Page 159 of The Last Remaining Light

Elowynn might have cared about the concern on any other night. She might have even thanked her.

“Have you seen Caelyn?” she asked.

The woman hesitated. That hesitation told Elowynn enough, and she snapped her eyes toward the tunnels.

Before she could rise fully, movement appeared near one of the tunnel mouths, and Caelyn stepped out of the darkness as though summoned by the fear twisting through her.

Relief crashed through her so suddenly that she forgot how to move.

He looked worse than he had when she fell asleep. Sweat dampened the hair at his temples, and his fresh bandages had darkened where blood had seeped through the layers again. There was a caution to the way he moved now, a measured restraint that told her he was holding himself upright by will alone.

But it was the expression on his face that made her straighten.

Caelyn had found something.

Pushing up from the ground, she made her way over to him.

Survivors moved out of her path. She was barely aware of them, barely aware of Lora stirring behind her or Alyra’s eyes opening with instant focus. Caelyn stopped when he saw her approach, and the look he gave her held enough guilt that her fear turned into anger.

“You left,” she said.

His gaze flicked over her shoulder toward the waking shelter. “Elowynn.”

“You left.” She hated how steady her voice sounded, hated that it didn't shake when everything inside her did. She waved a hand wildly behind her to where they had both been resting. “You were bleeding through bandages less than two bells ago, and you walked into unmapped tunnels beneath a collapsing city. Alone.”

He didn't look surprised by her reaction. Only resigned.

“I didn't plan to be gone long.”

“I have participated in enough debates to know that it is a poor attempt at defending your decision to go alone!”

“Yes,” he admitted, and some of the resistance left his face. “You’re right.”

The anger inside her faltered. He looked as though he had already punished himself enough. That was Caelyn’s oldest habit. He would endure any pain without complaint and then look startled when someone cared enough to call him out on it.

Elowynn had no patience for it. Caring about him seemed to mean wanting to shake him and hold him upright in the same breath.

“What happened?” she asked finally.

Caelyn looked past her to where Alyra had risen beside Lora, then toward Korvel, who watched them from across the shelter.

The dim lantern light sharpened the hard planes of Korvel's face. His expression said he’d heard enough to know that whatever it was, was important. His gaze moved to the dark tunnel behind Caelyn with the grim focus of a man already drawing conclusions from fragments.

“We need everyone awake,” Caelyn said.

After waking and eating rations from the crates, those in the shelter gathered around the resonance well.

Alyra stood beside Lora, her resonance blade sheathed but not far from hand. Korvel leaned against one of the old support columns with his arms folded, while the transit engineer hovered near him with the pale, pinched expression of someone who feared what he was about to hear.

Caelyn remained standing for reasons Elowynn couldn't fathom. She wanted to force him back onto a crate to rest, but the expression on his face stopped her. Something about his walk into the tunnel had changed his demeanor.

Elowynn turned from him and noticed the elderly scholar sitting among the survivors near the far wall. A blanket had been draped across his shoulders, and his cracked spectacles rested low on his nose while he listened to the discussion with a distracted expression. For a moment she frowned. Recognition stirred at the edge of her thoughts, elusive and frustratingly out of reach.

Then Caelyn began speaking, and the feeling slipped away.

“I followed one of the scholars,” he said at last, looking directly at the man with the broken spectacles.

Elowynn blinked, then whipped her head back toward the scholar.