21.

  Elora

  The rumbling had ceased, leaving behind a silence that pressed on my ears, heavy and cruel. Dust swirled like ghostly ash in the dim light, settling over me as if the earth itself were shrouding me. I tried to move, and agony answered. A sharp, blinding fire through my ribs. Breathing felt like drowning on air. When the cough came, I couldn’t stop it; blood splattered against my shaking hands. The sight stole the last of my denial. Something inside me had broken, and now it was bleeding out.

  I was trapped. Not just trapped… cut off. Sealed behind the collapsed tunnel, the exit to life and light swallowed under stone. Healing, hope, freedom… all buried with it. For a heartbeat I wondered if the Fiend lingered in the dark, hunting. And if he could finally get what he wished. The daughter of the lord and lady of Caradsher?n. But the truth was simpler, colder: even without it, I might not leave these tunnels alive.

  The thought pulled something unfamiliar into me. Not worry. Not the familiar weight of anxiety that I’d long ago learned to carry. This was sharper, suffocating.

  Panic.

  My chest fluttered, heart racing against the cage of broken bones. My breaths quickened into shallow gasps. I pressed trembling hands before my face, whispering, begging my lungs to slow. Then I heard Spook.

  “Elora? You’re alive. We’ll get you out.”

  His voice cracked with relief, so raw it nearly undid me.

  Faelwen’s steadier tone followed. “I could blast the rubble away?”

  Even through the pain, my mind reached for order, for reason, the way it always had.

  I let the calculations take me, scanning outcomes, discarding them one by one until the storm inside stilled. Cold clarity numbed me where fear had burned.

  “No,” I rasped, breath catching. “It would bring the whole tunnel down. It would bury us all.”

  My voice sounded distant to my own ears, already fading. The runestones were safe with Spook. That was what mattered.

  That they survived. That he survived.

  “We’ll dig you out,” Spook swore, desperation trembling in his words. I could hear his hands clawing at the stone. My chest convulsed; another cough dragged more blood free, dripping warmth down my chin. Pain shot through my abdomen when I touched it, hard and unyielding.

  Something deep inside me clenched, final and merciless. My eyes blurred.

  My hand slipped into my pocket and closed around the sending stone, smooth and small, the last piece of my family I still carried. I raised it to my lips, kissed it as if I could kiss them across the miles separating us right now. My tears wet the stone as I pressed it to my heart, holding it there like it could keep me tethered. I would contact them. Before the end.

  And in that fragile, bleeding stillness, I chose. I chose a path I knew Spook would never forgive me for.

  Spook

  We clawed at the earth as though the world itself had turned against us, dust thick in my lungs, my fingers raw and bleeding. Then her voice came through the crack, soft, measured, impossibly composed. Not a sob, not a plea, but something heavier than silence, threaded with quiet, resigned grief.

  “Stop. It’s no use. Go now… before the Fiend comes.”

  “No.” The word tore from me, ragged and trembling. Tears stung my eyes, though I did not let them fall. “We’re not leaving you.”

  Faelwen’s hands scraped the stone, knuckles split and red, her strength fraying.

  “You are one of us, Elora,” she whispered, voice raw at the edges.

  Elora’s command cut through the dust like a blade, precise and unyielding.

  “Get those runestones out! Ash! You know we have to!”

  Ash faltered, jaw tight.

  “I don’t know if he’s still here,” he whispered.

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  “We can’t risk it,” Elora answered him, calm and unwavering, though I caught the almost imperceptible tremble in her tone. “We’re not strong enough. Get the runestones out.”

  I passed the runestones to Faelwen, feeling their faint vibrating hum in my hands, and their almost sacred weight.

  “Go. I’ll stay and get her out,” I said, my voice raw with both resolve and dread.

  Faelwen wanted to stay. Ash would not allow it. He hauled her away, over protests and quiet frustration. Artemis gave me a brief, steadying nod before following. Their footsteps faded, leaving only the tunnel, the dust and her.

  Her voice lingered, even without tears, threaded with a delicate, resigned ache.

  “Spook… please. You should go.”

  “No.” I couldn’t let go. “There has to be another way… some passage, some fissure… I’ll find it.”

  A soft sigh brushed across the stones, calm, restrained, almost like a benediction.

  “Listen. What I’m about to say… you won’t like it.”

  “Don’t…” I started. “Are you hurt? We need to get you to a healer.”

  “I can mend myself… a little,” she said, voice carrying the weight of finality, tempered with care. A perfect, sweet lie. “But I want you to go. Find your way back to the others. Fight for Caradsher?n. Fight for the Ancestral Region. Fight for us.”

  The plea lodged in my chest like a stone.

  “What if you can’t get out.” My voice trembled.

  A brittle, almost imperceptible laugh escaped her. “Don’t worry, puppy. I have my family. The sending stone.”

  Her words were warm, teasing even, but trembled just enough to hint at all the things she would not say.

  I pressed on, desperate. “Are you sure you’re not fatally wounded?”

  “Puppy…” she said, voice soft and intimate, tethering me in the air between us. “Just scratches. Nothing bad.”

  My chest ached, hollow and raw. I had a strange feeling she was lying to me.

  “I had hoped… maybe… we could end up together.”

  I didn’t want her to give up on her life. Silence stretched, filled only by her steady, trembling breath.

  “You were my greatest maybe, Spook. I’m grateful to have met you.”

  Past tense. The words cut deep.

  “Don’t speak as if…” my voice broke. “There’s still time. The elves can heal you.”

  “Remember what I told you before, don’t waste away in the shadows of what-ifs,” she said, her voice faltering faintly, delicate as a leaf in the wind. “And don’t forget…”

  A narrow fissure opened between the stones as I dragged more stones away to get to her. It wasn’t enough to get her out. The stones still in place were too big for a man to carry by himself. I slid my fingers through the narrow crack and found hers, cool and trembling just enough to make my heart ache. “What shouldn’t I forget, princess?” I whispered, voice thick with longing. The wish to hold her one last time. Look in her beautiful hazel coloured eyes, one last time. Thread my fingers through her blond her… one. Last. Time.

  “You promised to look after yourself,” she said, the tremor in her tone a subtle, sacred thread. “Don’t forget that.”

  I promised. Quiet tears fell at last, mingling with the dust and sweat. I memorized her touch, the gentle curve of her hand, the faint warmth, the faint pulse beneath her skin, as if committing her very essence to memory. The ache of wanting her to be safe, alive, whole, even in a world that had already wounded her, pressed against every bone in me.

  “I’ll miss you,” I breathed, voice raw, trembling, intimate.

  “I’ll miss you too, my emotional, young puppy,” she replied, teasing even in the fragility of her tone, and the ache in my chest deepened.

  “One day, you’ll stop seeing me as a puppy,” I whispered.

  “I never did,” she said, soft and warm, her calm steadfast even through the tremor in her voice. “I only teased.”

  “Promise me you’ll try and find a way out?”

  “I promise.” Her answer was soft, sacred, a thread tying us together even as we were torn apart.

  I reluctantly let go of her hand and drew in a trembling breath, legs carrying me toward the dim light of the tunnel’s mouth.

  “I’ll send help. Just hold on,” I said.

  “Okay,” her voice came, soft as wind through leaves, weaker than before but unwavering.

  “I’ll see you later, Spook,” she whispered, farewell braided into the words.

  “I’ll see you soon, princess,” I promised, stepping into the shadows, leaving behind the bravest, most adventurous woman I had ever known. Her courage, her cunning, her wild, untamable spirit lingered like a spell in the air, and I carried it with me, aching and determined, as I ran toward hope.

  ? ? ?

  It didn’t take long to catch up with Faelwen, Artemis, and Ash. Their trail was almost theatrical. Scorched earth marking Faelwen’s defiance, a silent testament to her fight against Ash’s hold. The air smelled of burned stone and sweat. I found them collapsed together, raw and exhausted. Ash slumped against a jagged rock, his skin marred, knuckles red and cracked, dark crescents of fatigue painting shadows beneath his eyes. Faelwen knelt beside him, shoulders bowed, breaths ragged, her hair falling in wild, tangled strands over her dirt-streaked face. And Artemis his fur grey from the dust, his face fallen.

  “Everything alright here?” My voice was cautious, gentle, carrying the tremor of the tunnels’ darkness still clinging to me. Faelwen looked up, and the sight of her… bruised wrists, smudged dirt across her pale skin, the subtle glitter of unshed tears in her lashes, struck something fierce and tender in me.

  “Where is Elora?” she whispered. Her voice carried the weight of all the grief we had yet to name.

  I swallowed hard, each word a painful shard. “I couldn’t get her out. We’ll need more hands. We have to reach Sylvaeris.”

  A voice, silk and steel in equal measure, slithered through the clearing. “The lord and lady of Sylvaeris are not fond of strangers.”

  The words were in common with an elvish accent.

  My body spun before thought could claim it, blade snapping into my hand. Too late.

  A boot swept my legs, sending me crashing onto the dirt beside Faelwen and Ash. Pain bloomed in my ribs.

  Artemis moved in front of us, growling, his form a protective barrier, the forest whispering around him.

  Four elves emerged, draped in grey, longbows coiled over their shoulders, faces hidden beneath masks of leaves. Their presence was both elegant and predatory, an otherworldly tension that hummed beneath the soil and trees alike.

  The elf who had struck me leaned slightly, a predator’s poise, threading his words. “Tell me your purpose here,” he hissed, voice curling like smoke. “Do so, and perhaps I’ll be gentle.”

  Even in that moment, with danger pressing and heart still weighted with the absence of Elora, the world shimmered around me. Grief, fear and stubborn hope dancing together. I could feel her there, in the quiet tremble of the forest and the memory of her voice, urging me onward. And I would not, could not, fail her.