Page 77
— Senior Archivist Arcturus Thalvio's private journal
Hearthwane, 750 A.V.
Elowynn sat alone at the desk she had dragged beside the window of her personal rooms moons ago. She was curling a lock of her hair around her finger while watching the early snow gather along the suspended bridges and listening to the early evening bells echo in melodic waves through the tower. She pressed her forehead to the window, trying to peer through the flurries to see them, but the attempt was futile.
Beside her, candles burned low across the pages of scattered books and unfolded star charts. Most of the residential observatory chambers assigned to senior scholars were far grander than the small room she occupied within the upper archive district, but Elowynn had grown strangely fond of the narrow room tucked high within the eastern towers. The ceilings curved overhead in smooth dark stone, veined with faded, dormant astrylite while the enormous circular window overlooked nearly the entire southern half of Veylspire.
On clear nights, the bridges looked like constellations suspended between mountains.
Tonight they disappeared beneath snow squalls.
Elowynn pulled her gaze back to the parchment before her, then dipped her pen into the inkwell again.
Then stopped.
Ink pooled at the tip, making a splotchy mess, the unfinished letter sitting before her.
Caelyn,
I almost wrote to you immediately after—
Her eyes stared at the sentence before she slowly crossed the words out.
Not that. Gods, not that.
She slapped the pen down and leaned back in frustration, pressing tired fingers against her forehead.
Three discarded drafts already lay crumpled near the hearth. The first had been too honest. The second showed too much fear. The third, for the love of all the gods, managed both. It was clear she was terrified and wanted him to know the real threats here. She had spent roughly two bells attempting to explain something she could barely understand herself.
How did one put horror into words? How did one write: I watched civilized people execute someone exactly like you and afterward everyone casually went back to their waiting suppers.
Her stomach twisted into knots again. Even now, nearly two spans later, the memory refused to loosen its grip.
The flash of resonance.
The terrified voice cracking through the square.
“I tried to stop it.”
The spreading frost after his death.
Sometimes she still heard the boy’s terror while trying to sleep.
Elowynn had been unable to write to Caelyn after that. Instead, she had written everything that happened. Everything it had made her feel. Then tossed it into the hearth and watched it turn to ash.
It hadn’t made her feel any better.
Elowynn stared down at the letter again before finally beginning anew.
Caelyn,
Veylspire has begun its first snowfall of the turning already, thus, this will likely be the last letter you receive before the spring thaws. The upper bridges look almost surreal beneath it. Lora insists the mountain districts become impossible to navigate once true winter arrives and claims someone will absolutely fall from a bridge eventually. This is a horrifying thought. I hope that doesn’t happen. I have seen enough dea—
Her pen hesitated briefly.
But I do think you would like the eastern observatories.
The line struck her with a wave of emotion because she could suddenly picture him there with startling clarity—standing beneath the observatory domes with that focused expression he always wore while repairing resonance instruments.
