Chapter 197

*Elora*

The wind was too quiet.

Not soft—quiet. Like it had nothing left to say. Like it had listened to everything I’d screamed into it earlier and decided, simply, to hush. I sat outside the eastern hall on one of the stone benches that faced the leyline canyon, arms wrapped around my knees, Kaelen’s absence like a hollow beside me.

The bond wasn’t broken.

But it had thinned again.

Like a pulled