Chapter 23
Elara woke to the clatter of wood against plaster and the faint rattle of glass in its frame.
For a moment, she lay still, disoriented—her body stiff from unfamiliar bedding and too many nights of poor sleep.
Then the sound came again: a low, guttural rumble that rose, wavered, and gave out with alarming enthusiasm.
Aoife lay beside her, limbs gracefully sprawled, the picture of serenity—if one could ignore the sounds coming from her.
The bed quivered as she released another low, bestial rumble.
Elara stared up at the ceiling beams and exhaled through her nose.
She’d assumed he was exaggerating—he usually was where Aoife was concerned—but after several nights in the same bed, she had to admit he’d, if anything, understated the matter.
Even the flower’s nectar—still threading its warmth through her veins, coaxing her toward the soft pull of sleep—hadn’t spared her. She woke again and again through the night, each time abruptly, her mind rising before her body could catch up.
Sometimes it was Aoife’s snoring that broke through—an improbable sound, heroic in its persistence.
Other times it was the dreams: disjointed, slippery things that dissolved the instant she reached for them.
No faces she knew, no voices she could name.
Only flashes of motion, the cry of wind, the sense of being pulled through a world she couldn’t see.
It unsettled her more than she cared to admit. What if that place between places had never been real? What if it was only a mirage—hallucination born of grief, exhaustion, and drugged hope?
The thought stung.
Once, though, she was almost certain she had seen Ivan. He’d been standing somewhere beyond the rushing dark, looking straight at her, as if he knew she was there. But the moment dissolved before she could reach him, and the wind took her again.
Aoife shifted onto her back, and Elara turned slightly, watching her in the half-light. Golden hair spilled across the linen in a wild tangle, one arm thrown wide as though even sleep were something to conquer.
A brief, fierce tenderness gripped Elara—then gave way to sheer exhaustion.
She must have drifted off at some point, because when she opened her eyes again, the room had softened to a pale, milk-blue dawn. Aoife still lay sprawled in careless glory, mouth slack, utterly unbothered by the havoc she’d unleashed upon the night.
Elara slipped carefully from the bed, earning only a muffled murmur as Aoife turned her face into the pillow.
At the window, she unlatched the warped frame.
A cool breath of air crept in, tasting faintly of salt and rust. Below, the canal drifted beneath a veil of fog, boats tethered in neat rows, their hulls knocking softly against the stone.
Somewhere beyond the mist, a gull cried out.
She dressed quickly. The tunic she reached for was cut close and plain, darkened sea-green, and, beneath it, thin linen clung cool to her skin.
A slender sash of woven gray silk cinched the waist—delicate, salt-stiff, catching the faintest glint of dawn.
She twisted her hair into a knot at the base of her neck, fingers quick, practiced; a few strands escaped anyway.
Before Aoife could stir again, she slipped from the room.
The house was quiet, though not truly sleeping.
Some faint wakefulness lingered in it—and she sensed him before she reached the final step.
Maistir Odhrán stood by the hearth, his narrow shoulders swallowed by a wool robe worn thin at the elbows.
A kettle murmured over the flame, and morning light struck his spectacles just so, turning his eyes briefly to silvered glass.
He did not start when she reached the last step.
Which meant, of course, that he had known she was there from the first. His gaze settled—decisively—on her ears. Elara sighed.
So it begins.
“Good morning, Maistir Odhrán,” she said evenly.
He blinked, as though startled to have been caught staring. “Ah. Yes. Morning.” His gaze flicked to hers, then back to her ears once more. “Forgive me. Purely anatomical curiosity.” He stepped closer, peering with unabashed academic interest. “Do they ache in cold weather?”
She stared at him. “My ears?”
“Yes, yes.” He gestured vaguely. “Structural difference. I’ve always wondered if there is increased sensitivity to pressure changes. Wind. Altitude.”
Elara folded her hands in front of her. “No more than yours, I suspect.”
“Fascinating,” he murmured.
He did not sound disappointed, and she found, to her own surprise, that she did not dislike him for it. “Not particularly,” she said. “As you’ve no doubt noticed, they remain structurally unremarkable, I’m afraid.”
Over the past few mornings, a certain routine had established itself.
She woke first—thanks entirely to Aoife—and slipped from the room.
By the time she reached the kitchen, Maistir Odhrán would already be there, waiting with his kettle and that particular expression scholars wore when they had discovered a new problem to worry to death.
On the worst mornings, his questions concerned her anatomy; on the better ones, her history.
Today, unfortunately, seemed inclined toward the former.
Even as he fussed with the kettle and prepared the tea she had learned to endure out of politeness—he was, after all, sheltering fugitives in his home—his eyes kept drifting toward her ears with a concentration that would have been unnerving if it were not so earnest.
Elara tried not to laugh.
“Pity,” he said. “That would simplify several of my ongoing disputes.” The kettle shrieked softly.
Odhrán turned at once, shuffling mugs aside, distracted.
“Had I known I would be hosting a small rebellion,” he muttered, clearing a stack of loose parchment with the back of his hand, “I might have tidied.”
Elara surveyed the room.
The kitchen was no cleaner in daylight than it had been by lamplight.
Papers lay in precarious drifts beside bowls and stacked cups.
A knife rested dangerously close to the edge of the table.
Ink-stained diagrams competed with grocery lists and fragments of what might have been philosophical arguments.
One might have mistaken the state of the room for neglect.
Elara suspected otherwise. She had seen this sort of arrangement before.
Some minds did not thrive in tidy spaces; they required a certain level of disorder to function properly.
Among the Druids, it had been common enough—where even a small attempt at tidying could unravel an entire line of thought.
Odhrán, she suspected, preferred his home exactly as it was.
A draft moved through the kitchen—cool, river-laced, carrying the faint scent of spice. Caelion followed through the narrow side door, hair damp at the temples, sleeves pushed to his forearms. A wooden tray rested easily in his hands, six small porcelain cups already steeping.
“Oh,” Odhrán said. “How thoughtful.” He abandoned the kettle mid-hiss and claimed a cup, spectacles slipping slightly down his nose. “You have excellent timing.”
“I’ve been told,” Caelion replied mildly. Only then did his gaze drift briefly to the kettle still sputtering on the stove. The look that crossed his face was fleeting but eloquent—the expression of a man who had witnessed a crime against tea and chosen the diplomatic solution.
His eyes came to Elara. One brow lifted. She met his look squarely, then brought her hand up in the Sídhe gesture he had once shown her—fingers spread, palm angled outward, then drawn back to the heart.
Caelion’s head tipped, surprised. For a beat, he was utterly silent. Then he barked a laugh so loud it rattled the cups on the tray he was carrying.
She buried her smile in her hands. His laugh warmed something in her, and she felt an unreasonable flicker of pride that she’d managed to draw it from him.
“Goodness,” Odhrán said, flustered, then shook his head and moved toward the study, muttering about proper levels of noise in the morning and spoiled tea.
Elara lifted her cup in mock salute. “For this heroic act, I shall name my firstborn after you.”
He shook his head, grinning.
They settled once more at the long table in the adjoining study—the place they had claimed as their own over the past several days.
Light slipped through the tall windows in pale bands, catching on drifting dust and casting a glow over the familiar sprawl of parchment that had come to define the start of their days.
Ledgers lay open in overlapping rows, their columns of inked names and dates marching across the pages.
Some had already been combed through—corners bent, margins crowded with Odhrán’s cramped annotations, and the small marks they had begun using to flag anything that felt… off.
The effect was less scholarly and more prosecutorial.
Odhrán spread several ward ledgers before them, smoothing the brittle pages with fingers that treated the paper almost reverently.
He had delivered the same instructions each morning, though the ritual now carried an air of routine rather than introduction.
“We begin here,” he said, tapping the first column.
“Birth rolls. Trade registries. Temple offerings. Anything that breaks the pattern.”
Elara leaned forward, already scanning.
It took only a few minutes before she found the first discrepancy—a pair of entries crossed out without explanation.
She tapped the page.
Odhrán made a soft, pleased sound in the back of his throat. Caelion leaned in beside her to confirm the mark, his finger tracing the line as he compared it with the adjacent pages. They noted it, then moved on. The work was absorbing. And maddening.
An hour passed.