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The coat came free at last, heavy with blood and shredded along the back from the crystal shards. His shirt followed only after Alyra cut through the worst of the torn fabric with the edge of a small blade pulled from her boot.

Elowynn just stared at her.

“How did I not know you were so… resourceful?” she asked.

Alyra didn't pause in her work. “The world is considerably less safe than you think it is, Elowynn.”

Lora pointed at her. “See? This is exactly the sort of thing she says right before revealing she’s got four additional knives hidden somewhere.”

“Three,” Alyra corrected.

“Three?” Lora repeated.

“Yes, three now.” Alyra returned her attention to Caelyn. “I’m using the fourth.”

A bemused expression had appeared on Elowynn’s face as she looked between the pair.

A snort was heard from near the doorway, and all three women turned to look at Korvel. He had the good decency to clear his throat before he turned back around to keep watch.

Lora had her eyes narrowed at him, and Elowynn went back to looking at Caelyn.

When the cloth peeled away from his back, the three of them went silent in a way that had nothing to do with the chaos of the world outside those walls.

Elowynn sucked in a sharp breath.

Scars crossed Caelyn’s back and arms in pale, uneven lines. Some were thin and silvered with age. Others were broader, raised in places where the skin had not healed cleanly. There were marks that looked like claws, others like burns, and several along his ribs that seemed too precise to have come from accident or labor.

They layered over one another in a history she had not been there to witness.

Five turnings. The number had already felt large. It had stretched between them in letters and unsent confessions, in winters apart and in silence that neither of them had known how to cross.

Now those five turnings had a shape; they had edges and scars. Elowynn’s vision blurred before she forced herself to blink to clear it.

Caelyn’s head remained bowed. He had been willing to show the darkness in his eyes, the frost beneath his hands, the ruin Blackwake was making of him. But this had embarrassed him more.

These were not signs of power. They were proof of what life had done to him when she was not there. Her chin wobbled, and she leaned forward, unable to stop herself.

She pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes.

Caelyn froze. For one awful heartbeat she thought she had made a mistake. Then his breath left him in a slow, uneven exhale. His shoulders relaxed beneath her hands, and Elowynn suddenly understood that he had been expecting pity.

Not this. Not silent comfort.

Alyra worked with brisk care, cleaning blood from the first wound before gripping the nearest shard with a folded strip of cloth.

“Hold him steady,” she said.

At once, Elowynn shifted closer. One hand moved to Caelyn’s shoulder, and the other found his wrist again. His skin felt too cold beneath her fingers. The moment her thumb brushed the inside of his wrist, the frost creeping along the floorboards near his knee withdrew.

Everyone noticed again, but no one mentioned it.

Alyra pulled the first shard free and Caelyn’s entire body locked. His fingers clenched around Elowynn’s wrist hard enough to hurt, but she didn't move, knowing he was not doing it on purpose. She only leaned closer, letting her forehead continue to rest against his temple.

“I have you,” she murmured.

His breath shuddered against her skin.

The second shard came out with more blood. The third was deeper, buried beneath torn muscle near his shoulder blade, and when Alyra worked it free, Caelyn made a sound he couldn't quite swallow. Elowynn felt it move through him before she heard it, felt the pain travel beneath his skin into the hand still gripping hers.