She thought of Theia’s face, the light in her eyes. Theia had always leaned on her mother for guidance, for strength. She had already lost her father, to lose her mother now…
Alora needed to be there, to hold her, to promise that she wasn’t alone. But she was trapped here, buried under a mountain that didn’t belong to her.
Only Rune could let her out.
Alora’s gaze drifted upward to the ceiling, where faint white veins of calcite shimmered.
“Karag Dûr,” she whispered, unsure if she spoke to the stone or the shadows themselves. “Can I see him?”
The silence was heavy.
It had been three weeks since she last saw Rune.
Had her husband grown bored of her? Or was this some new punishment?
The thought unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.
Alora often dreamed of Rune.
The edge of his form standing in the sun, the whisper of his shadows curling through her sleep, calling her name. The heat of his hands, his mouth against her skin, left her waking flustered and ashamed of the ache between her legs that followed. Sometimes she woke certain he had been beside her, the sheets still warm where no one had lain.
Even in his absence, Alora still felt him.
Rune’s consciousness lived in the walls of Karag Dûr, as though he were watching, listening, breathing with the mountain itself. At times, she swore he could hear her.
One afternoon, when loneliness and nostalgia gnawed deep, Alora spoke to Nexus aloud.
She told him of the Midlands, the rolling meadows and the fairies she used to sing to. Bramble, the grumpy hedge goblin; her godmother and her stuffy lessons; the loneliness of her quiet cottage. Her favorite reprieve in those days had been the little book shops she visited in town: the scent of parchment and rain, the peace of corners where no one demanded anything of her.
The next morning, a door appeared where there hadn’t been one before.
It waited at the edge of her garden cavern, carved from black stone veined with silver. She hesitated a moment before opening it.
Inside lay a room she had never seen. Velvet carpet, dark shelves heavy with leather-bound volumes, a single armchair before a tall window spilling sunlight across the floor.
Her breath caught.
It was a library.
Every detail was curated by unseen hands: the faint warmth of the fire, the ink-scented air, the soft hum of shadow magic holding the room together. Alora sank into the velvet chair, the light haloing her in gold. For the first time in weeks, she smiled. But the warmth in her chest flickered with unease.
He was merely making the cage more comfortable.
Still, she wandered the library, tracing her fingertips along the spines until one caught her eye. It was tucked in the corner on the bottom shelf, forgotten or hidden. The cover was bound in black leather, its edges worn by time. No title. When she opened it, the paper whispered beneath her touch, aged and yellowed by time.
Her fingers stilled when seeing the elegant black script inside.
She knew that handwriting.
The long, slanted strokes. The sharpness of theS, the flourish of theR. She had seen it once before.
The first time she had called on the dark.
Alora skimmed through the pages, reading Rune’s thoughts, and sometimes his sketches. Her eyes paused on a passage where the ink had spilled, splattered with wine stains, the letters careless as if written on a night he had too much to drink.
They clamor for eternity,
andbargain gold for time.
