Page 131

***

Months passed the way winter does in the north—quietly at first, then all at once.

Eira had been taken to the changelings at the edge of the old woods, where the trees grew thick and the air shimmered faintly at dusk. It was the agreement that had once saved her life.

Blaidd went often.

The first time he saw her there, he almost did not recognise her.

She stood taller. Her shoulders were squared. Her chin lifted. The listless child had vanished, replaced by an adult overnight. It was as if suffering had thrown her across some invisible threshold and left childhood behind without ceremony.

She had only just turned sixteen, but she looked as though she had lived far longer.

The changelings treated her as one of their own. They did not touch her unnecessarily. Eira did not ask to leave.

And when Blaidd came, she inclined her head in acknowledgment, polite and distant.

"Are you well?" he would ask.

"Yes."

"Are they treating you fairly?"

"Yes."

The answers were always the same.

But there was no resentment in her voice.

Occasionally, when Blaidd lingered at the tree line before departing, he would feel another presence.

He would glance toward the darker stretch of forest, where shadows pooled thickest.

And sometimes he would see Sora standing half-hidden among the trees, unmoving.

Watching.

The moment their eyes met, he would vanish into the shadows.

Sora had withdrawn into himself in the months since Aiko's departure. He trained with relentless precision—long hours in the sparring grounds until his knuckles split and his muscles trembled. He ran patrols others did not volunteer for; he took the most distant watch posts.

His life had narrowed to two things: training and watching over Eira.

There was no softness in him when he looked at her, only duty.

***

One evening, Blaidd returned from the changeling's tree, there was something different in his step.

He found Fae in the cottage, sleeves rolled, a thin curl of wood shavings at her feet.

"I need to show you something," he said, excitement in his voice.

She eyed him suspiciously. "That tone usually means trouble. I hope this doesn't mean you have found another loincloth costume you want me to take off with my teeth."

"Not this time."

He took her hand and led her down through the town, past the bakery, past the smithy, toward the far corner where the old tanner's house had once stood abandoned.