{Elias's POV continuation.}
I stood there for a moment after the door closed, the silence settling back into the room as if nothing had disturbed it at all. Slowly, I exhaled and dragged a hand down my face before straightening. Staying here would not change anything. It would not bring her back faster, it would not open the forest, and it would not give me answers that refused to be found no matter how hard I searched for them.
Without thinking much about it, I moved toward the window. The light had shifted, the late afternoon fading gradually into evening, painting the sky in muted gold and soft blue. From where I stood, the kingdom stretched out beneath me, calm and orderly, but my gaze drifted past it, toward where I knew the forest lay even if I could not see it from here.
My thoughts followed.
No matter how much I tried to focus on strategy or logic, they kept circling back to her.
