The temple emptied. Elders, warriors, and pack members filed past the altar with their heads lowered until the doors closed behind the last of them.
I knelt beside Elara and took the repaired Ice Shard from my pocket.
The royal smith and I had spent hours joining the fragments with silver and my blood. We had recovered every blue piece we could find from her chamber floor.
The crystal had lost its old shape. Dark silver filled the cracks, leaving the surface scarred and uneven beneath my thumb.
I placed it in Elara's palm and folded her cold fingers around it. The shard used to calm her breathing the moment it touched her skin. This time, her hand stayed slack inside mine.
“You used to sleep with this in your hand,” I said. “You told me it stopped the nightmares when I could not be th
