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Elowynn pursed her lips. “I wanted to brood like men in the storybooks.”

“Now that sounds more accurate,” he teased, leaning close enough to nudge her with his arm.

A reluctant smile touched her mouth.

Caelyn leaned down beside her to rest his arms against the stone railing overlooking the sea below. The wind tugged at strands of their hair and cloaks. For several moments, neither spoke. They simply watched the setting sun.

Eventually, the final evening bells rolled through Lumenshire beneath the fog.

“El?” he asked, breaking the silence.

She glanced toward him. “Hmm?”

“You don’t have to read all of it at once, you know.”

A slow exhale escaped her, and she turned back toward the sea. “I thought if I learned enough about the wars—” Her throat constricted, the words sticking. “I thought… maybe the fall of Astermere would make more sense. You know?”

Caelyn said nothing, which seemed to make it easier for her to continue.

“But the more I read, the less any of it makes sense.” She shook her head. “How did the world become this broken, Caelyn?”

Sea spray rode the wind, stinging her eyes as silence settled between them.

With a deep inhale, Caelyn pushed up, leaning with his palms along the stone railing. “Honestly? I think it happened slowly at first. None of it happened overnight.”

Elowynn looked toward him again, his words finding purchase.

“People probably believed they still had time,” he continued. “Time to stop it. Time to fix it. And then one sun…” His gaze moved toward the darkening horizon beyond the cliffs. “They didn't. Their time ran out.”

The simplicity of the answer hollowed something inside her chest.

It felt true.

Her chin wobbled, tears threatening to fall as she looked down at the sea.

“Elowynn.”

The way he said her name made her look up again. Caelyn studied her carefully, his kind, forest-colored eyes shadowed beneath the fading light.

"You speak about the fall as though you should have been able to stop it." He leaned his head down, meeting her gaze. "You don’t have to keep punishing yourself for living through it."

Her breath caught.

She had hidden that guilt beneath layers of grief for so many turnings that she'd almost convinced herself it wasn't there.

But he saw it anyway. He saw her.

The ache inside her chest shifted painfully, and tears began to leak from her eyes. She swiped them away in haste.

“I just do not understand how you seem to notice all that you do,” she whispered in a sniffle.

A smile touched his mouth, and he lifted an arm, opening it to her. Elowynn leaned into his side without hesitation, taking comfort in his warmth and the friendship he freely gave her.

“So do you, though,” he said into her hair.

Beneath the sea fog and fading light, Elowynn realized there was something more terrifying than the histories waiting inside those books.

Somewhere over the turnings, Caelyn had become the person who understood her most completely. More than even her own mother. Sometimes, she suspected, more than she understood herself.