The rhythmic clatter of wheels against the road reclaimed the silence inside the cabin. Outside, the night was a vast, ink-washed canvas, swallowing up the ragged edges of the pine forest as the carriage pushed deeper toward the edge of the map.
"Thank you," Haviel said. The words were small. Quieter than they probably should have been, muffled slightly by the high collar of his traveling tunic. "For... what you said. I appreciate it."
Jevon didn’t offer a grand royal gesture in return. He merely inclined his chin, a sharp, minimal nod that conceded the receipt of the words without actually accepting the premise behind them.
Internally, the demon monarch regarded the gratitude with mild confusion. Unnecessary, even. A king did not receive accolades for maintaining his own estate, and right now, by every law written in blood and parchment, Haviel fell under his protection. There was nothing remarkable about fulfilling a responsibility.
As the silence stretched back out, thick and heavy with the scent of old leather and extinguished hearth-smoke from their dinner stop, Jevon kept his gaze fixed on the passenger opposite him. Haviel had gone quiet. The frantic, breathless stammering from earlier had retreated, replaced by a sullen, far-away stare directed somewhere near the floor.
He wasn’t talking about the shadow puppets anymore. He didn’t need to. Jevon could practically see the frantic calculations spinning behind those pale eyes, the sharp, lingering static of a creature that had suddenly realized it was being hunted. The human’s shoulders had hitched higher, the muscles in his neck locking up like rusted gears the moment the word target had cleared his lips.
It was precisely the kind of psychological deterioration Jevon had intended to avoid by ordering Sevrin and Jaeric to hold their tongues at breakfast. Panic was a noisy, inefficient emotion. It disrupted everything.
His thoughts drifted backward, slipping easily out of the moving cabin and into the cold, damp darkness of the inn courtyard from the previous night.
He recalled Sevrin’s post-incident briefing, delivered in skin-crawling whispers behind the door. The shadow puppets had been dismantled, yes. Chopped into harmless, greasy soot by the soldiers’ swords. But the information they had hoped to obtain was lost.
The hidden caster, the puppet master holding the invisible arcane threads from some distant ridge, had severed the link the exact second Sevrin’s attack hit them. The magical feedback had dissolved before Sevrin could trace it back to its source.
Jevon’s jaw tightened slightly at the memory, a faint, rhythmic pulse working in his cheek. He despised loose ends. An unpunished transgression was simply an invitation for the next one.
But there was nothing to be gained from brooding over a missed kill while in transit. The ambush had failed. The perimeter had held, and the human sitting across from him was currently intact, with all his fingers and toes accounted for. That was the primary objective achieved.
Once they were safely within the Demon Realm, he would have Jaeric investigate the matter thoroughly.
The hours bled into each other, marked only by the shifting pitch of the wind outside. The attackers had not appeared by chance. Someone had known which road they would take and when they would be on it. Information had changed hands somewhere along the way. The source of that breach would be uncovered soon enough. For now, his attention remained on the journey ahead.
The landscape through the glass was losing whatever sparse hospitality it had possessed during the afternoon. The rolling hills gradually gave way to a bleak, windswept wilderness, and the road ahead wound through an increasingly barren landscape. Fewer stone walls. No lights from distant huts. Signs of human presence became increasingly rare as the wilderness closed in around the road.
Across the cabin, Haviel’s head gave a sudden, violent dip.
He snapped backward instantly, his spine slamming against the cushions as his eyes bugged out, wide and terrified, staring around the dark carriage like he’d just been caught sleeping on the clock. He cleared his throat loudly, checked to see if Jevon was watching, and proceeded to sit up so aggressively straight his posture looked borderline painful.
Three minutes passed.
Then, his eyelids began to sag again, heavy as wet wool. A massive yawn bubbled up his throat. Haviel desperately tried to swallow it down, clamping his jaw shut until his nose crinkled, but a small, pathetic squeak escaped anyway. He quickly rubbed his face with both hands, trying to pass the motion off as general alertness.
"If you are going to lose consciousness," Jevon said, his low voice cutting through the steady rattle of the carriage, "you should do so horizontally."
"I’m not losing anything," Haviel shot back, his voice a fraction too loud, carrying that raspy, dry edge of a man who was fighting a losing battle against his own biology. "I am perfectly awake. My eyes were just... adjusting to the ambient light. It’s a focal exercise. It prevents strain. You should try it."
To emphasize his total clarity, he gave a firm nod, which unfortunately carried his head halfway down toward his chest before his muscles caught the error and yanked him upright again.
Jevon let out a breath so faint it was barely noticeable. "The road ahead is completely empty. The territory ahead is entirely wild. If you intend to rest, I’m afraid the cabin is your only available accommodation."
Haviel waved a loose, dismissive hand through the air, his fingers limp with fatigue. "Please. I’ve slept in vehicles before. Last night before... well, never mind. The point is, the suspension on this thing is surprisingly decent today. I’ll survive. I can just lean against the window frame."
Jevon studied the human’s glassy, unfocused eyes for five long seconds. Arguing with Haviel when he was in this specific, stubborn state of panic-driven exhaustion was an inefficient use of oxygen.
Without a word, Jevon uncrossed his legs. He shifted his massive frame forward, his boots making a heavy, definitive thud on the floor as he moved across the narrow gap between the seats, settling himself directly down on the seat right next to Haviel.
Haviel’s eyes snapped fully open because of that, his entire body going rigid as his head whirled around. He looked at the massive shoulder now hovering barely three inches from his own arm with absolute suspicion.
"What... what are you doing?"