Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The Great Hall
Shadows of What’s Next
The Great Hall of Caerith always seemed too large, too echoing, too cold but never more so than that morning.
The long tables were laid with trenchers of warm bread, soft cheese, roasted roots, and bowls of oat porridge threaded with honey. Servants moved silently behind them, refilling cups and adjusting platters, but the hall itself felt hollow, as if the stones were holding their breath.
Elara, Feena, and Adira sat close together midway down the table before the hearth, their meal half-eaten. The king had not yet appeared.
Elara watched Adira nibble at a small piece of bread, her movements stiff with unease. The lass kept glancing toward the dais where the king’s high-backed chair loomed empty and overbearing.
Feena placed her hand over Adira’s, offering the gentle touch that always calmed her. “Easy now, lass,” she murmured, patting her chest, then touching Adira’s. “Safe. Together.”
Adira’s tense shoulders softened slightly, but fear still clung to her like a second skin. Her wide green eyes moved between Feena and Elara, searching for understanding.
“No harm will come to you this morn,” Elara offered with a reassuring smile, knowing the lass could not hear the words yet hoping she might feel the calm behind them.
“She’s beginning to understand,” Feena whispered, glancing toward the king’s empty chair. “She knows we will stay here… and I believe she knows, and fears, she will serve the king.”
Elara’s stomach tightened. “How? She cannot hear what’s been said.”
Feena turned weary eyes on her. “It took me time to learn how she senses what others miss. Touch, expressions, the weight of a room, the way men stand, the way fear fills the air. She feels it all. And I cannot imagine the joy it must bring her at times and other times how it must terrorize her.”
Adira lifted her head, watching their faces with anxious attention, as though piecing together a puzzle she wished to understand.
Feena smoothed a hand over the lass’s braid. “She will adjust in time.”
It was easy to hear that Feena sounded more hopeful than certain and before Elara could comment, a subtle shift rippled through the hall. Adira must have felt it too, since her eyes widened and she turned toward the door.
Elara heard it then, bootsteps, firm and measured.
The door swung open and Dar strode into the Great Hall with the effortless command of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
The morning light cut across his broad shoulders and the dark leather he still wore, marking him unmistakably as a Hunter.
Yet his eyes, those storm-gray eyes, softened the moment they found hers.
He crossed the space with powerful strides, the kind that drew more than a few curious glances from those seated nearby. Even Adira watched him warily.
Elara rose when he reached her, heat fluttering unexpectedly through her chest.
“You came sooner than I thought,” she said.
He cast a quick glance at her plate, only half the food eaten. “You haven’t finished your meal.”
“I have eaten enough to satisfy me,” she assured him. “But you need to eat.”
“I have,” he said abruptly. “We leave shortly.”
Sooner than he had said and Elara saw how anxious he was to do so. Did he fear staying longer than needed? Did he worry the king would make more demands on them? Or was his worry for her, since his gaze kept sweeping protectively over her?
She nodded, more than willing to take their leave as soon as possible, but first there was something she needed to see to.
“I must find Maelis before we leave. I want to make sure she’s all right… and that she’s being sent home to Birkfell.”
“The Hunters are gathering the healers now. The first group will leave within the hour. I’ll take you to her, but you cannot linger.”
Relief brought a soft smile to Elara’s face. “I won’t. I just want to make sure she is well and soon to go home.”
He reached for her hand, the gesture instinctive, protective. “Come. If she hasn’t already been taken to the carts, she will be soon.”
As his fingers closed around hers, warm and steady, Adira watched them, a faint, soft smile spreading across her face, and Feena offered Elara a reassuring nod.
Elara returned it, then let Dar lead her from the Great Hall, her pulse quickening at both the urgency of their errand… and the man at her side.
The courtyard behind the castle hummed with movement, healers gathering in groups, carts waiting, horses stomping restlessly, and the king’s warriors barking commands.
Dar led Elara through the bustle, his hand remaining locked with hers. When they reached a wagon draped with wool blankets, he halted.
A young Hunter hurried toward him. “Commander Dar,” he called, breathless, “the king summons you.”
Dar’s jaw tightened in annoyance as he turned to Elara, his voice firm. “Wait here. Here, Elara. Do not wander. Do not go anywhere without me. I will have your word on it.”
“You have my word,” she said. “I will be here looking for Maelis.”
His gaze lingered on her for a heartbeat longer, as if unsure whether he should leave her, then he turned to the young Hunter. “Make haste and take me to the king.”
He strode off, his gait swift and determined.
Elara turned her attention to the line of carts and healers preparing for departure, her eyes darting over every weary face.
Then she saw her, leaning against the side of a wool-covered cart as though bracing her tired limbs, her familiar shawl slipping from one shoulder, her hair pulled back in a loose knot.
“Maelis,” Elara called out, her voice catching painfully in her throat as she rushed forward only to bump into one of the king’s warriors.
“Watch where you go,” he snapped, his eyes shifting suspiciously over her.
Unease rippled through her and she kept her head lowered as she nodded and hurried around him to call out once again, “Maelis.”
The older healer lifted her head. Her aged-eyes widened, filling with disbelief first, then a tremble of emotion so raw it nearly undid Elara. Maelis pushed away from the cart with more speed than her frail frame should allow and hurried toward her.
“Elara… by the gods, Elara,” she whispered, pulling her tightly into her arms.
Elara clung to her, burying her face against the shoulder that had often offered her comfort when she missed her clan. She felt the shudder that ran through Maelis’s thin body, the kind of tremble that came after too much fear held inside for too long was released.
“I thought you dead,” Maelis murmured, her voice cracking. “I prayed every night I was wrong.”
“I feared the same for you,” Elara whispered back.
They stood like that for several long moments, neither willing to let go, until the sound of soft sobs and murmured relief surrounded them.
A handful of healers had gathered, forming a small circle of warmth and familiarity around the two of them.
Faces Elara remembered from gatherings in Leighfeld, women who had eagerly wanted to learn all they could about new herbs from her and how they blended, forming new combinations that the herb-scribes had discovered.
The women looked upon her with expressions of pure, unguarded relief.
“Elara…” one breathed.
“Thank the fates…” said another.
“She lives,” whispered a third, hand pressed to her chest.
When Maelis finally drew back, she looked Elara over with a healer’s practiced eye. “Your eyes tell me you carry a heavy burden. What happened? What did they do to you?”
Elara shook her head gently. “It’s a long tale, and one best told when you’re safely home. But I survived, and… a Hunter helped me.”
Maelis blinked. “A Hunter helped you?”
Elara offered a small smile. “Aye. The world has taken a strange turn.”
A dry chuckle slipped from Maelis. “Strange indeed.” Her gaze softened. “But you look well enough. And me, well, don’t study me too closely. Caerith serves food with as much flavor as wet bark. I swear their cooks boil everything until misery sets in.”
A ripple of laughter spread through the healers, warm and much needed.
Maelis leaned closer, dropping her voice. “Word spreads, you know. That a healer is the reason we are being sent home. That someone does the king a favor.” Her eyes narrowed with gentle accusation. “Tell me, lass… was it you?”
Elara lowered her voice. “It was fate,” she said, and then, more honestly, “Aye… I had a part in it.”
Maelis’s lined face softened further, pride threading through her relief, and she pulled Elara into a brief, fierce hug.
“You saved more than you know,” she whispered.
As the older woman held her, a vision tore through Elara with sudden force—sunlight spilling across Birkfell’s cottages, Maelis stepping down from this very cart into the arms of weeping friends, whispers of thanks carried on the wind. Safe. Protected. Home.
“Elara?” Maelis asked when she felt her tense.
Elara steadied herself. “You will reach Birkfell safely. I saw it.”
Before Maelis could speak, a harsh male voice cut sharply through the gathering warmth.
“What was that?”
A king’s warrior strode toward them, tall and broad-shouldered, his blond hair unkempt, his boots striking hard against the packed earth. Suspicion flared in his eyes as he looked from Maelis to Elara, then fixed entirely on Elara with growing malice.
It was the warrior she had bumped into.
“You saw it?” he repeated. “What did you see? You did no more than hug the old hag.” His eyes turned wide. “A vision? You had a vision?”
Maelis went to step in front of Elara, but she placed her arm in front of her, preventing the older woman from moving.
The warrior sniffed sharply, his lip curling as though he had scented rot. “I knew something was amiss with her. She smells of the forbidden land. I should have trusted my instincts.”
Elara recoiled at the accusation, and gasps rippled through the healers.