CHAPTER 750: THE ELDER OF RETURN (3)

"Hive?" His voice came out low, as if he didn’t want to wake the cliff.

Pinging.

He held very still with his mouth closed and his ribs a little lifted. The answer came like a note plucked on a string running through his spine: thin, proud, patient. Not loud, not demanding—present. The Queen. Faint, but hers. A pressure in the air behind the thought, like a distant heartbeat he remembered from a dream.

Chimera hive signature within range. Probable outer valley, west face. We are near Silvarion Thalor.

Silvarion. The word settled into him like warm bread. He swallowed once, because the inside of his mouth had gone dry from all the sudden geography.

He checked his pack the way fingers check a pulse—quick, exact. Pebbles left, yes; he could feel the smoothness. Sap gone; the vial had been bled honest. Elites re-leashed; tokens heavy and quiet. Knuckles scraped; skin sang a small song that promised scabs later. Pride intact and still too chatty. Stay quiet, you. We’re standing on a cliff.

Elowen is near. The thought came first, steady as a step. He could see her in his head, not the crown, not the hall, just the way she stands when she decides something: spine tall, hands still, eyes soft and dangerous at once. The way she says nothing and makes other people empty their pockets of foolishness. Lira will have the doors open and the tea not too hot. He pictured the ponytail like a dark ribbon, the little tilt of her wrist when she poured. The way she cleaned worry off his coat with a cloth as if it were dust. Cerys will be in the hall pretending to be a statue with a sword. He saw the set of her mouth, the careful stillness she wore like armor. The gentleness she would never admit to, folded under iron. Serelith will be somewhere she shouldn’t, smiling too much. He did not picture that one long. His ears warmed.

He laughed once under his breath, a small sound that the trees accepted and did not throw back. The laugh was as much relief as humor. He allowed it and then put it away.

"All right," he said softly, to the wind and the cliff and whoever else was polite enough to listen without repeating. "Let’s go home without breaking anything."

Define ’anything.’

"My face. The city. The rules."

Ambitious.

He grinned at the dark, but it was a short grin. He turned from the drop with care. The cold bit his cheeks in a way that felt like a clean hand washing them. He liked that. It made him feel almost new.

He set his feet for rude steps—the kind that make would-be patterns sulk. Heel heavier than fashion allowed. Toe touch brief. Pauses not where the poem expects. He could hear his old teacher in his head, scolding him for walking like a drunk. I am drunk, he told the ghost-teacher. On being alive.

"Seven nights," he said, not loud, not quiet—just enough for the promise to hear itself. He said it to the dark, to the neat memory of a placard tied high where sun had warmed it. He said it to a commander whose hands tied knots like laws and who chose boring miracles almost as often as he did. "I keep my word."

The trees didn’t applaud. They did something better. They listened like old friends who don’t need proof. The needles shifted without turning it into a beat. He stepped into them and gave the night nothing to eat. No rhythm. No claps. Only stubborn, ugly footwork and air that moved around him as if he belonged.

He did not look back at the cliff. He didn’t have to. The shape of the drop lived in his muscles, the warning stored in calves and ankles. He let his body own that memory and he moved on with the rest.

The ground here wore a thin crust of frost. It cracked in quiet syllables under his weight—soft k, softer k, then just breath. He chose where to place each foot like he was writing a sentence only the dirt would read. He avoided roots that liked to catch toes. He stepped over places where water remembered an old habit. He let his hand brush a trunk once, twice—to greet, not to balance.

Behind him, far away and too close both, the grove sighed. It had the particular sound of a conversation cut off by a bell. It made him think of school. It made him think of Elowen’s council table. It made him think of doors. He did not turn his head.

Ahead, the valley held its breath. It was the kind of held breath kingdoms do before they decide what kind of morning to allow. Forgiveness takes more air than anger. He hoped the valley had practiced.

He moved like a man who enjoyed the joke of getting to move at all. The cloak sat right on his shoulders now, ash damp resolving into the smell of rain that left a week ago. The resin seam stuck once and then let go. He patted it as if to say good cloak. He felt like an idiot for doing that. He did it anyway.

He put one hand to the pack strap and checked each pocket by touch again because he always did when night pushed against him. Pebbles. Tokens. Cloth. He tapped once where the sap had been. Empty. Next time, take two. Next time, bring the better vial. He liked how the small practical thought pushed back the last of the banishment sting. Practical beats panic.

The wind shifted and brought him a smell he had not known he missed: wet stone from the river’s lie, a whiff of wood smoke from somewhere human, a thin belt of city—metal, soap, candle tallow, leather, ink. He breathed it in slow as if it were soup too hot for a careless mouth.

The hive tether remains stable, came the cool line in his head. Signal strength is improving as you descend. I recommend an oblique route to avoid the two shallow echo pockets between here and the valley floor.

"Oblique I can do," he murmured. He angled left where the slope offered a polite argument. He placed his feet on unpretty beats. He imagined he was stepping around the mouths of sleeping gods. It helped.

A fox ghosted across his path, low and red as if made from the last bit of sunset. It looked at him, considered if he was edible or boring, and chose boring. He nodded to it, grateful for the review.

The stars shifted overhead, not much, but enough that his eyes did the thing where the sky feels bigger than your body can hold. He let the small fear of that live in his chest for two breaths, then traded it for the math of steps and distance. Math was a good blanket.

He adjusted the cloak again when a branch tried to taste it. He kept his hands out of his pockets. He let cold take his fingers just enough to keep him honest. He memorized the slope—the way it wanted to collect his weight and run away with it—and put that in the same drawer as cliff and grove.

Don’t be a boy about it, he reminded himself. Be a man. He wasn’t sure what that meant, except maybe: do your work, say less, promise what you can keep, make the joke only after the danger’s finished speaking.

He kept going, small noises tasting his boots and letting him pass. A crown of ice on a puddle tried to crack into a rhythm under his heel. He stepped aside and let the ice be whole. A tangle of roots reached for his ankle like a lazy cat; he lifted his foot in time and gave the roots a rude look. They ignored him, as was right.

He did not think about sleeping or eating or how his shoulders burned a little now from the grab at the thorn bush. He thought about the path, about air, about the promise he had made. He carried the shape of Elowen’s calm in his chest like a borrowed lamp. He carried the knot on the cloth under Talatha’s map like a weight balanced on the back of his tongue.

He did not rehearse what he would say when he reached the city. He did not pre-write the apology for being late. He did not sharpen words to use on people who deserved dull ones. He walked.

Branches whispered. Stones decided not to roll. The night, having decided he was boring, let him be.

Behind him, very far and very near, the grove’s disappointed sigh folded back into the trees. Ahead, the valley kept holding that breath, as if waiting to see if he would keep his own.

He went on.