Nobody planned it.That was the thing Aelara kept coming back to afterward, in the days that followed when the weight of what had happened was still settling. They had not been in a training session. Seraphine had not been present.
There had been no lead-up, no building pressure, no identifiable cause that she could trace back and say: here, this is the moment that made it happen.
It was a Tuesday night in the Ashveil borderlands. The moon was full. She had noticed the moon when she stepped outside to check the temperature before bed the specific brightness of it, the way it made the grass silver and the shadows sharp and the farm look like a different version of itself.
She had noticed and she had thought nothing specific about it and she had gone back inside.
Caelum was asleep in the small room. Lyra was doing the thing she sometimes did sitting in the dark, not sleeping, processing. Aelara had checked on them both and gone to her own mat and lay down.
