Page 185 of Of Iron and Moonlight

The gentleness of the goodbye only deepened the despair of the loss.

Elara drew her knees closer and wrapped her arms around them, trying both to temper the cold and contain the pieces of herself still intact. Her fingers pressed into her sleeves until the fabric numbed her skin. Her shivers refused to cease, clattering her teeth.

Soft footsteps approached, barely more than ice shifting on gravel. The earth behind her dipped slightly as someone lowered themselves there. Warmth gathered at her back a moment later when a heavy arm settled around her waist.

Every line of Elara’s body tightened against the solid plane of Njall’s chest. Had she possessed more strength—had she not been emptied by anguish—she might have torn free. Sensing it, he stilled, his arm hovering for a moment before carefully resting again.

Was it possible to love someone and hate them in the same breath? He had upended her life once by taking Lorrain into the fae world. And today he had chosen to save her over Lorrain. Whatever delicate feelings had bloomed toward him over the past months had been swallowed by the enormity of that choice. The place inside her where tenderness had lived now throbbed with suffocating hatred.

That morning she had missed him.

Now she did not know how to bear him.

His warmth seeped into her bones, dulling the edge of the cold. The conflict churned until it broke. A tremor passed through her. Then another. Unrestrained sobs clawed up her throat. She sagged backward into him despite herself. His arm tightened just enough to hold her steady. He rested his chin lightly against her hair, saying nothing.

They lay there not in forgiveness, not in peace, but in the brutal necessity of survival.

Dawn broke thin and silver across the rocky inlet where they had hidden, light stretching carefully over the crags as though reluctant to touch a place so marked by pain.

Morning meant waking.

Waking meant remembering.

And remembering was breaking all over again.

Elara’s heart clenched the moment she opened her eyes. Lorrain was gone from the world. No sunrise would ever reach her face. No laughter would ever again leave her lips. No future would unfold with her in it. The day itself felt indecent in its insistence on continuing, and Elara too fractured to do anything but exist within the circle of Njall’s hold while the ache spread in her chest and grief moved through her in violent surges.

When they finally stirred, it was with reluctance and without urgency. They assembled in a loose circle and sat in stillness. The air felt brittle, as though speech might splinter it. Lorrain’s absence settled over them all not as a single wound but as something too vast to fathom.

“What shall we do now?” Gavriel ventured eventually. He looked carved down to bone and shadow, frighteningly thin. His long, matted blond hair fell forward as he leaned over his knees, the question sounding less like strategy than a plea offered to the grim morning.

The silence that answered him came from exhaustion too deep to shape thought.

He cleared his throat softly. “Kalaetzu… I suppose you’ll return to Tsuchitsa Isle.” He glanced at the Tsuchitsan. “You’re the only one of us with somewhere certain to go.”

Kalaetzu exhaled, weary but thoughtful. “I will go back.” He hesitated. “Though getting there won’t be simple. I am too recognizable in Norrelia. Every road. Every port. Any place a messenger might pass through puts me at risk. If they catch me again…” He let the rest hang.

“Difficult,” Gavriel murmured, shivering against the cold, “but not impossible.” He gave a humorless breath. “At least you have a home waiting. One you want to see again.”

“I can’t return to Jarovina without Lorrain,” Elara said. Speaking hurt.

Njall’s posture shifted at that—subtle, but noticeable. He turned away, toward the distant silhouette of Celestine Isle along the dark horizon of Lunnholm Bay.

Gavriel followed the movement. “And you, Njall?” he asked, more gently than before. “Where would you go?”

Njall was quiet for a long moment. Then, “I don’t know.”

“You can’t return to Selenar,” Kalaetzu reminded carefully. “Will you remain in Norrelia?”

A slow shake of his head. “I don’t know where I belong.”

Kalaetzu sighed and let it rest. He smiled faintly. “When you spend months chasing a single aim,” he said softly, “you rarely prepare for what comes after it ends. The road we thought we followed simply… stops. Now here we are. No purpose beyond surviving yesterday.”

Gavriel swallowed. “What shall we do?” he repeated, almost under his breath.

The question drifted among them, unanswered again. Elara folded into herself, ribs tight with the effort of containing her breath, tears threatening again.

Slowly, Njall turned back toward the others. “I have a proposal,” he said quietly. He opened his mouth, then hesitated as though unsure he had the right to offer direction.