“It was,” she replies, looking out at the water. “It still is, when the tides are right.”
Then Fenric speaks, his voice low and unhurried.
“My favorite place in Caelir was the skybridge to the observatory. It’s one of the highest points in the city—so high up,it’s often above the clouds.” He opens his eyes, though he doesn’t move from Darius’s lap. “When I was little, my older brother and I used to sneak up there before dawn, even when we weren’t supposed to. The stones would be slick with frost, and the air was so thin and cold it hurt to breathe. But if we timed it just right, we could watch the sunriseoverthe clouds.”
He pauses, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Maybe that’s what the gods see when they look down on us—light swallowing everything.”
Taila smiles at him, a little sideways. “You always get poetic when you talk about home.”
Fenric shrugs. “It’s hard not to. Caelir has that effect on people.”
He closes his eyes again, and Darius rests his hand on Fenric’s chest, a quiet gesture that somehow says everything.
I let my head tip back against the oak tree and close my eyes too.
They speak of home like it’s a song buried in their bones. Something that shaped them, still echoing now. And I realize—none of us ever left it behind.
Then Lyra shifts beside me, nudging my leg with hers like she knows what I’m thinking.
“You remember the orchard?” I ask her, eyes still closed.
She huffs a quiet laugh. “Which time?”
I smile. “That summer we kept sneaking in to steal peaches before the harvest festival. You fell out of the tree and blamed the wind for pushing you.”
Taila snorts, and Fenric cracks an eye open.
“Itwasa strong breeze,” Lyra says, utterly deadpan. “Very aggressive weather that day.”
I open my eyes and glance around at them.
“It wasn’t anything like your cities. We didn’t have skybridges or glowing caves. We had muddy paths and chickens thatfollowed you around if you fed them once. Market days that started before dawn. Everyone knew everyone. If you did something embarrassing, the whole village knew by lunchtime.”
“We used to race sticks down the stream after rainstorms,” Lyra adds, softer now. “Pretend they were boats off to explore far off lands.”
I nod, the memory curling warm in my chest. “We made everything an adventure because there wasn’t much else. No grand festivals or crystal-lit towers. Just fields, forest, and whatever we could imagine.”
I shift against the tree, brushing a stray leaf from my arm. The warmth of the sun is starting to mellow, the light softer now as it filters through the branches overhead.
“You all know why I’m here,” I say eventually, my voice low. “The prophecy. Spiritborn. Everyone trying to decide what that means—before I’ve even figured it out myself.”
Lyra is quiet beside me. The others don’t interrupt.
“But what about you?” I glance at them—Taila, Darius, Fenric. “You could’ve stayed home. You didn’t have to come here, to the front lines. So . . . why did you?”
Taila leans back on her hands, looking up at the sky through the canopy. “Because Sevrin isn’t safe anymore. The tides are shifting in more than one way. There were raids along the outer villages, then closer. I saw too many families lose everything while the capital tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I didn’t want to wait for it to reach my doorstep.”
Darius nods beside her. “Same. I joined because I was tired of watching the world unravel from the sidelines. I wanted to do something. Be something more than just a healer patching up what the war leaves behind.”
He pauses, then adds, tipping his chin toward Taila, “And because she was going.”
Taila smiles faintly, but doesn’t look at him.
Fenric doesn’t answer right away. He stares at the sky, the wind lifting strands of his pale hair. “Caelir doesn’t feel the war the same way,” he says finally. “It’s high enough, distant enough, that some people think we’re above it. Literally. But we’re not. I joined because I didn’t want to be one of the people who stayed comfortable while the rest of the world burned.”
He closes his eyes again. “And maybe . . . because I needed to prove that I’m not just meant to watch the storm pass from above.”
He pauses, then sits up slowly, his gaze fixed on the lake now instead of the clouds. “My brother died in a battle along the eastern borderlands. He was part of the first wave sent to reinforce the outposts when the raids started getting worse. I was too young at the time to enlist.”
