Page 63 of Keeper of the Word (The Unsung and the Wolf Duology #2)

Chapter

Fifty-Seven

ELANNA

“ Y ou need not follow me, Hux,” Elanna said, when she realized he trailed after her as she walked away from camp in the opposite direction of Tolvar.

She gauged the scene. Joss and Barrett argued in the background. Gus stood beside them, focused on the direction Tolvar had chosen. Hux bridged the gap between them.

“What are they arguing about?”

He grimaced. “Whether or not to go after Tolvar.”

She nodded. “He shall be all right. I have Seen it.”

“Why did he want to leave?”

“To drink himself into a stupor.”

“Are you in earnest?”

“Aye.”

“He’s not touched a drop of liquor for six moons.”

Elanna did not comment on Hux’s remark. “You need not follow me.”

“Mayhap. But allow me one phrase. What may I do to express to you my sorrow for keeping my past from you and convince you that my past is done?”

Elanna gritted her teeth. “Hux, I… ”

His dark eyes held hers in expectancy as he shifted back and forth.

“Do not mistake me. I forgive you. But…”

“You said weeks ago that goodness may be in my future. Lady, please. How may that be so if my past forever hinders that?”

“I forgive you!”

“Then what is it? You seemed pained by my presence, only barely glancing at me.”

“’Tis as I said before!” She pressed her hands to her cheeks so she would not think on the many, many scenes she could replay.

The many grim scenes. “You speak of the future! There shall be no future if I lose my concentration! No future if I do not give everything I have, and everything I am to what must be done!’

Breathe!

She paced away before striding back to face him. “I shall need every ounce of—” She cut herself off.

The quilting of stars overhead shimmered in reassurance.

She Saw something.

In the end, ’twas her choice. She had begun this journey moons ago, and it changed her. Changed her understanding of her role. Changed, mayhap, even the stars themselves?

“I understand, Lady. I was seeking only your forgiveness.” His tone carried a feigned curtness. “Now that you’ve bestowed it upon me, you have my promise that I shall cease my pestering of you. I will?—”

“Cease speaking,” Elanna interrupted.

Hux swallowed. “Aye. I shall go.”

“Wait!”

Hux halted yet kept his back to her.

“ I choose.”

“What?” Hux faced her with one eyebrow raised.

Her voice was almost a whisper. “So few moments of happiness.”

“What does that mean?”

Elanna made a choice. She closed the gap between them and, without another thought, pressed her lips to his .

When they broke off, his surprise mirrored her own. “Lady, I have been a man of contradiction for some time, but I fear you are schooling me.”

Elanna kissed him again. Deeper. Hux did not waste this kiss. He opened her mouth with his and sought her tongue with his own. Elanna’s eyes popped open from the sensation before she lost herself in him again.

The two found themselves kneeling together in the clover, arms encircling, lips searching.

Hux separated them. “Truly, what has happened? Moments ago, you seemed as though you wished to banish me, and now”—he cleared his throat—“here we are.”

“Doom is coming,” Elanna said.

Hux chuckled. “Oh, I see. Since you’ve seen us all perish, you have decided why not live dangerously with the handsome Deogolian?”

Elanna playfully shoved him away. “Nay. I’ve decided that as doom is coming, we shall need each other.”

“Oh, Lady. That wounds worse, I am afraid.”

“What I mean is…” Stars, she was terrible at this.

She remembered them collecting firewood together in what felt like a lifetime ago.

She knew then she was terrible at behaving in a normal way.

“I Saw in the stars that I have a choice. I need you, Hux. You’ve e’er been by my side. You saved me, for stars’ sake!”

“Lady, pray, do not have feelings based on that?—”

“I do not. But I should ne’er have questioned your quality.

Your loyalty. And your motives. You assisted us with the Shroud Magic.

We would never have found success without you!

” Stars, ’twas all becoming too much, and the flood of emotions that Elanna kept at bay, that she buried and then buried again, caused tears. She wiped them away.

“Do not cry, Elanna.” His hand gathered hers.

“You may not believe this, but ’tis quite unusual for a StarSeer to shed tears. You’ve done something to me. And that is what I mean. I need you. For now. For the future. I need you. ”

Instead of getting her emotions under control, Elanna shed tears anew.

Gently, Hux pooled one onto his index finger. “You are so pure. I can scarcely believe you would need me.” Their eyes met, and Elanna took in his dark lashes. “But I am not one to turn away from treasures that are bestowed upon me.”

The kiss he pressed onto her lips was a caress and a promise and everything Elanna never knew she desired.

She returned it in kind.

Again, Hux parted them, his hands a delicate and reassuring hold. “I’ll have you know that I have your face memorized in my unworthy heart already, but allow me to gaze at you. I wish to always remember this beautiful moment. The most beautiful moment of my life.”

“May your beautiful moments be as vast as the stars.”

No other words were said. They leaned into each other and fervently passed the time.

Elanna knew naught of love. She knew naught of having a man pay her interest. And she knew naught of paying that interest in kind. But, stars, she wanted to learn.

And stars, she did know about having authority.

When she and Hux returned to camp, Elanna gripped his hand defiantly.

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 were many 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.”

Hux had spent the last few days telling Elanna about his past, first as a nobleman’s son and then a renowned thief. Without a home and a true identity. It occurred to her that they had more in common than she had first realized.

“Do not pent up your agony,” Hux said.

“This is all too much.”

Hux slipped his arms around her.

“My sisters. We must find my sisters.”

“We will.”

Tolvar entered. “’Tis growing dark, and ’tis probably better if we are not here when night falls. I am most sorry about your home, Elanna.” His shoulders slumped. Dozens of bodies had been Tolvar’s own soldiers. “Seems all of us are without homes at present.”

“We do not know that Thorin Court is actually overrun, Lord Wolf,” Hux said. “Mayhap those knights of yours arose to the challenge. You certainly trained them hard enough to fight valiantly.”

Tolvar stared off.

“You’re thinking about Sloane, aren’t you?” Hux asked. “Enough of that, before you hate me all over again.”

Tolvar gave a pointedly frightful look. “I was trying not to blame myself for all this.”

“Do not blame yourself, Sir Tolvar,” Elanna said. “The actions here are the choices of sorrowful men.”

“Sorrowful? What do you mean?” Tolvar asked.

“Those who seek to bring down the light, as you say, who seek to cause chaos and turmoil, they are full of sorrow. Lost souls.”

Tolvar studied the soot-covered floor.

“Even your brother.”

“Who I dearly wish was here so I could witness his ‘sorrow’ for myself,” Tolvar said with sarcasm. “What now?”

Elanna attempted to sort that out. Searching for her sisters was her first priority.

“I was hopeful that I might find the location of some starstone here at Aura Hall, in addition to collecting my sisters. I am certain there were a few scrolls that detailed locations, but—” She scanned the charred room .

Elanna’s heart palpitated. If she didn’t keep her thoughts moving, the weight of all this would crush her.

“Elanna?” Hux stroked her shoulder.

She loosed an exhale. ’Twas extraordinary that giving her heart over to Hux seemed to strengthen her.

Tolvar ran his hand through his hair, shifting his weight. “Why is Ashwin a dry city?”

“There wouldn’t be any surviving liquor here anyway,” Hux said. “Though I will say, a drink sounds like the very thing at present. But Tolvar is right, Lady. What now?”

“I will ask the stars.”

At dawn, Elanna rose and gazed out at Ashwin’s remains.

She’d Seen their next move. But how could she tear herself away from this place?

“We shall return through Grenden,” she explained to the others. Tears stung her eyes. “Lenfore is too dangerous a place to venture through. In a week’s time, the West Road will be filled with highwaymen. But before we leave, there is something I must do.” She met Hux’s eyes. “Alone.”

“What is your task?” Hux asked.

“I—I must…” She could scarcely speak. “Plan for the fortune of those who shall someday rebuild Ashwin.” She did not add that the rebuild was further away than she dared estimate.

She walked the perimeter of the city. Her steps were deliberate, full of purpose.

Patches of green in the scorched grass that she could detect. Pieces of stone not charred. Birds overhead. These were the details Elanna concentrated on.

Or it shall become too much.