Chapter 56: The Road to Cenigue

Azura’s POV

The carriage had barely been moving for some minutes when it stopped.

Not the slow, gradual kind of stop that meant we’d reached somewhere. This was sudden. Abrupt. The whole frame shuddered, the horses pulling up short, and the momentum threw me forward slightly on the bench.

I grabbed the edge of my seat, heart jumping.

"What now?" Liona muttered, steadying herself.

I didn’t answer. I reached over and untied the leather flap on the window beside me, pulling it back, and stuck my head out.

The scene ahead made me frown.

Everyone had stopped. The entire group, warriors, horses, all of it stood completely still on the road, and every single person was staring at the same thing. I leaned further out, craning my neck to see past the bulk of the horses in front of us.

A tree. Huge. Old. Lying right across the road as if someone put it there on purpose. The trunk was thicker than two men standing shoulder to shoulder, the bark dark and rough, branches reaching out on both sides like they were trying to block the whole path.

Rhydor was already off his horse, standing near the base of the trunk. Torin was beside him. Silas and Axel too, the four of them clustered together, talking in voices too low for me to catch from this distance.

I stared at them for a second.

Then I pulled my head back in and reached for the door handle.

"Azura." Liona’s voice was immediate, sharp. "Don’t. The Alpha will lose his mind."

I pushed the door open. "Like I care."

"Azura..."

I hopped down before she could finish the sentence, my boots hitting the dirt road. The morning air was cool and sharp, smelling of pine and damp earth. I straightened up and walked toward the group, ignoring the few warriors who glanced my way as I passed.

Liona, naturally, followed me. I heard her footsteps behind me, quick and reluctant, the footsteps of someone who had decided that if things went wrong, she at least wanted to be close enough to witness it.

As I got closer, Torin’s voice became clear first.

"...for a few seconds," he was saying, his voice low, no trace of his usual joking around. "Clear enough to follow, and then just nothing. Like someone snuffed it out on purpose."

"A scent doesn’t just disappear," Silas said, frowning.

"This one did."

I stepped into the group, and Rhydor’s eyes found me before I’d even opened my mouth. Of course they did. They always did.

"Get back in the carriage," he said.

"What happened?" I asked, looking at the tree.

"Azura." His voice dropped, taking on that particular tone, the one that said he was two seconds from losing patience. "I said get back..."

"Oh, please." I turned to look at him fully, crossing my arms. "Stop acting like a mother hen. I’m right here, not in the way, and I want to know what’s going on."

Silas made a weird noise next to him. Short. Stuck in his throat. I looked over, his lips were pressed so tight they’d gone pale, his eyes fixed on the ground like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

He was fighting a smile and losing.

Rhydor’s jaw tightened. He said nothing else, which I took as permission.

Axel stepped forward, his expression practical and direct, the way it always was when things got serious. "Someone knows we’re making a move," he said, glancing at the fallen tree. "And whoever it is wanted to slow us down. Or stop us entirely."

I looked at the base of the trunk. Even from here, I could see what Axel meant, the wood at the bottom wasn’t jagged and splintered the way it would be if the tree had fallen naturally. It was clean. Too clean. Cut with something sharp and deliberate.

A cold feeling settled in my stomach.

"Who?" I asked.

Nobody answered. But the silence that followed was heavy with things nobody wanted to say out loud.

Rhydor looked at the tree for one more long moment, his expression unreadable, and then turned and gave Axel a single sharp nod.

Axel turned to the warriors immediately. "You heard the Alpha. Move it."

A dozen men moved at once, organized and efficient, converging on the fallen trunk with ropes and combined strength. It took effort, real effort, but they worked in sync, pulling and heaving until the massive tree dragged off the road inch by inch, clearing the path.

Rhydor was already walking back to his horse before it was fully moved.

****

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of wheels and hooves and the occasional bump that jolted us both off the bench padding.

Somewhere between the cleared road and the slow rhythm of the journey settling back into itself, exhaustion won. I don’t even remember deciding to sleep. One moment I was watching the trees through the window, thinking about the cut trunk. And then the next moment, there was nothing.

I woke up to Liona’s voice, dry and long-suffering.

"You’re finally awake. I’ve been waiting to stretch my legs for the last hour because your head has been on my thighs and I didn’t want to move it."

I blinked, lifting my head. My neck ached. My mouth tasted like sleep. Outside the window, the light had shifted, warmer, fuller, the kind of afternoon gold that meant hours had passed without my permission.

I rubbed my eyes. "Sorry."

"Mm." She didn’t sound very forgiving. "My left leg is completely numb."

"Where are we?" I asked, leaning toward the window.

The world outside had changed. The dense, oppressive tree line of the forest road had opened up, giving way to something wider, busier, louder. Wooden buildings lined the road, taller and more solid than the crumbling structures of the last village, with wide windows and painted signs hanging above their doors. People moved through the streets in actual crowds, merchants calling out, children running, horses tied in rows outside large buildings. Noise and color and life.

It looked nothing like the hollow, exhausted settlement we’d passed through before. This place had a pulse.

"The human village," Liona said, already pressing her face to her own window with thinly veiled curiosity.

"Which one?"

"Cenigue." She said it like it should mean something, and when I didn’t respond, she turned to look at me. "It’s the biggest one. The one where their king stays."

"Oh," I said.

The carriage rolled to a stop, and the door swung open a moment later, letting in the full noise of the village and a rush of air that smelled like roasting meat and sawdust.

We climbed down into controlled chaos.

The warriors had already spread out, moving with the comfortable ease of people who knew how to occupy a new place quickly. A group of them had found their way to what looked like a tavern, large, loud, its doors thrown open, voices spilling out onto the street. I could see them through the entrance, settled around heavy wooden tables with drinks in hand, the tension of the road already loosening from their shoulders.

Torin had gathered a little crowd near the tavern door, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and that smile on his face, the one that meant he’d already found people to charm and had no plans to stop. Two women were laughing at something he’d said, and he looked like he was exactly where he belonged.

Axel stood nearby, a cup in his hand, staring at absolutely nothing with the expression of someone waiting for their own funeral.

I looked around for Rhydor and Silas. Neither of them was anywhere I could see.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

Liona tilted her head toward the far end of the street, where a larger, more structured building stood apart from the rest, solid stone, guards at the entrance, the kind of place that announced its own importance without trying. "I think they went to see the king."

I wanted to ask why. What business Rhydor had with a human king on the road to a cursed forest. But something in the set of Liona’s expressions told me she didn’t know either, so I kept the question to myself and followed her toward the warriors instead.

We sat with them. Drank water while they drank whatever they were drinking. Listened to stories that got louder and more embellished as the hour stretched on. It was almost normal. Almost easy. The kind of afternoon that made you forget, briefly, why you were here in the first place.

Then Rhydor and Silas reappeared.

Rhydor went directly to Torin, pulling him aside with a few quiet words that ended Torin’s flirtation abruptly. Torin’s easy smile faded into something more serious as he listened, nodding once.

Silas came to us.

He stopped in front of the group, scanning faces, and then announced with the particular calm of a man delivering both good news and bad news in the same breath: "Alright. We’re spending the night here."

The warriors reacted with quiet satisfaction, a few nods, and someone exhaling slowly with relief.

Silas let it settle for exactly two seconds. Then: "It’ll be the last time any of us sleep in a proper bed for a while." He looked around the group, his expression perfectly, almost painfully serious. "So enjoy it while it lasts."

Nobody laughed. But the silence that followed had a very specific quality, the kind that came from a room full of people choosing not to think too hard about what ’while it lasts’ actually meant.

I stood up and stepped toward him before he could move away. "What did you discuss with the king?"

Silas glanced at me, reaching up to scratch the back of his head in that way he did when he was deciding how much to say. "Permission to spend the night," he said simply. "Standard courtesy when you’re passing through someone else’s territory." He paused. "And tomorrow, we move."

He said it like it was nothing. Like ’tomorrow we move’ wasn’t the beginning of something none of us might come back from. Then he nodded toward the building behind us. "Your rooms are ready. Get some rest."

****

The inn, a caravanserai, solid and ancient, built for travelers and their animals alike, was warm inside, smelling of woodsmoke and old stone. Our room was small but clean. Two narrow beds, a low table, a single candle already burning on the windowsill. The window looked out over the village street, still busy even as evening crept in.

Not much. But after the carriage, it felt like luxury.

Liona sat on the edge of her bed and said nothing. Just sat there, staring at the middle distance, her hands folded in her lap.

The silence stretched.

I watched her for a moment, reading it easily. "Let me guess," I said, pulling off my boots. "You’re annoyed because your crush is a flirt."

She didn’t answer.

"That’s why he’s not my type," I added.

She turned to look at me then, something shifting in her expression. "So who is your type?"

I thought about it, which was probably my first mistake. "He has to be handsome," I said finally.

Liona snorted. "Obviously. Go on."

"Tall."

"Also obvious."

"And he has to have eyes for one girl." I stared at the ceiling. "Even when the world is against it. He should be possessive, not in a bad way, just... like, I see you and nobody else possessive. And caring. Quietly caring. The kind that doesn’t make a big show of it but you just know."

The room went quiet.

I realized, a beat too late, that I’d stopped talking and started staring at the wall. The candle flame was doing something interesting, flickering even though there was no wind.

Then Liona said, very carefully: "You know you just described Rhydor without saying his name."

I turned to her so fast my neck cracked. "No."

"Tall..."

"No."

"Handsome..."

"Liona..."

"Extremely, actually. Objectively."

"It’s not him," I said firmly, shaking my head. "It’s not that jerk."

She tilted her head, something complicated moving through her eyes. "He is possessive, Azura. You’ve seen it. The way he looked at Torin this morning..."

"That’s different," I said quickly.

"Is it?"

"Yes. He was just..." I trailed off, not sure what I was even trying to say.

Liona’s voice stayed quiet, careful. "You just described someone who only has eyes for one girl. Who’s possessive and quietly caring. That’s exactly what you said you wanted."

I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it.

The words sat there between us, uncomfortable and heavy.

Because she was right. That was exactly what I had described. And the person who fit that description, the only person who had ever looked at anyone that way in my entire life, was not looking at me.

"With the girl he loves," I said finally, the words sharper than I intended. "He’s possessive and caring and everything else with Isadora. That’s who those things are for. Not me."

The name landed between us like a stone dropped in still water. Isadora. Even saying it felt like pressing on a bruise.

I remembered the forehead kiss this morning. How small and natural it looked. How he hadn’t even glanced back at her when he walked away, like she was so certain, so his, that goodbyes weren’t even necessary.

I looked down at my hands.

The mattress dipped beside me, and then Liona’s arm came around my shoulders, warm and solid. She pulled gently, and I let her, resting my head against her shoulder the way I had in the carriage, except this time I was awake, and the weight of it was different. Heavier.

"I believe it’ll be fine," she said quietly. Not brightly, not with false cheer. Just simply, like she meant it and didn’t need to dress it up.

I closed my eyes.

Outside, the village was still moving, still breathing, still alive with the sounds of people who didn’t know what was coming down the road behind us. Somewhere in the caravanserai, a door closed softly. Somewhere further, someone laughed.

I stayed very still and let Liona’s words sit in the room.

I believe it’ll be fine.

I wanted to believe it too.

I was still deciding whether I could.