The letter had been sitting on the table since yesterday.

Alaric had read it twice already, but he picked it up again anyway. The handwriting was neat but rushed. Ginny never had much patience for writing slowly. He could almost hear her voice in it.

Business has been going wonderfully! Better than I ever expected, honestly. We had to expand the apiary again! — Can you believe it? A whole second building. Father helped design it — kept him busy for weeks, which was a blessing in itself...

Alaric smiled at that. Then kept reading.

I found a business partner! Someone reliable who helps me manage things when I'm traveling, and who keeps an eye on Papa when I'm away. Physically he's fine, strong as ever. But his mind...

The sentence trailed off, then picked back up more carefully.

I pray to Lady Beatrix for him every evening. But I think we both know that prayer doesn't always work the way we want it to. I'm just glad he's not alone.

Alaric set the letter down for a moment and looked out the window.

Across the field, Saph was chasing something. Ati was sitting cross-legged in the grass, watching him with the tired patience of "the older brother." Nova was somewhere behind the old tree, probably pretending she wasn't watching too.

He picked the letter back up.

How are the kids? How are YOU, Alaric? I mean that...

It's been almost three years since I last saw any of you. I know you're busy...
But if you ever find yourself with a free summer, I would love to have you all visit.
Leonaport Bay is beautiful in the warm months, and I think the kids would like the sea.

Write back this time. Please.

— Ginny Effilyn

Three years... Alaric folded the letter slowly and put it in his pocket.

Maybe later, he thought.

Outside, Saph had stopped chasing whatever he'd been chasing. Nova had appeared from behind the tree, apparently deciding she wasn't pretending anymore. Ati was pointing at something in the distance.

Three years ago. He could hardly believe it.

—

It had been three months after the tragedy when his sister-in-promise appeared at his door.

He almost hadn't opened it. There was a stretch of time — he didn't like to think about it — when he simply stopped answering. Letters piled up. Knocks went unanswered. He told himself he was protecting the children, keeping things quiet. He knew, even then, that wasn't entirely true.

But he opened it that day. Jade looked like she hadn't slept. Her eyes were red, but her jaw was set. She had always been like that, Ruby's sister — grief and determination living in the same body, fighting each other constantly.

"I need your help," she said.

He let her in without a word. She sat at the kitchen table. He made tea because he didn't know what else to do, and they sat across from each other in the quiet house.

"Nova," she said.

"The Grey Pack has been watching. With Kroviq gone, they're already saying I'm unfit."

Her voice didn't shake, but her claws did, just slightly, around the cup.

"And with this... Reclamation Initiative..." There was a fury in her eyes. "They're talking about closing the city, Alaric. Control. Bloodlines. Promises. All of Howlstead."

"Jade, what are you asking of me?"

"I'm asking you to take her. Adopt her."

She met Alaric's eyes.

"I can't fight them and keep her fed and safe at the same time. My work in The Depths doesn't stop just because Kroviq's gone. There's no way in Muspell's I'd bring her down there. And I cannot let her grow up inside whatever The Grey Pack is planning."

Alaric stared at the table.

"Jade. I can barely—" He stopped.

"Saph still asks for her." He stopped again.

"Alaric... I..." Jade noticed his eyes tearing up.

"Ati doesn't talk about it at all, and that scares me more. And... and I don't know what I'm doing half the time."

"I know," Jade said.

"I'm not sure I'm the right—"

"I know," she said again. "But you're one of the few I trust."

He didn't answer that night. He told her he needed to think, and Jade nodded and left, and he sat at the table for a long time after.

—

It was Alaric's mother who settled it.

Hildegard had arrived in Howlstead the week before, quietly, without being asked. She had simply shown up with two bags and taken over Alaric's kitchen and refused to leave. Alaric hadn't had the energy to argue with her. She was a cleric of Sylvirix, his mother — small and unhurried, with the particular calm of someone who had made peace with hard things a long time ago.

When he told her what Jade had asked, she was quiet for a moment.

Then she said: "You're going to say yes."

"I haven't decided."

"You have."

Hildegard didn't look up from what she was doing.

"That little girl is Ruby's blood." She paused.

"Besides. You have more love in you than you know what to do with right now."

She paused once more.

"Better to share it somewhere."

Alaric didn't argue. He knew better than that.

Knew, too, that she was right — even if he wasn't ready to say so.

—

Nova came to stay ten days later.

She was quiet and wide-eyed, and she didn't understand why she was there in the beginning — only that her father wasn't coming back and her mother couldn't stay. Saph, to his credit, immediately tried to show her his favorite rock. Ati said nothing but moved over to make room for her on the bench during dinner.

Alaric stood in the doorway that first evening, watching the three of them.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

But he knew one thing. Nova was staying.

—

Alaric had barely noticed the months passing.

That was the strange thing about grief — it didn't feel like time moving. It felt like standing still while the world kept going around him. He worked. He ate. He got the children to sleep and got them up again in the morning.

He answered some letters and ignored others. He didn't answer Ginny's.

Not now. Maybe later...

He told himself it was because he didn't know what to say. Which was true. But it was also because her letters were warm and full of life, and he couldn't hold something like that for very long without feeling how cold everything had gotten.

He should have written. He knew that the moment he saw her at the door.

She had come all the way from Leonaport Bay. On her own, by the looks of it, dusty from the road, her bag slung over one shoulder. She stood there for half a second, taking him in — and then she jumped forward and wrapped her arms around him so quickly he barely had time to brace himself.

"You didn't write," she said into his shoulder.

"I know."

"Six months, Alaric!"

"I... know."

She pulled back and looked at him with that expression she had — not angry, not quite, but something adjacent to it. Worried and relieved.

"I was so scared something had happened to you."

"Nothing's happened to me."

"Don't do that." She shook her head. "Don't say it like that."

His mother appeared from the hallway and pointed at him without breaking stride.

"I told you to write to her, Alaric."

Then, to Ginny: "Come in. You look like you could use a good meal."

That night felt almost normal. Ginny was good with the kids in the particular way that people who genuinely like children are — she didn't talk down to them, didn't ignore them, didn't push. She just was there, and they orbited her naturally. Her fox familiar curled up near the fire, and Saph spent most of dinner trying to convince it to sit on his lap.

Afterward, when the children went to bed, Hildegard went out for an evening stroll — she had a talent for disappearing at exactly the right moment. Ginny told him what she'd seen getting into the city.

"I practically had to argue my way through the city gate," Ginny said.

"The guards told me non-wolffolk were going to be restricted soon. Barred entirely, one of them said."

She shook her head. "And the streets, Alaric. Half the houses are just — empty. Officials going through them."

Alaric said nothing.

"I know it's not my place, but—" Ginny said, more carefully. "Your mother thinks you should leave. She mentioned it to me earlier. Said the kids are struggling."

"My mother thinks a lot of things," Alaric said coldly.

"She worries. I worry too."

"She worries too much! Let's talk about it later."

"Alaric. What about Saph, Nova, and Ati?"

But before she'd finished the sentence, Ginny caught the flash of fury in Alaric's eyes. Mentioning the children had forced him into the place he refused to look — where grief, guilt, and helplessness tangled together.

"Saph is fine. Nova is adjusting. And Ati—" Alaric stopped himself.

His claw had curled into a fist on the table without him noticing. He looked at it, then at her.

"I know what she thinks. I don't need you repeating it."

"She worries about all of you," Ginny said quietly.

"I get it, alright?!" Alaric snapped. "I know what this city is becoming!"

"Then maybe it's time to move."

Ginny knew she was pushing it. But she also knew this might be the only chance she got to say it at all — so she said it, and let it sit.

Alaric looked at her. She met his gaze and didn't back down, which was very Ginny.

"This place. This house." His voice was rising again. "This is what I used that money from that mission for. This is where Ruby and I were going to—"

He couldn't finish it. He looked away, jaw working.

"I'm not ready to just leave that. I'm not ready to leave her behind."

"Alaric, I understand that." Her voice stayed even, even as her eyes were starting to shine. "I do. But what about them? Is it right to keep them here for—"

"You don't have children!" The words came out harder than he meant them to — he saw her flinch, and some small part of him wanted to take it back, but the rest of him was already moving.

"What would you know about what's best for them? Tearing my kids away from the house where their mother — where WE were supposed to—"

His voice broke on the last word. He stood so fast the chair scraped back and nearly toppled.

"I'm going outside." He didn't wait for a reply.

Ginny didn't call after him. She sat very still for a moment after the door shut, her hands flat on the table, and let herself feel it — the sting of it, real and unfair and exactly the kind of thing people say when they're drowning.

Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and got up to check on Ati, because someone in this house needed to, and it clearly wasn't going to be Alaric tonight.

He stood in the cold for a long time. He could hear, very faintly, Ginny and Ati talking inside. Ati must have woken from the shouting. He didn't go back in until he was sure his face was composed again.

Ginny was still there in the morning. She stayed for three days. She didn't bring it up again, and neither did Alaric, and when she left, they embraced at the door and she told him to write, and Alaric said he would.

He didn't. Not for another year. When he finally did leave that house, it was for a forge in Howl's Edge — a commander of the Voidbreakers had offered him her family's home, but only if he'd agree to be a blacksmith again.

A big house. A large forge. A yard large enough for three kids to run wild in.

He hadn't touched an anvil in years.

Ginny's only comment, when she heard, was that it was about time.

—

The sound of small feet on the grass pulled him back into the present.

Saph came sprinting across the field toward him, arms pumping, eyes wide.

"Papa, Papa! That duck is mean to me!"

Alaric looked up. Sure enough — a mother duck was waddling furiously behind his son, wings spread, profoundly offended. He caught Saph by the shoulders as he barreled into him.

"What did you do?"

"Nuh-Nothing! I just wanted to look at the little one!"

"Saph." Alaric looked at him. "Did you pick it up?"

A pause. "...Only a little bit."

Alaric bit back a smile. He looked over Saph's head at the duck, who had stopped at a reasonable distance and was now watching them with suspicious eyes.

"She's not mean," he said. "She thought you were going to hurt one of her little ones. She was trying to protect them."

Saph considered this seriously. "Like you protect us?"

The question landed somewhere soft and unexpected.

Alaric looked at his son — at the complete, uncomplicated trust in his face. He thought of his mother, standing in his kitchen, refusing to leave. Of Ginny at the door, dusty from the road, scared because he hadn't written. Of the duck, wings spread, running at something ten times her size.

And then he thought of Ruby.

He pulled Saph a little closer. "Yeah," he said. "Like how I protect you."

Alaric held him there a beat longer than he meant to.

"Hey! What's this?"

Before Alaric even realized it, Saph had swiped the letter from his pocket and unfolded it.

"A letter from... Aunt Ginny," Alaric said.

"Ohhhh, she's nice! She lives in... Leeonobort, right?"

"Hah. Leonaport Bay."

"That's where the sea is, right, Papa?"

"Yes. It is."

"Wish I could see it..."

Alaric looked down at the letter, at the line near the bottom: I think the kids would like the sea.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe it was time to stop saying later.

"Well..." he said slowly. "How about we go see it?"

Saph's head snapped up. "Really?!"

"Really."