Page 146 of Of Iron and Moonlight

“Then we go with the second option: redscale.” Elara exhaled. “I get close enough to drop the potion on the guards. Once it takes effect, you’ll have your distraction and your opening through the main gate.”

Njall muttered something between curse and consent. “I still don’t like it.”

“I suppose the third option is charging the front gate and hoping we kill them before they kill us,” Elara said dryly. “I’d call that slightly less than optimal.”

He drew a slow breath and faced her. “What do we do once we’re inside?”

“Make for the lower level,” Elara said, sketching the prison’s outline in the snow with her fingertips. “There’s a cluster of smaller rooms at the end of that corridor. He’s here.” She tapped a rough square. “I’ll run ahead to find the key and have the cell open by the time you reach it.”

Kalaetzu nodded.

Njall rubbed absently at his shoulder where the beast’s teeth had landed. The wound had closed cleanly, but the ache lingered. If only in his mind.

“Njall?” Elara looked at him, more worry than question in her eyes.

“I’m fine,” he said. He was not.

“Then the challenge will be getting out, since we must leave the same way we entered,” she murmured, tapping two fingers to her lips. “Keep the smoke draught ready. Perhaps we will not need it. If we do… let’s hope it troubles us less than those pursuing us.”

Kalaetzu grimaced. “If only I could make it selective about who it affects. Plants, unfortunately, follow their own logic.” Frustration tightened his mouth. “I would offer a glamour instead, but I haven’t recovered enough strength… and I’m not very good at them. Only priestesses of Hanura are well trained for that branch of our magic.”

“Your potions are more than enough for the plan to work,” Elara assured him.

The old Tsuchitsan let out a long breath, fear and resolve tangled in it. “It’s as sound a plan as we can manage with this little time and fewer resources.”

Elara hesitated, then looked at him with quiet softness. “Kalaetzu… this need not be your burden,” she said, resting a hand on his arm. “You have never met Gavriel. And these are your first nights free in years. You could return home.”

Kalaetzu gave a small, sad laugh. “Thank you, child. But home is still far. And I can do some small good, if only to lessen the weight of what I helped unleash.”

That tugged at something tired and still burning inside Njall. He gave the potion master a nod of respect.

“Thank you,” Elara whispered.

A few moments later, there was nothing to be seen of her except for light footprints pressing into the snow, moving in quick, certain steps toward the prison.

Waiting stretched cruelly. Snow gathered along the seams of Njall’s cloak and cold bit through his leathers, but none of it cut as sharply as the turmoil inside him.

“She doesn’t blame you.”

Kalaetzu leaned his thin back against the stone beside Njall, facing south instead of the prison, as though he could see all the way across Hanura’s Veil to Tsuchitsa Isle.

“What?” Njall turned, pulled from the spiral of his trepidations.

“She knows you followed orders. That you believed you had no choice.”

Njall sank lower behind the rock and lowered his forehead to the cold stone. “It’s no excuse. My life was a punishment dressed as duty, a crime dressed as loyalty. If I had seen more clearly… If I had drawn a harder line… I would never have helped Oorlon take humans. Whether Elara blames me or not, I am the reason she is here.”

Kalaetzu released a slow breath. “It is only in hindsight that lines look sharp. In the moment, the world is fog. We walk the path we can see, even if it stretches no farther than an arm’s length, choosing as best we can with what we know.” He paused, still looking south. “Strength is not never losing your way. It is walking out of the mire when your knees are sunk deep. Many stay because the mud feels familiar. You stepped away. That matters.”

Njall gave a humorless huff. “I don’t feel strong.” He knocked his brow lightly against the rock once, then again. He did not know where else to put the ache.

Before he could do it a third time, Kalaetzu slid a rough hand between his forehead and the stone and nudged him back with gentle insistence. “Neither do I, child,” he said. “But self-forgiveness is a remedy we must learn, or self-loathing ferments inside us.” His gaze flicked toward the prison and back. “Many ruin themselves by swallowing the past as though it were medicine, only to discover too late it was the wrong draught entirely.”

The knot in him loosened, if only by a thread. He eased back from the rock. “She was a thorn in my side at first,” he said aloud without meaning to. Then, more to himself than Kalaetzu, he added, “I cannot see beyond the end of this.”

The Tsuchitsan said nothing, but the small curve of his mouth admitted understanding.

One of the guards at the entrance jerked back in confusion and slapped a hand to his face, eyes widening as he searched the empty air. Njall straightened, alert.