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“He always notices things nobody else does,” Elowynn said.

“Like you,” her mother smirked. There was a sparkle in her crystal blue gaze before she focused once again on the embroidery.

Elowynn opened her mouth to protest before realizing she had no actual argument against that. So instead, she looked out the window, considering.

Outside, the abbey bells began their evening tolling.

Low. Soft. Mournful.

Elowynn listened, expecting the old fear to return. But it never came.

Instead, she found herself thinking of a snow-covered library and a boy pretending not to listen to teachings while organizing books. She thought of a lantern glowing between old shelves and a garden alcove sheltered from the rain.

Somewhere over the last two turnings, the bells had stopped sounding like loss. Elowynn smiled to herself and leaned deeper into the warmth of the hearth while their song echoed through Lumenshire Abbey.

Chapter Three

“During Frostmere, the stars appear closest to the world. Some scholars believed this was why grief often felt stronger beneath winter skies.”

— Celestial Observances of Aetheris, 4th Edition

Frostmere, 745 A.V.

There had been very little news from the north about the Ash Wars over the summer and autumn moons.

The moon had arrived in a particularly brutal fashion. The Sisters had been talking about it constantly, saying it was the worst they had seen or heard about in centuries.

Storms rolled endlessly from the western sea and battered the cliffs below the abbey, hard enough to rattle the stained-glass windows deep into the nights. Snow lay in thick layers across rooftops and cloisters while bitter wind howled through the stone archways connecting the abbey wings. The sea had turned black and violent beneath the winter skies, waves crashing against the cliffs with enough force to shake the lower halls during the especially vicious storms; some of the lower cliff face had even broken off from the relentless beating of the sea.

The bells of Lumenshire were clanging chaotically through it all.

Even the Sisters had begun complaining about the cold, and the Sisters rarely complained about anything. They kept their voices low, however, careful not to let the younger children of the abbey hear too much fear beneath their words.

But as always, Elowynn had found a way to listen anyway.

She stood beside one of the frost-laced observatory windows with a new wool shawl she had received as a gift from her mother. Seralyth had taken the summer moons to make it for her in the loveliest of violet-dyed wools. It was wrapped around her shoulders while snow spiraled endlessly beyond the glass and as the sea below churned dark and furious.

Three turnings.

That was how long she had lived here now.

Astermere remained vivid enough in memory to be a constant ache beneath her ribs, yet Lumenshire no longer felt foreign beneath her feet. She knew the abbey now in all its little habits and hidden rhythms. And she knew where Caelyn usually was at nearly every bell of every sun.

And right now, even without hearing his footsteps or hearing him speak, she could feel him nearby.

A moment later, his voice carried across the observatory.

“You are thinking much too loudly again. I can see a cloud of thoughts above your head,” he teased.

Over the last turning, his voice had begun to deepen. Every now and then it cracked unexpectedly, and each time it happened, Caelyn looked momentarily horrified before his cheeks turned pink. Elowynn always found it endearing, though she never teased him about it.

Elowynn glanced sideways at him, unsurprised to find him there. One brow lifted in his direction.

Caelyn sat atop one of the observatory tables nearby with a dismantled astrylite lantern spread across his lap. He had grown quite a lot over the last several moons. At fifteen turnings, his shoulders had become even wider, his arms a bit bulkier, and his dark hair now fell in waves to his shoulders; he often kept it tied away from his face while working. He still carried that same shy demeanor within him, but boyhood no longer softened the lines and angles beginning to settle into his face.

“You cannot hear thoughts,” she calmly informed him.

“No,” he agreed while tightening one of the lantern screws carefully. “But your face does that thing again.”