Chapter 196: It’s You

Torin’s POV

I slowly dragged my feet back onto the stone pathways of the pack house, my mind still spinning in circles after the chaotic commotion in the market square.

Every single piece of information I had stumbled upon felt like a tangled web that I couldn’t unknot.

The sudden appearance of the beautiful apple angel, her secretive meeting with the fake Isadora, and the tightly wrapped cloth bundle they had exchanged kept playing on a loop behind my eyelids.

And to top it all off, I had managed to shatter a priceless ceramic vase belonging to a completely crass, short-haired blonde woman who had publicly labeled me as both blind and dumb.

None of it made a single bit of sense.

I desperately needed to find a way to clear my heavy head, and more than anything, I needed to talk to a trusted friend before the anxiety completely ate me alive.

When I finally reached the iron gates of the main courtyard, I instantly spotted Azura.

She was currently training with Axel in a small, grassy clearing situated just beside the stone walls of the pack house.

Her breathing was coming in heavy, ragged gasps as she kept her silver sword raised high in a defensive stance, her piercing gray eyes completely locked onto her opponent with an intense focus.

Axel was slowly circling her frame like a wolf tracking its prey, his footwork remaining sharp, fluid, and entirely controlled as he tested her guard.

I forced myself to shake off my daze and walked directly toward the edge of their training ground.

"Hey," Azura said, lowering the tip of her heavy blade the exact second she noticed my approach.

She wiped a layer of sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve, her chest rising and falling from the exertion.

"Where on earth did you wander off to?"

"I just needed to go out into the village for a bit of fresh air," I explained, stopping right beside her on the grass.

I paused for a long moment, awkwardly reaching up to scratch the back of my neck as I glanced over at her training partner.

"Can I talk to you alone for a little while, Azura? It is really important."

Axel stopped his circling motion and looked up at me, his handsome face pulling into a flat, distinctly irritated expression.

It was completely obvious that he did not appreciate having his intense training session interrupted by my sudden arrival.

But before he could utter a single word to dismiss me, the sharp, rhythmic sound of clopping hooves suddenly echoed through the open courtyard.

A dark wooden carriage came rolling rapidly through the stone entrance gates, its wheels kicking up clouds of gray dust before it ground to a complete halt right in the very center of the main compound.

Axel’s entire face transformed in a single instant, a genuine, incredibly warm smile breaking across his features as he lowered his training weapon.

Azura and I exchanged a deep, synchronized frown.

We were clearly dealing with uninvited guests, and absolutely neither of us possessed any clue as to who could be sitting inside that mysterious carriage.

The individual driving the carriage hopped down from the high wooden bench, their heavy boots hitting the dirt with a loud thud.

The second the person turned around, my eyes locked onto her face, and my jaw nearly dropped straight to the grass.

It was her.

It was the mannerless, aggressive lady from the market.

She walked with a confident, heavy stride directly toward Axel, completely ignoring the rest of the yard.

Her short, cropped blonde hair was a total mess, sticking out in wild directions from the wind of the road, and her clothing was entirely practical for hard travel: a stained leather tunic, thick trousers, and scuffed riding boots.

There was an exhausting aura about her, making her look like a person who had been riding hard for days on end without a single break.

Axel kept smiling brightly at her approach, but instead of greeting him with words, the crass woman walked straight past his extended arm and strode over to the carriage door.

She raised her fist and knocked against the dark wood with three hard, incredibly aggressive thumps.

The action was entirely unladylike and rough.

A second later, the small carriage window slid open from the inside.

A slender arm reached through the gap, handing the short-haired woman a small, securely tied leather bag.

She snatched the item quickly, turned back on her heel, and walked straight over to stand in front of Axel.

Without saying a single word of greeting, she threw the bag directly into his waiting hands.

Axel untied the top, his fingers pulling open the leather to inspect the contents inside.

In a single second, the warm smile completely dropped from his lips, his handsome face turning hard and rigid as he stared down at the item.

"This is not what I asked you to bring me," Axel stated, his deep voice turning ice-cold as he looked up at her. "This object looks completely nothing like the description we discussed."

The blonde woman shrugged her shoulders, entirely unbothered by his rising anger.

"About that little issue, you see..."

She abruptly cut her own sentence short.

Her sharp green gaze had finally drifted past Axel’s shoulder, landing directly onto my frozen frame standing by the grass.

A sudden, wicked smile broke across her weathered face.

She lifted her arm, pointing her index finger directly at me in front of the entire compound.

"He is the exact idiot who ruined your expensive ceramic craft in the market square!" she shouted out loudly, her voice echoing against the stone walls.

Axel pulled his brows together into a deep, utterly confused frown.

He turned his head around to look at me, his eyes darting back and forth between my face and the short-haired woman, entirely unable to understand what kind of madness she was talking about.

"It was a complete and total accident," I said quickly, my voice rising in a frantic rush to defend myself before Axel could snap.

"I was not paying attention to where I was walking, and I..."

I stopped speaking mid-sentence.

The words died completely in my throat the exact second I noticed that something was deeply, terribly wrong.

Azura had gone entirely rigid beside me.

She wasn’t moving a single muscle in her body, her silver training sword hanging completely uselessly from her numb fingers as her wide eyes remained fixed onto the blonde woman’s face.

Every single drop of healthy color had completely drained from her skin, leaving her looking entirely pale and ghostly under the afternoon sun.

The expression painted across her features was incredibly strange; it wasn’t a look of burning anger, and it wasn’t a trace of basic confusion.

It was something different. It was a look of profound, devastating sadness.

"Azura?" I asked, my voice dropping into a deeply concerned, worried whisper as I reached a hand out toward her shoulder.

She didn’t give me a single answer. She didn’t even blink.

Axel, who finally noticed her strange state the exact second I called her name, quickly stepped closer to her side, his brow furrowing with genuine alarm.

"Azura, are you okay?" he asked, his voice softening significantly as he tried to catch her frozen gaze. "Is there something wrong?"

Still, she didn’t utter a single syllable.

A single, heavy tear suddenly escaped from the corner of her gray eye, tracking a slow, wet path down her pale cheek.

A second later, another tear followed the first, splashing silently onto the green grass beneath her boots.

She was sobbing right in front of us, silently, without letting out a single gasp or making a single audible sound to express the pain ripping through her chest.

The blunt woman from the market instantly noticed the crying girl, her harsh, sarcastic expression shifting into a look of quiet discomfort.

The thick wall of crassness faded from her green eyes, replaced by a careful, guarded curiosity.

"Are you okay, girl?" the woman asked, her voice dropping its rough edge as she stared at Azura’s trembling form. "Why are you looking at my face like that?"

Azura still could not bring herself to answer the question, her breathing turning incredibly shallow as the tears began to fall faster.

But then, the heavy carriage door swung open for the second time.

Another woman stepped out of the dark carriage, her movements incredibly graceful and slow.

She was dressed in a flowing, pristine white gown that brushed against the dirt path, and a thick mane of long, beautiful blonde hair cascaded all the way down past her waist.

She was breathtakingly beautiful, possessing a soft, delicate aura that made her seem like a creature made entirely of light.

She was everything the first, crass woman was not.

And as she lifted her head, my breath caught in my throat.

She looked exactly like her. They possessed the same facial structure, the same sharp jawline, and the same nose.

They were identical twins, yet they felt like opposites in every single way.

The beautiful woman dressed in white walked slowly toward our small group, her piercing green eyes pinned onto Azura’s face.

She didn’t cast a single glance toward me, and she completely ignored Axel’s presence as she halted her steps on the grass.

"What exactly did you just call her?" she asked, turning her head just a fraction of an inch toward Axel, though her intense gaze never actually left Azura’s crying face.

Axel blinked his eyes in total confusion, caught off guard by the strange question.

"I asked you a direct question, Mr," the woman in white repeated, her soft voice turning significantly sharper, a dangerous edge cutting through the smooth tone. "What did you just call her?"

The blunt, short-haired woman quickly walked over to her sister’s side.

She raised her hand and hit her twin’s arm with a quick, firm slap; it wasn’t hard enough to bring physical pain, but it was more than enough to violently jar her attention away from the girl.

"Do not tell me you are actually stupid enough to believe that every single person in these lands with that specific name is actually her," the blunt woman muttered in a low, tight whisper, her green eyes flashing with a sudden, deep-seated bitterness. "You know the truth, sister. Nobody survived that horrific night. No one."

The beautiful woman in white turned her head slowly to look at her twin, her perfect brows coming together into a tight, deeply pained line.

It was entirely obvious that she did not appreciate the harsh words she had just heard.

Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, she turned her face back around to look at Azura.

Azura’s tears were falling freely now, streaming down her pale cheeks in an uncontrollable, silent river of pure grief.

She stood frozen in the center of the yard, her chest trembling violently with the force of her unspoken emotion, but she still had not spoken a single word since the carriage had arrived.

I didn’t possess a single clue as to what kind of hidden history was unfolding right in front of my face, but as I watched Azura’s silent sobbing break her completely apart, a deep ache formed in my own chest, and I desperately wanted whatever this was to stop right now.