Page 207 of Of Iron and Moonlight

Njall blinked rain from his lashes. “I had not looked at it that way.”

“It deserves consideration,” Kalaetzu said. “Miraval is fervent, but he is not cruel. He stands secure in his place as High King, the strongest of Ameriel’s line. A ruler who does not doubt his own legitimacy has no need to rule by terror.”

Njall thought of Avonsperra’s golden dunes. Aurumierra’s hot deserts instead of Norrelia’s relentless cold. His mother’s homeland. A part of himself he had spent his entire life avoiding. Perhaps he could face it now. Perhaps it was time to.

“I will see you as far as Calvessa.”

“That would please me,” Kalaetzu replied, a private smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Then, more quietly, “And if you ever find yourself without shelter, there will always be a place for you with me in Verdanai.”

Njall turned to him, almost startled. The sincerity settled deeply in his chest.

“Thank you.”

Kalaetzu inclined his head.

Njall drew in a long breath, and some measure of tension left his shoulders. “Let’s remain here tonight.” He paused, then added, “Just long enough to be certain they are safe.”

Kalaetzu gave a sly, knowing look but left the thought unspoken. “The rain does not seem inclined to stop,” he said instead, glancing up at the dark clouds. He crossed to a nearby tree and began setting their small camp beneath its sheltering branches.

Njall joined him, working in quiet cooperation to rig a cover against the drizzle. As his hands moved, his thoughts did not rest. He began the slow, grueling task of pulling them apart, examining each strand instead of letting the knot tighten further.

“You have lived a very long life,” he said suddenly. In truth, the next question had forced its way to the surface. “How does one know when it is love?”

Kalaetzu regarded him with mild amusement. “What do you think?”

Njall hesitated. His mind flickered first to Astriyed. “There was a time I believed I was in love,” he said slowly. “She was the most beautiful female I had ever seen. I felt drawn to her from the first moment. Just being near her felt exhilarating.”

Kalaetzu raised a brow. “And why do you doubt it was love?”

“I have not thought of her once—not truly—since we left Selenar,” Njall said.

A soft chuckle. “Then no. That is not love.”

Njall turned toward him, surprised by the certainty.

“Not a single hour passed during my years of captivity without Denzato in my thoughts,” Kalaetzu continued. There was no embellishment in it. Only truth. “Love is feeling their hurt as though it were your own. It is finding laughter simply because they do. It is watching the walls you keep with others fall away without effort. It is realizing they occupy so much of you that you are no longer certain where you end and they begin.”

Njall swallowed.

Kalaetzu settled himself beneath the tree, his expression softening tenfold. “It is perhaps the freckles scattered across their cheeks. Their stubborn courage. The way their mind twists a hopeless situation into something clever and unexpected. The way they take two fractured halves and fit them into something stronger.”

Elara.

“You know?” Njall asked, searching Kalaetzu’s face.

Kalaetzu’s grin was warm and impossibly kind. “Child, every time she stumbled, you looked as though your heart might follow her to the ground. It was not difficult to see.”

Njall bit down on his tongue to keep the sound in his throat from breaking loose. “She deserves someone better. Perhaps she and Gavriel…” His voice faltered. “Perhaps they could have a happy life together.”

“Gavriel has burdens of his own,” Kalaetzu said gently. “And a long path ahead in mending what was done to him. Some wounds lie too deep to show on the skin.”

Njall turned his face toward the orange horizon to hide the blur in his eyes. “It changes nothing,” he said. “It is better this way. We were meant to part.” The words scraped him raw from within. “She will never forgive me.”

“Ah.” Kalaetzu sighed, not heavily. “There is something else you should know about love.” He smiled faintly. “Not always quickly. Not without pain. But it tends to forgive.”

Without further explanation, Kalaetzu turned onto his side beneath the branches and slipped into sleep with the ease of someone who had endured many storms.

Njall willed the tremor beneath his ribs to quiet, then returned to his place overlooking the basin and the shadowed outline of Netherfen Hallows. Even as the possibility of seeing her again thinned with every passing breath, some stubborn part of him held fast to the last place he had seen her, as though the space itself still carried her imprint.