Chapter 39 #3
Not new. Not born of this moment. It had been there all along, she realized, waiting behind caution and fear and everything else she had mistaken for the whole of him.
He trusted her not to endanger them. Trusted her to know the limits of her own strength.
Trusted her with the lives of those he loved most in the world.
Something turned over inside her chest.
Elara knew the name of it then—it had been there a long time.
She understood that now. It had simply been waiting for her to stop moving long enough to find it.
She did not give it voice, not even to herself.
She only held it there for a moment, turning it carefully as one might turn something precious in the hands to learn its weight. Then she set it down and answered him.
“Yes.”
Her voice came out rough. She swallowed and tried again.
“Yes. I can.”
He searched her face for uncertainty, bravado, any lie meant to spare them, and found none. The corner of his mouth shifted, quick as light on water, showing the faint flash of a canine.
A private thing.
“We leave for Ellylldan.” His voice changed as he turned to the others, gathering command around himself as easily as a cloak. “My father’s hall. We’ll be safe enough there to decide what comes next.”
Reynnar helped Elara to her feet, and, by some small mercy, her knees did not fail her.
Aoife was gone from the garden before Elara had fully steadied, Caelion and Eamon pushing away from the wall to follow her back into the house.
Odhrán opened his mouth as though to speak, thought better of it, and instead crossed himself in the old Naidiryn way—three fingers to brow, to throat, to heart.
He had once told her it was a gesture of his people, used only for births and deaths and endings.
Reynnar glanced toward the house, toward the stairs. “I’ll gather our things,” he said. His hand brushed once, briefly, at Elara’s back before he left her there with Odhrán and disappeared inside. The garden was quiet, save for the fading drip of water from her clothes.
Elara cleared her throat. “There’s something I need you to do.”
At once Odhrán’s expression changed.
“The boy,” she said. Her voice nearly failed her. “The youngling.” She swallowed. “Will you make sure his parents know where he’s buried?” Her fingers closed hard around his sleeve. “Please, Odhrán. Promise me.”
She knew she was asking for a lot—asking him to put himself in danger. But Odhrán did not hesitate. He covered her hand with his own, warm and rough and steady.
“I will,” he said. Then, softer, because he could see she needed it said twice, “I will.”
His thumb passed once over her knuckles. Only then did he disappear into the house. When he returned, it was with a small bundle of cloth tied tightly at the corners, which he pressed into her hands without ceremony.
“Dried lungwort and black moss,” he said gruffly, still not quite meeting her eyes. “For the cough. Steep it dark and drink it before you sleep.” A pause. “All of it. Don’t go wasting it making faces.”
Elara looked down at the bundle in her hands, and to her surprise, the back of her throat tightened. “Thank you,” she said. “For all of it.”
Odhrán smiled. “Never would I have imagined a halfling would turn up at my door.” His hand tightened over hers. “And yet the world is seldom made right by what it expects. I am glad for the day it brought you here.”
By the time they gathered in the study, the house had changed.
Packs slung over shoulders. Cloaks drawn.
Faces set. The notes still lay scattered across the table where they had left them: bloodlines, inspection reports, canal maps marked over in careful ink, names with red lines struck beneath them.
Elara stood over the papers while the quiet sounds of departure moved through the rooms around her.
With one finger, she traced the road to the Ellylldan border and measured the distance in her head.
It would hold.
It had to.
When Reynnar appeared in the doorway, he carried her pack in one hand and his own in the other. He said nothing at first. His gaze moved from her to the maps beneath her hands and rested there.
“I can do it,” she said before he could ask.
“I know,” he answered.
Elara rolled the map and tucked it into her satchel, then turned toward the far wall of the study.
“Ready?” she asked.
Caelion stood near the door, his pack slung over one shoulder.
Aoife was still pale, but her jaw had firmed with resolve, and Eamon pushed off the frame and stepped fully into the room, his attention fixed on Elara with that deep, difficult watchfulness she had long since stopped trying to untangle.
Beyond them, in the hall, Odhrán stood with his arms crossed, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“Ready,” Aoife said.
Elara lifted her dagger and opened the wall. The rift tore through the plaster, setting the air trembling around it, and the familiar scent reached her first—that strange, bright bite of ozone—before the darkness beyond unfolded.
Reynnar came to her side, and Elara did not look back. Not at the house, not at the maps tacked to the walls, not at the refuge Odhrán had given them when nowhere else was safe.
Together, they stepped through.