Page 43 of The Last Remaining Light

Far away from him.

“Now,” her mother said with a gentle tone, “you are becoming what House Selvicta would have raised you to be.”

The words should have sounded triumphant.

Instead, they felt devastating.

Because Caelyn finally understood something terrible with absolute clarity.

Elowynn was never meant to remain at Lumenshire forever. Part of him had known this but had not wanted to believe it.

Elowynn belonged to observatories and archives and celestial scholarship. To resonance halls and the accumulated knowledge of the Astrari filling the libraries within the heart of Aetheris. To the life of a noble.

Not sea cliffs.

Not confined to abbey halls.

Not him.

Something inside him broke. The pain washed over him so completely he nearly missed Elowynn turning toward him on instinct from across the chamber.

Their eyes met.

And for one unbearable moment, Caelyn watched the truth dawn in her eyes.

Chapter Nine

“Most grief is simply love with nowhere left to go.”

— Sister Agatha

Hearthfall, 749 A.V.

Autumn arrived along the southern coast. The blazing heat of Dawnfall and Dawnmere had long faded from the Abbey, replaced now by colder sea winds. Through the western cloisters, they carried the scent of encroaching rains and the bittersweet fragrance of ivy blooms curling brown along their edges. Red and gold leaves swept through the stone courtyards while dark storm clouds gathered over the sea beyond the cliffs with increasing frequency.

Caelyn hated Hearthfall.

He never used to, because it had been Elowynn’s favorite moon.

She loved watching the wild storms rolling inland from across the seas. She loved wandering through the gardens as autumn surrendered its last warmth to the coming cold, gathering the final vibrant blooms before the first frost could claim them and carrying them back inside to admire for as long as they survived in a vase of water.

But what she loved most about Hearthfall was wrapping herself in absurdly oversized shawls and sitting within the alcoves near the observatory windows, one careless movement away from sending the stack of books across her lap tumbling to the floor while her tea sat abandoned beside her.

Now the very things he once found comfort in seemed to wound him instead.

Because everything reminded him she was leaving.

The entire abbey knew it now. Not about Veylspire specifically, but enough whispers had spread after Elowynn’s resonance manipulation that the Sisters had begun treating her differently. Scholars sought her out more frequently. Visiting astronomers requested private discussions with Agatha. Resonance instructors who once barely acknowledged her now watched her with open fascination whenever she entered the observatory halls.

House Selvicta’s surviving heir.

A prodigy.

A future scholar of the great city of Veylspire.

Each title pushed her farther away from him.

Caelyn stood alone beneath the western observatory arch, watching rain sweep across the cliffs below while light from a lantern spread along the abbey windows behind him. The storm had crept inland shortly after the dinner bell, beginning with scattered drops against the stone before the wind turned harsher and the rain thickened into rolling silver curtains off the sea.