Page 227 of Salt Between the Wolves

When he asked about Ilva, she found herself smiling despite everything.

"She's impossible."

Leander laughed softly.

"That is one of her better qualities."

The answer earned a genuine smile from Eira, but it vanished almost immediately as the memory returned with unsettling clarity: the fear, the pain, and the sudden certainty that something had happened far beyond the mountains.

Leander noticed, as he always seemed to.

His gaze lingered on her for a moment longer than usual.

"The archives disappointed you?"

The question pulled her from her thoughts.

"What?"

"The look," he said with a small gesture of his hand. "Most people leave the archives either excited or overwhelmed. You look neither."

Eira glanced down at her plate.

For a moment she considered claiming she was tired. It would have been an easy explanation, and one he would probably accept without question.

Instead, she heard herself say, "Something happened."

Leander did not respond immediately, but there was something in the silence that invited her to continue.

She almost did.

For a brief moment, she considered telling him about the sudden fear that had not felt like her own, the pain that had followed, and the certainty she still could not explain.

The words rose as far as her throat before she stopped them.

Speaking them aloud felt strangely wrong, not because she feared sounding irrational, but because the experience itself seemed too personal to share.

It felt as though she would be exposing something that belonged to someone else as much as it belonged to her.

Someone far away. Someone she had left behind. The realization unsettled her more than the experience itself.

"Nothing I can explain," she said at last, shaking her head.

Leander studied her quietly.

He did not look convinced, yet neither did he press the matter further, and after a moment he simply reached for his glass.

"Tomorrow I'd like to show you something."

The abrupt change of subject caught her off guard.

"What?"

"A place."

His answer was so unhelpfully vague that Eira immediately regretted asking.

"What kind of place?"