Page 47 of The Last Remaining Light

She rolled her eyes, fighting a smile. “Do not ruin my vulnerability. Let me wallow.”

A laugh escaped him before he could stop it, the tension softening as easily as it always had when they began teasing one another.

The sound seemed to relax her as well, and Caelyn could only look down at her face, admiring.

There she was.

His Elowynn.

He couldn't remember when his mind had begun thinking of her that way, only that the feeling had rooted itself so deep inside him he no longer knew how to separate it from the rest of his heart. It was not possession, never that. Elowynn belonged to no one except herself—to her dreams, her ambitions, and the endless hunger for knowledge burning bright within her. She belonged to the stars as much as the earth beneath their feet.

But somewhere along the way, Caelyn’s soul had begun reaching for hers all the same.

Together they stood beneath the observatory arch while storms rolled across the far western sea. The bells rang somewhere deep within Lumenshire, their low tones mournful.

Eventually, Elowynn spoke again. “Agatha told me something odd last sun. She said resonance does not answer certainty.” Elowynn frowned in thought. “She said it answers honesty.”

Caelyn leaned against the stone arch beside her, arms crossing over his chest. “Well, that sounds irritatingly philosophical of her.”

A soft snort escaped her, and Caelyn smiled at it.

“She was irritatingly philosophical while saying it.” Elowynn smiled at him before her expression relaxed. “She thinks I am afraid because I still see Lumenshire as the place that saved me.”

Caelyn’s expression sobered, knowing Agatha to be right.

Lumenshire had become sacred to Elowynn like no other place ever could. The abbey and the people within it had carried her through grief and loneliness while the ashes of House Selvicta settled in the north.

And somewhere during those turnings—

It had become home to her.

“You are allowed to outgrow places,” Caelyn said with a low voice. His eyes had turned back to the horizon; he knew they had become dark with sorrow.

He could feel Elowynn looking at him in that assessing way of hers, and before allowing her a response regarding what she may find, Caelyn pushed away from the arch abruptly.

“Wait here.”

Her brow furrowed, and she turned toward him. “What?”

“I will return in a moment. Please, just… just wait.”

“Caelyn—”

But he was already disappearing into the observatory corridor before he could lose his nerve entirely.

The object remained exactly where he left it.

Hidden carefully beneath a loose floorboard inside his small room overlooking the southern cliffs, rested a bundle wrapped in dark linen worn soft with age. Caelyn knelt beside the bed and pulled it free with both hands, a thin layer of dust scattering across the floorboards as the fabric brushed against the wood.

For a long moment, he only stared at it.

Then a slow, uneven breath left his lungs as he pushed himself up from the floor to return to her.

By the time he arrived back at the archway, Elowynn had moved closer toward the outer balcony overlooking the sea below. She turned without hesitation upon hearing his footsteps and noted he held something to his chest.

“What is that?”

He didn't respond to her question. Instead, he stopped beside her, hesitating long enough that she looked up at him before he finally held out the wrapped object.