Elara clasped her hands before her, hoping he didn’t notice how tightly she held them. “If I travel throughout the kingdom, my visions will surely show me something. If the healer is within reach, whether footsteps away or days, I believe my visions will lead us to her.”
“Us,” the king echoed. “You mean to travel with your husband.”
Elara nodded. “Aye. Dar knows the land. He has strength to protect us both, and the Hunters obey him.”
A faint flare of displeasure passed through Dar’s eyes, but he remained silent.
The king looked to Dar. “Confirm your wife’s claim.”
Dar hesitated a heartbeat too long.
Elara felt it, felt him struggling with his loyalty—to the king, to her, to whatever lay between them unspoken.
He finally nodded once. “Aye, my king. She has the sight.” His voice dropped to a sober tone. “She knew Hunters were close long before I heard them. Her visions are true.”
Elara’s chest tightened at the note of resignation beneath his words. He did not want this for her. That much was clear. But he would not deny the truth.
The king took a slow, thoughtful step towards Elara. “And you believe these visions will lead you to the healer?”
“If given the chance, I believe they can,” Elara confirmed. “If I concentrate, if I allow the visions to come as they will, I believe I will be shown where I can find the healer.”
The king studied her for a long moment, the weight of his gaze like a cold, heavy hand upon her.
Elara swallowed hard, then kept her voice steady but soft. “I request one thing, my lord, that I believe will further help.” She hesitated only briefly before plunging ahead. “The healers you captured should be released.”
Silence crashed down like a closing gate.
Tavish stiffened.
Muir froze mid-shift beside him.
Feena’s breath hitched with hope and fear tangled together.
Even Dar tensed at her side, as if bracing for the king’s wrath.
The king’s blue eyes narrowed dangerously and his voice bit cold and furious. “So, this is all a ruse to free your kind?”
Elara pressed on before he could lash out further. “Nay, my king. As I said before, with Muir’s wound healed overnight”—she gestured faintly toward him—“then the exceptional healer you seek is still out there.”
The king’s expression did not soften, but his stillness shifted, cold curiosity edging through his anger.
Elara continued, her voice gaining strength with each word. “Healers thrive only when surrounded by their own. Fear weakens them. Captivity stifles their gifts. If they are freed and able to return to their homes, to their work, to old memories and old stories, something one of them knows may stir my visions. I may see something useful. A direction. A face. A place.” She took a careful breath. “Keeping them locked away serves no purpose. Allowing them to return home may help me find the one you seek.”
A sharp, cutting silence followed. The kind that made one’s heart beat in their throat.
Dar’s hand landed lightly but protectively at the small of her back, unnoticeable to others, but a strong signal to her. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, he simply stood ready, should the king’s temper turn on her.
The king stepped back by Adira, his gaze shifting between Elara, Dar, Muir’s nearly healed arm, and Adira’s frightened eyes.
“And you claim,” he said slowly, each word stronger than the next, “that freeing the healers will increase your visions?”
Elara met his powerful glare though she shivered inwardly. “It may. If I am meant to see, I will. My visions come not of comfort or captivity, but of need—of what the world itself seems desperate to reveal. If those women are where they belong, the past may stir, and the present may shift enough for me to see what I must.”
The king’s jaw flexed once, a flash of something dark and calculating moving behind his eyes. “And if you are wrong?”
Elara did not waver. “Then you will have lost nothing you did not already lack.”
The chamber fell into a silence so heavy it pressed upon every breath.