Chapter 48: Trouble In Paradise Before The Paradise Begins

Kren stood in a cave alongside Pina, Jomin, their father, two Storm Eagle elders, and the rest of his own party. Ahead of them loomed a pair of massive silver doors.

The village chief looked anything but pleased about this particular gathering, especially given how thoroughly Kren had just torn apart whatever illusions the chief had been nursing about retaining real power. A bitter pill to swallow, no doubt — but this was the price the Storm Eagles would have to pay if they wanted salvation from decades of slow, grinding decline toward extinction.

"This is the last cache left behind by our final true sovereign. The others were destroyed deliberately, to keep them out of the Zar Draconic Empire’s hands. Only a true member of the Storm Eagle bloodline can open it — and more precisely, only someone carrying both real cultivation and that bloodline together." One of the elders spoke up, offering Kren a perfunctory bow as he explained.

"And what exactly is inside?" Aki cut in, taking his role as captain of the king’s guard seriously as always. It was Jomin who answered — and despite their best efforts to hide it, both Pina and her father let a sour frown cross their faces the instant he spoke.

"No one knows for certain. We know it’s a weapons cache, but also a vault holding resources and knowledge invaluable to the Storm Eagles and our entire way of life." Pina grunted audibly at her brother’s casual use of "our," her father shooting her a sharp look while the two elders both turned their faces aside, as if that alone might dissolve the tension thickening in the air.

If Kren was being completely honest with himself, he had no real interest in marrying Pina. Beautiful, certainly — but her attitude left something seriously to be desired. Whatever redeeming qualities she carried were buried under a mountain of jealousy and resentment toward her own brother, and that alone was enough to sour the whole arrangement for him. He turned to Aki and asked, without bothering to dress it up at all.

"So I actually have to marry this woman? She’s insufferable. And not in the fun way." Pina’s eyes narrowed sharply as she closed the distance between them.

"I don’t particularly want to marry you either, you bastard! But you’re not getting through that vault without me, and you certainly won’t be leading MYPEOPLE without my say-so. So what’s it going to be? Believe me, crawling into your cursed bed is the last thing on my wish list right now. But you made a promise, you sniveling child, so either you honor your word, or you can turn around and crawl back to wherever you came from!"

Kren blinked several times, genuinely caught off guard by the force of her outburst. Fima looked one wrong word away from removing Pina’s head entirely, while her father wore an expression caught somewhere between vindication and outright terror. But Kren wasn’t about to back down — this woman grated against every nerve he had. Still, she wasn’t wrong. Jomin would never be capable of opening that vault, bloodline or not. And as much as some part of Kren would have preferred extending the bond to the wolf-kin instead, given his objectively superior bloodline, what he and his people actually needed sat locked behind doors that answered only to Pina or her father’s absent cultivation and present bloodline. Those doors weren’t opening without the bond being offered, one way or another.

"I could simply extend the bond without marriage attached to it. You’d serve as my subordinate, my vassal — free to lead your people however you see fit. But you would still answer to me."

"No!" Pina’s father blurted out suddenly, startling the entire group — only for Pina to silence him with a single raised hand.

"I’ve come too far to be reduced to a vassal’s position. I don’t like you, Kren N’kora Blackmane. Everything about you grates on me. But my people’s future — my own future — now rests entirely in your hands, and you want to offer me what? A seat on the sidelines? No. You will grant me the bond, and with it, the influence needed to rule not only the Storm Mountains, but every inch of N’kora territory as its queen. If you want my life resting in the palm of your hand, you will hand me something of equal weight in return. So this marriage happens, whatever I think of the idea personally. You give me power, I give you weapons and innovations this continent hasn’t seen in an age. Keep as many other wives as you like — I don’t particularly care. But my authority, my people’s place at your side, will be absolute. We are done scraping for scraps of approval just to survive. Those are my terms."

Kren blinked again, turning to Aki, who only shrugged back at him, no help whatsoever. Ruhu wasn’t present — still down in the village, elbow-deep in understanding their economy and figuring out exactly how to weave Storm Eagle resources properly into the broader N’kora kingdom. Neither Fima nor Toa offered any guidance either, both of them apparently just as stumped by Pina’s declaration as he was.

In some strange way, Kren understood exactly where she was coming from. She wasn’t so different from him underneath it all — just considerably worse at hiding her contempt, and openly cruel toward her own brother in a way that still didn’t sit right with him. Still, this was a weighty decision to make, especially given that his system had already made clear, in its own roundabout way, that Elyvara herself sat somewhere on his horizon eventually. And something told him that particular dragoness would take serious issue with playing second fiddle to anyone, let alone another woman entirely.

"Let’s set the marriage itself aside, for now. I’ll marry you eventually — but for the moment, let’s settle on a formal betrothal instead. It buys both our people time to adjust to the idea of us being joined, and gives us an honest chance to actually build something resembling a relationship, rather than resenting each other the way I suspect we’re both currently headed toward."

Pina glared at him, though truthfully, it was the best compromise Kren could pull together on short notice, and it served them both reasonably well. She was attractive, certainly — he wouldn’t pretend otherwise, and some part of him genuinely wouldn’t mind seeing her beneath him eventually. Fierce, too, with a real sense of responsibility toward her people, the kind of trait that made for a genuinely good leader. But she was also petty, and visibly jealous in ways that didn’t sit comfortably with him. Perhaps there was more beneath the surface than he could see from the outside looking in.

He liked Jomin, for what it was worth, and Kren had always been fiercely loyal to the people he cared about — openly hostile toward anyone who crossed that line. With Pina, though, he found himself standing in genuinely unfamiliar territory.

"Fine. But this betrothal cannot be called off once it’s made. Agree to that right now, before we go any further. If my people are tying ourselves to you, then you are tying yourself to me in return. For life."

Kren grimaced. The way Pina framed it, it felt disturbingly close to signing himself into indentured servitude. He could have forced the issue, sure — but he had neither the soldiers nor the stomach for that kind of ruthlessness. The last thing he wanted was to start mirroring the same empire that had driven both the N’korans and the Storm Eagles into the desperate states they currently found themselves in.

"Fine, Pina. You have my word." Kren said, conceding the point to keep things moving forward. Her father, at least, looked visibly relieved at how the conversation had resolved.

"Very well, then." Pina said, something settling in her expression. "When do you intend to apply the bond?"

Kren turned his attention back to the massive doors ahead of them, and without so much as glancing her way, answered simply.

"Right now."