Page 5 of The Last Remaining Light

The garden was beautiful. Rain shimmered silver across winding pathways lined with winter ivy and pale flowers stubborn enough to bloom even during Duskfall. Ancient statues stood half-consumed by moss, their weathered faces turned toward the sea below the cliffs, while covered alcoves offered shelter beneath trailing vines and carved stone arches. The storm still raged beyond the abbey walls, yet the bells did sound nicer here, softened by the rain and the sheltering stone surrounding the garden. She could even still hear the distant crash of waves far below the cliffs.

Elowynn stepped farther beneath the covered archways out of the weather and looked beyond the carved stone columns. Then she paused.

Someone else was already there.

Caelyn sat beneath one of the western alcoves wrapped in that thick, worn cloak. He had a lantern glowing beside him and a thick book spread across his knees. The warm light flickered across his dark hair and the careful lines of his face.

He quickly looked up when she approached. For several moments, neither of them said anything.

Caelyn broke the silence first. “You found it,” he said with a smile.

Elowynn folded her arms tightly against the cold. “I could not sleep,” she admitted.

“Neither could I,” he sighed, looking tired. “But that’s not unusual for me,” he added with a shrug.

She moved in slow steps beneath the shelter of the alcove roof, her gaze lowering toward the book in his lap.

“What are you reading?”

Caelyn glanced down at the open pages. “Astryllic charts.”

Surprise flickered across her face. “You can read those?”

“A little,” he said shyly.

Curiosity quickly overcame caution. Elowynn stepped closer until she could properly see the diagrams spread across the pages. The charts looked old and complicated, crowded with resonance calculations, constellation patterns, and narrow columns of annotated symbols.

“Oh, uh… that chart is wrong,” she said automatically.

Caelyn blinked and looked up. “What?”

She pointed toward one of the symbols near the center of the page. “The resonance line is misaligned. If the pressure of the aethercurrent adjusted northward, the harmonic sequence would collapse here.” She tapped the parchment a few times with one finger. “See?”

He stared at her, mouth agape. He looked baffled.

Elowynn scowled. “What?”

“You understand this?” he asked, disbelieving.

“Of course I do,” she said haughtily.

Caelyn blinked again. “You are ten.”

“And?” she replied, insulted.

To her irritation, Caelyn grinned. Was he mocking her? She couldn't tell. But something about that smile transformed his entire face, softening the solemness she had noticed the moment they first met. “You sound exactly like Sister Agatha when she argues with the scholars,” he snorted.

Elowynn eased herself onto the stone bench across from him beneath the alcove along the garden wall while rain continued to fall beyond them in shimmering curtains. The lantern between them cast a warm glow across the old stone, softening the sharp edges of the storm beyond the arches. Neither of them spoke for a long while. Yet the silence no longer felt heavy in the way it had since Astermere fell. It felt... comforting.

As they sat together beneath the shelter of the alcove, it struck Elowynn with mild surprise that this was the first conversation she had shared in spans where no one spoke cautiously around her. No one lowered their voice or wore that same worried look they often had when they saw her. She wasn’t being treated like something fragile.

Caelyn looked at her as though she were simply Elowynn.

Not a daughter of a noble house or a survivor from the north.

Just… Elowynn.

The thought eased something tight and aching inside her chest. The loneliness that had followed her through the starway no longer felt quite so consuming.