Chapter 108: Not Today

Azura’s POV

The warmth hit my face the moment I stepped inside.

The fire had been burning since morning, crackling low and steady in the way fires do when nobody has been paying attention to them, but they have decided to keep going anyway. I did not sit. I moved to the window and stood there with my arms at my sides and looked out at the yard.

The gate was still open from where he had ridden out.

I looked at it for a moment. Then I looked at the road beyond it. Then, at the mist sitting over everything, like it had nowhere better to be.

I turned away from the window.

Liona came in a few minutes later. She did not say anything. She just came inside, closed the door behind her, and sat down on the chair near the wall with the quiet of someone who had already decided that whatever was about to happen, she was going to be present for it without making it about herself.

I looked back at the yard to check for the main person I needed right now.

Torin came in after that. The door opened and closed, and I heard him brushing something off his sleeves. The sound was practical and unhurried, as if he had been doing something outside that involved dirt, and he was dealing with that before attending to anything else.

I turned from the window and faced him.

"We need to leave," I said. "To find the man’s son. The one who might know where the book is."

Torin looked at me. Something in his expression shifted in a way that I did not immediately like.

"Yeah but not today," he said.

I frowned. "What do you mean not today? We have been sitting in this house for weeks. We are not doing anything useful here. We have the time, and we have the reason, and nothing is stopping us from going right now."

"I know you want to go," he said. "I want to go too. But something came up."

"Something came up," I repeated it back to him the way you repeat something when you are trying to understand how it was supposed to make sense. "What does that mean?"

He hesitated. He looked at Liona briefly and then back at me.

"The place we need to reach is not close," he said. "It will take at least a full day of travel to get there. Probably more depending on the roads."

"Then we pack now and leave before midday," I said. "We have time."

"I cannot leave today." He said it plainly. Not defensively. Just as a fact he was putting on the table. "I need to sort something out first. It will take a few days."

My jaw tightened. "What exactly needs sorting that is more important than this?"

He did not answer that directly. He just looked at me with that patient expression he wore when he had made a decision and was not going to be argued out of it today.

"Where exactly is this place?" I asked.

He crossed to the table without answering immediately. He pulled open the small drawer underneath it and came back with a map. Old parchment, edges worn soft from handling, markings in ink that had faded in some places and stayed sharp in others. He spread it flat on the table and smoothed it down with both hands.

He pointed to a spot.

And I leaned over to look at it. The distance from where we were. The roads between here and there. The markings around the destination that I did not fully recognize but could read well enough to understand what kind of territory we were talking about.

"It is inside Hollowcrown’s land," he said. "But far from this part of it. The roads are good until the last stretch. After that, it is mostly trail."

I looked at the distance on the map. Then at him.

"We can leave today," I said. "Right now. We get as far as we can before dark and stop somewhere along the road."

He shook his head slowly. "I told you. Something needs handling before I go anywhere. This is not a situation I can just leave behind and deal with later."

"Do you understand what we are risking by sitting here?" My voice came up slightly. Not shouting. Just the particular rise that happened when something important was not being heard.

"I hear you," he said. Quiet but completely steady. "And I am sorry. But not today."

I looked at him furiously.

He reached for his coat on the hook by the door. Pulled it on without rushing. Checked the front of it. Then he looked at me one more time with that same expression.

"I will be back when I can," he said.

He opened the door. The cold air came in from outside, moving across the floor and finding my feet immediately. He stepped through. The door closed behind him.

The room was quiet. I stood there with my hands at my sides and felt them shaking slightly, but not from the cold.

Liona was watching me from the chair by the wall.

"Azura."

"Why does nobody listen?" The words came out before I had finished deciding to say them. "I tell him we need to move. I tell him time matters. And he just..." I stopped. Pressed my lips together. Started again. "He just left."

"Maybe he has a real reason," she said. Not defending him exactly. Just offering it.

"I am sure he does," I said. "But I do not care about his reason right now. I cannot sit here waiting for every piece of someone else’s life to fall into place before I am allowed to go find out who I actually am."

I grabbed the map on the table, and walked toward my room.

The bag was on the floor near the bed. I grabbed it and threw it onto the mattress and stood in front of it for a second with my hands on my hips thinking through what I needed.

The journal went in first. I set it carefully into the bottom of the bag because whatever else happened it was coming with me. Then food from the kitchen, enough for two days if we were careful. My coat. A knife from the side table that I tucked into the side pocket where I could reach it without thinking.

The map I folded and held in my hand.

Liona appeared in the doorway.

She looked at the bag on the bed. At the journal inside it. At the knife. At me.

"You are actually going," she said.

"Yes," I said. I did not look up.

"Right now. Without Torin."

"Mm-hmm."

"Azura." She stepped into the room slightly. "You do not know these roads. You have never been in this part of Hollowcrown. You do not know who you are going to find when you get there or what they are going to say or whether any of it is going to go the way you are expecting."

I looked up at her. "I know all of that."

"And you are still going."

I held up the map. "I have this."

She looked at the map. Then at my face. Then on the map again.

"You expect me to just let you walk out that door alone," she said. It was not quite a question.

"I am not asking you to let me do anything," I said. "But if you do not want me going alone, you know what the other option is."

She looked at me for a long moment. The particular look she had when she was weighing something properly, not just going along with whatever the situation was pulling her toward but actually thinking about it.

Then she exhaled through her nose, "Give me a minute to pack."

She turned and went to her room.

I stood by the front door with my bag on my shoulder and the map in my hand and listened to the sounds of Liona moving around in the other room. Drawers opening. Something being folded. A quiet word to herself that I could not make out.

She came back faster than a minute. Her bag was smaller than mine and she was already wearing her coat, buttoned to the top, her hair pulled back. She stopped in front of me and looked at my face with the direct honest look she used when she wanted to check something before committing to it.

"You are sure about this," she said.

"Time waits for no one Liona."

She looked at me for one more second. Then she nodded.

I opened the door.

The cold air hit my face immediately, sharp and present, the same cold that had been sitting over this yard all morning. The mist was still on the road. The gate was still open from earlier.

I stepped outside. Liona came through behind me and pulled the door shut.

We walked toward the gate.

"Where do we start?" Liona asked, falling into step beside me.

"The map says east," I replied. "We follow the main road until we reach the village marked here." I held the map out briefly so she could see where I was pointing. "Then we ask for the son. Someone in a village that size will know him."

"Do you even know him? Who will you tell them you’re looking for? And what if he is not there?"

"Then we keep looking until we find him."

"I have the urge that I might die because of you" Liona said with a bored face

"And I will never let that happen."

She nodded. No more questions. That was the thing about Liona. When she decided to go somewhere with you she actually went. No half-measures. No looking back.

But for some reason, I feel like she’s gonna back out in this one.

The gate passed on either side of us, and then we were on the road with the mist around us and the trees on both sides and the morning sitting over everything in its pale, unbothered way.

We walked east.