Page 154 of Keeper of the Word

Tolvar had returned, and said nothing. As he said nothing, Joss, who openly gaped at them before eyeing Tolvar expectantly, said nothing, either. Tolvar appeared as if he’d been waiting for this moment. He gave Hux a brief nod. Hux opened his mouth and then closed it, eating whatever barb he’d prepared to feed Tolvar.

Joss and Barrett exchanged a glance, but neither moved. Mayhap eventually, Elanna thought. Gus’s eyebrows were upturned. But Elanna concerned herself not.

That first night, Hux escorted her to her bedroll and tenderly kissed her forehead. As everyone was out in the open, there weremany averted glances. But after a moment of staring up at her stars, Elanna dragged her bedroll next to his, curled herself up next to him, and was asleep in seconds.

Aye, she knew naught of pairing herself with another, but she would not squander one more moment.

Not with what she had Seen.

Each night, Elanna offered herself to the stars and witnessed the horrors of the fall of the Capella Realm. ’Twas as if the stars themselves could not sustain what was to come.

They needed to reach Ashwin, gather the three StarSeers, and race back to Asalle, where, hopefully, they would collect the starstone along the way. The matter of Prince Dashiell did not concern Elanna just yet.

She had still not felt her sisters.

And so, when they were but an hour’s ride from the city, Elanna spurred Rasa forward, with only Tolvar on Valko and Gus on his newly acquired Ashwinian Luster—a gift from Kyrie—able to keep pace.

Elanna knew something was amiss before she crested the top of the rolling hill and could gaze upon Ashwin’s ivory walls.

“Stars!”

Ivory no longer. The discoloration and fragmentation from a fire that had clearly charged through the city had turned the walls into a horrid sight.

Streets, where rows of shoppes and flats had been, were ashes. Aura Hall slumped in the background of the city. Northeast of the city, bodies rotting in the late afternoon sun sowed the midsummer fields. Nothing stirred.

“Siria’s skirt,” Tolvar swore from beside her.

Gus echoed the sentiment. The three sat astride their Lusters and stared, naught more to say or do.

“Do you wish to investigate?” Tolvar asked.

Elanna shook her head numbly. “Let us wait for the others; then we can.”

Kyrie!She shouted in her heart.Kyrie! Where are you?

If the three were dead, she would know. Somehow, Elanna convinced herself she would know.

By and by, the others joined them, each unable to take in the horrendous shock that Ashwin, the beloved city of the StarSeers, was rubble and ruin. Even Hux pronounced his grief for Elanna and the realm.

“The Capella Realm has always been thought to be a place of fairy tales. Untouchable from the evil fates of the continent. Even in Asalle, I supposed as long as we could make it here, you could mend everything.” He gave Elanna a humorless smile. “What a foolish thing to say.”

They trotted to the city, the sight of the battered gate taking everyone’s breath away. Bodies lay everywhere. Elanna went numb.

You could have warned me,she prayed to the out-of-view stars.You did not have to let me discover it this way.

More and more, Elanna’s life was becoming one of events and less of visions. At this moment, she hated it and longed to race back through time to when her only activities of the day were praying and counseling.

Hours later, she’d sifted through what had been some of her favorite rooms in Aura Hall. Blessedly, they had not discovered many corpses in the castle itself. Mayhap, most had been able to escape.

Please let it be so.

But scrolls and scrolls of parchments with fortune Seeings were destroyed. Tapestries depicting famous fortunes and historical events over the last millennia were no more. As was everything that Elanna had personally owned, which was scarce. A few seashells from home. A collection of Grendenian poetry that had been her mother’s. The only item from the woman she had never known.

Hux joined her on the ashy floor.

“Losing everything is difficult.”

Her grief was so acute, she dared not even shrug. “StarSeers are taught to not value worldly objects. But ’tis as if everything that made me Elanna has vanished.”