Kaelen’s POV

I grabbed the carriage keys off the desk before Brenna’s last word had even settled in the air.

"Let’s go. Now."

Brenna’s hand shot out. Her fingers clamped around my wrist with a grip that would have impressed a seasoned knight. She didn’t let go.

"No."

"Brenna—"

"Sit down."

"I am not going to sit down while she’s out there—"

"And I am not going to let you ride out like a madman and risk you falling apart if you come up empty-handed again." Her voice stayed low. Controlled. But her eyes were hard as flint. "We plan this. We do it smart."

My jaw clenched so tight my molars ached.

She was right. I hated that she was right.

"Fine," I breathed out.

She released my wrist. Red marks from her astonishing grip lingered on my skin. "Give me an hour. I’ll pack my overnight bag and meet you at the front gate."

She left. I stood in the empty study, the carriage keys biting into my palm, and forced myself to breathe.

An hour later, the sun was bleeding red along the horizon as dusk settled. I carried my travel bag down the front steps. The air smelled like damp grass and chimney smoke. Somewhere in the gardens, a bird was singing something unbearably sweet.

Brenna was already at the gate, packing her overnight bag into the carriage. She looked like she hadn’t slept either.

"Ready?" she asked.

"An hour ago."

A small voice stopped me cold.

"Daddy?"

I turned. Valerius stood on the front porch in his sleeping clothes. His black curls were a disaster—sticking up on one side, flattened on the other. His dark gold eyes caught the evening light and held it.

He was barefoot. The stone must have been freezing.

"Hey, buddy." I crouched down to his level. "What are you doing up?"

He studied my face. Not the way a child studies a face—looking for a smile or a game. The way a man studies a map. Reading terrain.

"Are you going to find Mommy?"

The air left my lungs.

"What makes you say that?" I kept my voice light. Easy. The mask I wore for him was the most exhausting one of all.

"Because you have your travel bag. And you’re sad again." He tilted his head. Those gold eyes—my eyes—didn’t blink. "You’re always sad now. Even when you smile."

Something cracked inside my chest. Deep. Structural.

I pulled him into my arms. He was warm and small and smelled like the lavender soap Lady Sarah used for his baths. His little hands fisted in the collar of my coat.

"I’m going on a trip, sweetheart. Just for a day or two."

"To find Mommy."

It wasn’t a question.

I held him tighter. Pressed my lips against his tangled hair.

"Yeah," I whispered. "To find Mommy."

"Promise you’ll bring her home?"

The words cut. They cut because I wanted to promise. Wanted it more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life. But I’d learned what broken promises did to children. I’d been that child once.

"I’m going to try, buddy. I’m going to try so hard."

He pulled back and looked at me. Searched my face again with that devastating perception that no child his age should possess.

"Okay," he said quietly. Then, softer: "Tell her I miss her. Tell her Lyra cries at night and I sing to her but it’s not the same."

I couldn’t speak. My throat had sealed shut.

I kissed his forehead. Stood. Took his hand and walked him back inside to where Lady Sarah was already hurrying down the stairs in her robe, apologizing.

"It’s fine," I told her. "Watch them both. Don’t let him skip meals."

"Of course, Your Majesty."

Valerius didn’t cry when I left. He just stood in the doorway, small and still, watching me go.

That was worse.

---

We endured a tense, four-hour carriage ride.

Brenna sat across from me, her satchel on her lap, watching the countryside scroll past in silence. The road narrowed as we left the capital’s outskirts—wide imperial highways giving way to a narrow, two-lane highway. We drove for ten miles along the winding road to reach the rural town center.

Neither of us spoke for the first hour.

I stared out the window and didn’t see any of it. My mind was running the same circuit it had been running for three weeks. The same questions. The same dead ends. The same suffocating spiral.

What do I say to her?

That was the one I couldn’t answer. I’d rehearsed a thousand versions in the dark. Lying in our bed—her side still dented, her pillow still carrying the ghost of her scent—I’d whispered words to the ceiling like a man praying to a god who’d stopped listening.

Come home. I need you. The children need you. I can’t do this alone. I don’t know how to do this alone.

But none of it addressed the core of it. The reason she left.

She didn’t leave because she didn’t love me. The letter made that agonizingly clear. She left because she believed she wasn’t enough. Because somewhere in that beautiful, brilliant mind, she’d convinced herself that she was a burden. That the children and I would be better off without her.

How do you argue against a wound that deep? What words could possibly reach a woman who’d spent her entire life being told she was worthless—and had finally started to believe it again?

"Stop."

I blinked. Brenna was watching me.

"Stop what?"

"Whatever you’re doing in your head right now. I can hear it from here." She shifted in her seat. "You’re spiraling."

"I’m thinking."

"Same thing, with you." She pulled a water flask from her bag and held it out. "Drink. When’s the last time you ate?"

I ignored the flask. "What if she doesn’t want to come back?"

The question hung between us like smoke.

Brenna didn’t flinch. "Then we deal with that when it happens. Not before."

"She asked me not to look for her."

"And you love her too much to listen. She knows that. On some level, she’s counting on it." Brenna’s voice softened. "Elara doesn’t want to be abandoned, Kaelen. She’s just terrified of being a burden. There’s a difference."

I took the flask. Drank. The water tasted like nothing.

The road grew rougher. The birch trees thickened into dense forest, then thinned again as we crested a ridge and a valley opened below—patchwork fields, stone fences, a cluster of buildings around a single main road.

A rural town. Small. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s name and strangers were noticed immediately.

The kind of place a woman could hide.

Brenna leaned forward, peering through the glass. "That’s it. Morrison’s place should be on the eastern edge. Past the town square."

The carriage rolled through the center. A general store. A tavern with a crooked sign. An old stone church. Faces turned as we passed—curious, guarded. My carriage was too fine for this road. My expensive court coat too out of place. Every detail about me screamed outsider.

I didn’t care.

"There." Brenna pointed.

The Morrison blacksmith shop sat at the end of a gravel lane. The building was old but well-maintained—thick timber walls, a sturdy roof, tools hanging in neat rows along an exterior rack. Smoke drifted from a chimney at the back. A vegetable garden bordered the side yard, freshly tended.

I was out of the carriage before it fully stopped.

Gravel crunched under my boots. The evening air carried the smell of woodsmoke and heated iron. I crossed the yard in long strides toward the front door of the attached house—

And froze.

Voices. From inside. Muffled by the walls, but unmistakable.

A man’s voice first. Low. Warm. Saying something I couldn’t make out.

Then laughter.

Her laughter.

Soft. Musical. Like wind through silver chimes. I’d know that sound in a crowd of thousands. I’d know it on my deathbed.

Elara.

My heart slammed against my ribs so violently I thought my sternum would crack.

I reached the door in two steps and hammered my fist against it.

"Elara!"

Silence inside. Dead, instant silence.

I pounded again. "Elara, I know you’re in there! Open the door!"

Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. Not hers.

The door swung open.

Finnian Morrison filled the frame. Tall—nearly my height. Broad shoulders. Tousled golden hair. He wore denim trousers and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms corded with muscle from years at the forge. His blue eyes swept over me—my expensive court coat, my polished boots, the imperial signet ring on my hand—and something cold settled into his expression.

"Kaelen." Not Your Majesty. Just my name. Flat. Unimpressed.

"Is she here?" The words tore out of me, carrying all the desperation I’d swallowed for three weeks. "Is Ela here?"

Something flickered across Finnian’s face.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he said calmly.