The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

of his broad tent and into the open air, walking through the center of the camp. All around him, Shades stopped in their tracks and saluted, hands over their fists. He nodded to each, giving them a stern smile that warmed their hearts.

But as he neared the center of the camp, it seemed as if a thought struck him. His steps faltered, slowed, and then stopped. Though no one else had heard anything, Rogan tilted his head back to look into the sky, and the faint smile on his lips fell away.

A raven swooped out of the grey clouds to land on the dirt before him. Some Shades looked on curiously, and then their eyes bugged with surprise as Kaita emerged from the bird’s form. But Rogan looked as if he had expected her.

“Kaita,” he said. Warm. Welcoming. Grief-stricken.

“Brother,” said Kaita through a raspy throat.

She had been ragged five days ago when she received Rogan’s summons. She looked worse now. Her clothes were new, but she was dirty and wasted, and gaunt beyond what Rogan had ever seen of her. Still she tried to stand tall, her head up and her shoulders back. But it was a poor showing, and her limbs shook with the effort of attempting it.

Rogan saw it in her eyes, and he motioned her back towards his tent. Kaita followed him without a word. They passed through the camp quickly, and it was all Kaita could do to ignore the stares of the other Shades. Rogan pulled back the flap of his tent, letting Kaita step through first.

He had barely followed her in before Kaita broke. Her face twisted with pain as tears etched burning lines down her face. She paced to the back of the tent and whirled, walking back up to Rogan and glaring up into his face.

“Weeks,” she said, managing to keep her voice down so that those outside could not hear her fury. “Weeks I have been searching for you. I went to every encampment I knew of, every stronghold where our siblings have gathered in strength. No one knew where you were, and that is not like you. No one knew how to send you a message, and that is not like you. You left me alone. Alone in the wilderness, with two people hungry for my death, and after you promised—”

Her voice broke, and she turned from him. Rogan laid a hand on her shoulder from behind, but she jerked away.

“Do not touch me.”

“You were never alone,” said Rogan softly. “I have heard many reports of your long journey. In Lan Shui, and then Opara, and then Kahuanga, you were with our siblings always.”

“But I had no one I cared about,” snapped Kaita. “Not after Dellek died in Lan Shui. I did not have Tagata, or you, or Father.”

Rogan’s face grew stony. Kaita knew he wished to admonish her, to tell her that she should care about all the Shades as if they were family. But he held the words back. Mayhap he knew that was not what she needed to hear.

“We made a plan together, Kaita,” he said. “And we agreed upon it in Northwood, before you set out on your long road.”

“That plan never satisfied me, and you know it.”

“And do you think I was happy with it? Do you think I enjoyed making the promises I did? I would rather have had you by my side all this long while. But Mag and Albern were more important to you, and I knew that, and so I let you go your own way. That is the nature of compromise, Kaita, of being part of a family. You and I both thought you had a hope in Northwood, and then in Kahuanga.”

Kaita’s chin trembled as she looked up at him. Yes, she had thought she had a hope. Better than a hope. How could she have foreseen that Mag would be able to defeat her lion form? How could she have predicted that Mag would find a way to survive even the trolls? They were monsters of campfire legend.

But her plans had failed her, just as her strength had failed her every time she and Mag came to blows. She could not win, no matter what she did. Dark below, she could not even find a way to kill me, and I was no warrior of legend. Even my sister Ditra had survived Kaita’s attempts to kill her.

The seed of doubt had already rooted in Kaita’s mind. Now, for the first time, it ensnared her own idea of herself, becoming a corruption that threatened to destroy the last shreds of her conviction.

Yet Kaita was not the sort of person to accept responsibility when she could instead cast blame. And so her expression went from lost to furious once more, and again she stepped towards Rogan.

“You never gave me the chance I wanted,” she hissed. “I told you from the beginning what I need, what I knew I would require in the end. Now I have spent months in useless flight, and you have lost scores of your precious siblings. They have exposed our plans in two kingdoms, all because you would not listen to me until it was too late. That is why I demanded your promise. Because I knew all along what it would come to in the end, even if you were too foolish to see it.”

She stopped suddenly, fearing she had gone too far. But no anger came into Rogan’s eyes, only a more profound sadness. And Kaita wondered if he knew all the unspoken thoughts that had flitted through her head before she finally lashed out.

“I wanted to give you a chance to change—to learn why you must change,” he said quietly. “Since before we met, you have tried to do everything alone. You wish to rely only on yourself, to have so much power that no one can challenge you. Once, you were loyal to a family, and they betrayed you. You have feared