapped.

Marten’s shoulders jerked with another wave of pain. He had to take two shallow breaths before he could continue.

“It was you that she wanted,” he said, each word scraped raw. “Not me. And she wants you on the throne. Do you know how bitter that tasted?”

Kennard’s expression didn’t change.

Marten kept going, jaw tightening. “But I realized it was an opportunity. The emperor has always treated me as yours. Like I belonged to you. He’s pushed me away endlessly because of it. So I thought… if I used some insignificant lesser noble, someone like the Blade house no one watches too closely, I could finally start moving pieces without him noticing.”

He swallowed hard, palm pressing his side as if he could force the blood to stop by sheer will.

“I’m telling you this,” Marten said, voice roughening into something almost furious, “because you think I’m handing the empire to the White Fox Tribe. You think I’ve lost my mind. But you’re standing here trying to kill me before you even hear what I’ve actually done.”

He lifted his chin, eyes bright with something that wasn’t fear.

“So listen,” Marten said, teeth bared in a pained, ugly grin. “Just this once. Stop attacking long enough to understand why the capital is about to burn, and why the only reason you still have a chance to save it is because I chose to call you here instead of letting you find out too late.”