When Ellowyn and Aeryn slipped back through the garden gate, the mist still clung to the streets of Yal Elunore. While the city slept, Ellowyn's heart pounded so loudly that the stones beneath her feet trembled.
The house was eerily quiet inside. The air was filled only with the faint hiss of the Ether lanterns.
The stolen truths swirled inside Ellowyn like a storm as she fell to the edge of the sitting room, her entire body shaking. Aeryn wrung his hands and hovered, uncertain. He knelt next to her, attempting to steady her trembling shoulders.
He whispered, "Ellie, breathe." "What did you see? What happened?"
She started to speak, but before she could finish, a sharp voice broke the silence.
"What is this ruckus?"
With his robes hurriedly thrown over his nightgown, Caelarion stood in the archway, his silver hair disheveled and his face etched with annoyance. "It's not even morning yet. Have both of you lost all senses?
Aeryn tensed, trying to move in between them. "It's nothing, Father. We..."
However, Ellowyn charged ahead, slicing through him, her voice shaking with anger.
She cut through the room with her words, "Do you know of the dangers Skyland faces right now?"
Caelarion froze.
Ellowyn's eyes were burning as she pressed, "Do you know what is happening beyond the Dome?" "Or are we just pretending everything is fine?"
Their mutual silence became as tense as wire.
Caelarion tightened his jaw. He stated icily, "I have no duty to share diplomatic matters or outside affairs with children." "Skyland is steady. Sylvanmyr is unwavering. That's all you need to know."
His eyes grew steely. "It would be wise for you to stop before your inquiries bring disgrace to this household."
Despite her trembling, Ellowyn refused to give up.
Her father's fiery, fierce eyes met hers as she looked for the man she had once trusted.
With a voice that cracked like dry wood, she asked sourly, "So what would you do?" "Take me to re-education? Just like Talanar?"
Something sharp, invisible but violent, like a taut thread finally breaking, snapped in the air between them at that moment.
Caelarion's nostrils widened. His knuckles whitened from the strain as his fists clenched at his sides. However, his eyes—proud, uncompromising eyes—were the ones that betrayed him the most.
Ellowyn saw it for a heartbeat: a glimpse of something behind them. Not rage. Not power. but fear. Deep, bone-deep fear.
His entire body bristled like a shield raised against a blow, and he quickly covered it up with a hard-locking jaw. However, Ellowyn had witnessed it, and it hit her more forcefully than any yelled warning could.
He's afraid. Not her. Not even of the Dome collapsing. But of the truths she had touched — the ones too dangerous even for him to name.
Caelarion's voice cracked like a whip in the thick air as he shouted "This conversation is over. Go to your chambers. We'll talk more at a more appropriate time."
His robes swirled with imperious, practiced grace as he turned abruptly, ending the argument as all others had.
However, Ellowyn's voice cut through the room like a blade drawn across stone:
"How about Drako?"
It was a whispery word. But it came like a thunderclap.
Caelarion stopped in the middle of his stride.
The air changed abruptly, as though the walls themselves had taken a horrified breath and refused to exhale. The Ether lanterns flickered, casting long, trembling shadows across the floor.
Slowly, painfully slowly, he turned back toward her.
His face was unlike anything Ellowyn had ever seen. His skin had become nearly transparent and bloodless. Slack with shock, his proud mouth had opened a little. And his eyes were wide and glaring with fear, tight, commanding eyes. Mortal, bare-faced fear.
She seemed to have cursed someone or resurrected an old ghost that no living Eldian dared to disturb.
"How..." "How do you know that name?" Caelarion said in a broken, hoarse voice.
Like a man perched on the precipice of a tumbling cliff, Aeryn stood motionless next to them.
No one moved for a long time. Nobody even took a breath.
Ellowyn's heart was beating so fiercely that she was afraid it might burst. However, she stood her ground, using strength she didn't know she had because of the fear she saw in her father's face.
Confused and uneasy, Aeryn glanced between them. "Drako? What is that?
With a twisted mask of fear and panic on his face, Caelarion rounded on them both. He hissed, cutting the air between them with the word, "Silence!" "Never again mention that name. There may be eyes, ears, you know not who listens in this city."
He took a step closer to Ellowyn, his robe rustling on the ground, his hands shaking, the same hands that had once held her on weary shoulders, now clenched into frantic fists.
"What have you done?" Like something old and broken, his voice cracked, low and hoarse.
Despite her heart hammering against her ribs, Ellowyn refused to back down. She hardly raised her voice above a whisper.
She said, "I visited the archive." To find answers. There was a scroll… a glowing one…"
Caelarion stumbled back as though he had been struck. Blindly, his fingers searched for the table's edge, holding on until his knuckles turned white.
He breathed, "The Encloric Scroll," each word weighing more than the one before it. "No. You touched it, Ellowyn. You opened it."
For a moment, he appeared very small and elderly, a crumbling monument to fear, as his knees gave way slightly.
"You have doomed us all," he muttered, his voice tremulous and hollow. "Not just you, but all of us if the Council finds out, we will be banished. Exiled, or even worse."
Aeryn gazed at them both, stunned and wide-eyed, his face losing its color.
Ellowyn's voice broke with unadulterated agony. She stepped forward and exclaimed, "Father… how could you live like this?" "How could you agree to it? We gave up on everything. We allowed Skyland to suffer."
Caelarion's once-sharp and commanding eyes had become vacant and wide, like windows into a long-abandoned house.
His voice was like a ripped piece of fabric as he rasped, "You have no idea." "The horrors outside the Dome are beyond your comprehension. We're safe here. We endure here."
"Here," Ellowyn added quickly, moving forward with a fierce, low voice, "we rot in our pride."
Like a stone thrown through glass, the words shattered the room.
Caelarion winced as though the blow had struck him. In a storm he could no longer control, his face twisted, hurt, angry, and afraid.
He snarled, "You know nothing of survival," but his words lacked conviction.
Ellowyn's voice was steady but thick as she swallowed hard.
"I am aware that Skyland will perish if we remain silent," she stated. "And it will bring down your 'Silent Heaven', your priceless Dome."
The delicate silence seemed to give way under the weight of her words. In their cradles, the very Ether lanterns flickered uneasily.
Caelarion nearly passed out as he stumbled back. He opened his mouth to protest, but he didn't say anything.
His voice was barely human as he rasped, "What are you saying?"
With the memory of Rikuin blazing against her skin like a second heartbeat, Ellowyn clutched the scarf at her heart.
"I saw it," she declared. "The dying ether tree. Everything being consumed by the shadows. The downfall of Skyland. We will all perish as the Kosmic Dome breaks and the Ether fades from the land."
Caelarion's already-pale face became even paler.
He shook his head angrily and stammered, "No... no." "Only records are stored in the Encloric Scroll. Memories. How did you—"
Choking on the words, he broke off.
"No Council member has ever been able to see into the future. However, how?"
Ellowyn's tear-streaked eyes met his.
"You see, father. Pride is no longer the only factor here. It has to do with life. It has to do with hope."
With a shuddering force of conviction, she took a step closer.
"You are capable of speaking the truth in front of the Council."
Still stunned, Caelarion said nothing.
Ellowyn waited for a response while looking into his eyes.
She whispered, "...or I will," and her promise dropped into the room like a sword piercing stone.
Caelarion remained silent for a long, awful heartbeat. The silence was broken only by the brittle hum of the Ether lanterns.
The war in his face, the tearing walls of fear, the old pride straining against the thin, newborn flicker of guilt—all of it was visible to Ellowyn.
She turned away after lowering her head once, slowly and solemnly.
She whispered, "I will not stand by," with a terrible, fierce grace in her voice. "Not anymore."
Clutching the ruined scarf to her heart, she swept out of the room without turning around.
Caelarion, a man shattered not by the future but by the past he had helped create, sank into a chair behind her and stared blankly at the ground.
For a moment, Aeryn lingered in the doorway, his hands twitching at his sides. Then, in silence, he moved across the room and sank down next to his father, lost in a silence that no Dome or walls could protect them from any longer.
-break-
Ellowyn stood in front of the mirror in her chamber, the silence enveloping her like a second skin. She looked back at her reflection, which was older, harder, and thinner. Memorizing the person she had become, she traced the faint lines of her face with trembling fingers.
In order to send another icy spike into Skyland's waning light, the Council would meet tomorrow to finalize the decree against the Kinitu. to make silence a law.
And she would stand if her father didn't. even if she had to pay the price.
She slowly reached for Rikuin's scarf, which was warm despite being worn and burdened with broken promises, and was tied tightly near her chest. Feeling its frayed edge brush against her skin like a silent promise, she tightened her grip.
Like a breath, her voice touched the glass. "I'm not going to be scared."
A borrowed heartbeat against a collapsing world, the vast silver lattice of the Dome pulsed faintly outside. Her own heartbeat responded from inside her chest. steady. Defiant. alive.
Yal Elunore's misty windows let in the pale light of dawn, which shook the polished floors with a shaky glow. The silver threads of Caelarion's ceremonial robes caught the dim light as he stood by the open door, tying the final folds.
His carriage waited outside, silent and dark, the driver rigid in the mist of the morning.
With her heart pounding, Ellowyn hurried over to him. Her voice was raw as she gasped, "Father..." "There's still time. You can still talk, please. You can still act morally.
His hand hovered on the doorframe as he froze for a moment. He turned slowly and looked her in the eye.
At first, it wasn't cold. She briefly caught a glimpse of the man she remembered—the father who had carried her on his shoulders and told her stories about Skyland's former splendors.
Hope flared painfully as she held her breath.
However, the ember died when he spoke.
His voice was as flat as stone as he said, "I always do what is right for our family."
He entered the waiting carriage without saying another word. With a final, heavy thud, the door closed.
With mist encircling her bare feet, Ellowyn stood motionless in the doorway. The clatter of hooves faded away like a heartbeat as she watched the carriage disappear into the fog.
Her stomach churned.
"He won't say anything," she thought. Or worse, he might turn on me.
Her bones felt the chill. Breathless, she staggered.
Then, as if outrunning the breaking of her last shaky hope, she turned abruptly, wiped her sleeve across her moist eyes, and ran back into the house, up the stairs, two at a time.
-break-
She rushed to Aeryn's Chamber where she found him tugging at a cloak in and his face tense with anxiety.
Ellowyn's voice was sharp with urgency as she said, "We have to go," out of breath. "To the Council."
He frowned as he turned to face her. "Ellie, you cannot simply enter the Council Hall. You are aware of that. It takes months to even request an audience, and half the time you're ignored."
She said, "I'm not asking," as her hands at her sides began to shake a little. "I'm going to talk. Whether they want to hear me or not."
Aeryn's mouth dropped open as he gazed at her. His eyes widened in disbelief. He said in a low, almost begging voice, "You'll be arrested before you even cross the threshold."
All Ellowyn could do was stare back, fierce and unwavering, the fire in her chest not letting up.
With a gentle groan, Aeryn ran a hand over his face. "I recognize that expression," he whispered, his mouth twisted in a grimace. "Little fox, what wild scheme are you hatching this time?"
He paced once, twice, and then stopped as his eyes began to open up in realization.
"Don't tell me you want me to sneak you past the guards and into the Council Hall?" he said slowly, nearly choking on his words.
Ellowyn's mouth quirked, almost into a smile.
Her voice was light but steely as she whispered, "You said it, not me."
Aeryn grumbled once more, massaging his temples as though the entire Dome had fallen on his shoulders.
"Oh Shiruba," he whispered. "You're going to throw us both into their deepest pit."
Ellowyn simply extended her arm and lightly touched his sleeve.
She said, "Only if we fail," and her eyes were so bright and certain that even he briefly thought they might not.