Day One - The Summons

Victor - POV

I woke to horses and voices I did not know.

Not village voices. Not merchants. Not the loose easy kind people used when they had arrived somewhere safe.

These were clipped.
Formal.
Used to being answered.

I went to the window before I was fully awake.

Three riders stood in the yard in court colors, their horses marked with the royal seal on the tack. The lead rider had already dismounted. Tall. Silver-haired. Staff in one hand. Even through the glass, I could feel the shape of his magic.

Controlled.
Heavy.
Close enough to Seraphine’s kind of power to make my stomach sink.

Yesterday’s distant pressure had become people.

“Victor. Elira. Downstairs.”

Seraphine’s voice carried up the ladder.

Calm enough to obey.
Too flat not to.

I dressed fast.

By the time I reached the kitchen, everyone else was already there. Naelira slept through it in her basket by the hearth, one fist tucked under her chin, unaware the room had changed shape around her. Mama stood near the table with one hand braced on the wood. Papa was by the door. Seraphine had changed into court robes.

I had only seen them once before.

They made our cottage look smaller.

“Are they here for you?” I asked.

Seraphine looked at me. “Yes.”

No softening. No drift around the truth.

Papa opened the door before I could ask more.

The lead official entered first, ducking slightly under the frame though he did not need to. Habit, maybe. Or practiced courtesy. He brought the morning cold in with him, and with it the feeling that our house was being measured.

“Seraphine,” he said.

“Aldrin.”

So she knew him.

He inclined his head to Mama and Papa. “Lyra. Gregor. Forgive the hour.”

His two companions stayed outside. That should have felt respectful. It did not.

Aldrin’s gaze moved once around the room, taking in hearth, table, cradle, children, exits. Then it paused on me for half a second too long.

Not because he knew.

Because he was trained to notice.

“His Majesty requires your return to court,” he said to Seraphine. “Immediately.”

The word landed and stayed there.

“How immediate?” she asked.

“We ride in three days.”

Mama drew in breath through her nose and let it out carefully.

Aldrin continued. “The Northern Territories have abandoned the last standing terms. Border wards have already been tested twice. The court expects military engagement. Barrier specialists are no longer optional.”

War.

I knew the word. Enough to know it stopped smiles and emptied rooms.

“Months?” Seraphine asked.

“At minimum.”

I looked at her.

Months sounded like a word adults used when they meant: longer than you want, possibly longer than you can understand.

Elira had gone still beside me.

Aldrin’s expression shifted slightly. Less hard, but not soft. “I understand the burden this places on the household.”

No, I thought.

You don’t.

You came anyway.

After a few more words that blurred past me, he left to arrange lodging and feed in the village. The moment the door shut, the house felt too quiet, as if every sound had withdrawn to the corners to watch us.

“Three days,” Elira whispered.

Seraphine lowered herself to the floor in front of us. For the first time that morning, she looked tired instead of official.

“Yes.”

Elira’s mouth trembled.

Victor, I told myself. Do not cry first.

If Elira cried first, I could be strong.
If I cried first, then everything would get worse.

I lasted two breaths.

Seraphine gathered us both in before either of us properly fell apart.

“Three days,” she said into our hair, our shoulders, whatever part of us she could reach. “So we use them well.”

Day Two - Lyra POV

The second day was the cruelest kind.

Ordinary on the outside.
Broken underneath.

Naelira still needed feeding and changing. Bread still had to be made. Gregor still had work waiting in the forge, because iron did not care what had happened in our kitchen. Floors still needed sweeping. Water still needed carrying. Every task remained. Only now each one carried the knowledge of being counted.

Seraphine spent most of the morning with Victor, pushing lessons ahead without making the urgency obvious unless you already knew what to look for. Not more raw power. More control. More restraint. More recovery when something slipped. She was trying to sew extra time into too little cloth.

Elira helped me fold linens, though “helped” mostly meant she held the same towel for too long because her thoughts were elsewhere.

“Aunt Lyra?”

“Yes, love?”

She twisted the edge of the cloth. “When I go back... will he forget?”

There it was.

Not the court.
Not the packing.
Not the leaving.

Will he forget me.

I set the basket aside and took her hands. They were cool despite the warmth in the room, fingers tight with the effort of being brave.

“No.”

The answer came too fast for doubt.

“What if he makes other friends?”

“He will.”

That startled her enough to make her blink.

I held on before panic could root itself. “And that will be good. Children should have many people to love. But not all bonds are built the same way. Some arrive slowly. Some arrive like weather. You and Victor...” I smiled despite the ache in my chest. “You two were immediate.”

Elira looked down. “I don’t want to be replaced.”

“You won’t be.”

Across the cottage, Gregor sat with Victor at the table, teaching him how to fold a letter properly.

“No, not like a dead insect,” Gregor said. “Like a square.”

Victor flattened the page again with visible offense. “It was nearly a square.”

“It was a struggle.”

Victor tried again.

“Better.”

Elira watched him from the corner of her eye even while pretending not to.

I saw the moment the thought arrived in him too. The need to make something that would outlast the leaving.

He came to me that evening while I fed Naelira.

“Mama,” he said quietly, “I want to make her something.”

“A gift?”

He nodded. Serious as winter. “Not just a gift. Something for keeping.”

I looked down at Naelira, half asleep against the bottle, then back at my son with his too-old eyes and hands roughening already from forge work and carving.

“What kind of something?”

He frowned, frustrated by the size of feeling and the smallness of words. “Something that says she still belongs with me.”

I smiled despite myself. “Careful. That sounds possessive.”

His whole face went red. “Not like that. I mean...” He pressed both hands flat to his chest. “The staying kind.”

I kissed the top of his head. “Then make the staying kind.”

Day Three - Victor POV

I got up before anyone else.

The house was blue-dark and quiet except for Naelira’s small sleep sounds from the basket. I eased past the table, lifted my boots without putting them on until I was outside, and circled behind the forge where Papa kept storm-fallen wood stacked to season.

I found the piece almost at once.

Oak.
Palm-sized.
Clean grain.
Good enough.

Papa had been teaching me carving for months. Mostly practical things. Pegs. Handles. A spoon with one side thicker than the other because wood has opinions and punishes pride. But this needed to be different.

I sat on an overturned bucket with my knife and began.

Shave.
Turn.
Shave again.

The tree came slowly out of the wood. Trunk first. Then the branches crossing and curling back toward one another instead of away. Not fancy. Not perfect. But true enough that I knew what it was.

I rubbed my thumb over the carving and imagined it hanging against Elira’s chest in the court, under cloth finer than anything we owned here, hidden but still there.

That was when I knew the wood wasn’t enough.

Not because the pendant needed magic to matter.

Because I needed there to be something of me in it besides the marks of my knife.

I cupped it in both hands and reached inward.

Not far. Just enough.

Warmth gathered under my palms, the smallest thread of it. No flame. No visible light. Just that familiar inner heat moving into the carved oak as carefully as breath on glass.

The pendant warmed.
Held it.
Then cooled.

When I opened my hands, it looked ordinary.

Good.

I threaded the cord through the hole I had drilled the day before and tied the knot twice to be sure.

Close enough to perfect.

That counted.

Elira POV

I did not know what to make him at first.

Anything too pretty would feel wrong in his hands. Anything too delicate would end up chipped, scorched, buried, or all three. Victor was good at keeping things right up until he forgot he was holding them.

So I went to the stream.

The water offered a thousand stones. Most were wrong.

Too sharp.
Too flat.
Too fragile.
Too plain.

At last I found one that fit my palm as if it had been waiting there. Gray river stone, worn smooth, heavier than it looked.

I sat in the grass with one of Uncle Gregor’s finer tools and carved the old symbol into it: a circle with a small flame inside. We had made it together years ago without deciding to. It had simply started appearing in the dirt, on scrap wood, in fogged breath against windows. Our mark for shared things.

The carving took longer than I wanted. The stone resisted.

Good.

Things that last should.

When I finished, I held it tight and thought of everything I wanted him to keep.

The apple tree.
The strawberry patch.
The waterfall.
Being seen without having to explain yourself first.

I had no magic to put into it. Or none that answered yet.

So I did the next best thing.

I kept holding it until it felt warm.

Evening - Victor POV

After supper, while the grown-ups talked too quietly near the hearth, Elira and I slipped out to the waterfall.

We did not ask permission because asking would have made it feel like an event, and we needed one thing that still belonged to us without adults watching it break.

The path was familiar enough to walk in dusk. Roots. Ferns. Damp stone. The air cooled fast under the trees. By the time we reached the falls, the last light was caught in the water in thin broken pieces.

For a while, neither of us said anything.

The waterfall filled the silence for us.

Then we both spoke at once.

“I made you something.”

That made us laugh, which nearly made me cry, which made me laugh again because feelings are badly organized.

“You first,” I said.

Elira pulled the stone from her pocket and put it into my hand.

It was warm.
Not from magic.
From being carried.

The carved symbol sat under my thumb as naturally as if it had grown there.

“So you won’t forget,” she said.

I wanted to tell her forgetting was impossible.

I wanted to tell her even asking made something painful happen inside my chest.

Instead I closed my fingers around the stone and said, “I won’t.”

Then I gave her the pendant.

She held it by the cord at first, looking at the carved tree. As soon as her fingers closed over the wood, something in her face shifted. Not because she knew what I had done. Because she felt something and didn’t have a name for it.

“It’s us,” I said. “Branches, but still the same tree.”

That was clumsy. I knew it the moment I said it.

But Elira’s eyes filled anyway.

When I tied it around her neck, my hands shook enough that I had to do the knot twice.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“It’s a little crooked.”

“So are you.”

That got me.

I made an ugly half-laugh into my sleeve and sat down hard on the rock beside her before the crying could start properly.

The water rushed white below us.

We sat shoulder to shoulder.

“I’ll write,” she said.

“You’d better.”

“I mean real letters. Not just ‘I am alive, the end.’”

“That is a bad letter.”

“It is efficient.”

“It is lazy.”

She leaned lightly against my shoulder. “You can be both.”

I looked at the pendant resting against her chest. “Don’t lose it.”

“I won’t if you don’t lose the stone.”

“Done.”

After a long silence, she said, “Khazad khazad?”

The phrase still sounded strange in her mouth and right at the same time.

Heart friend.

I swallowed around the ache in my throat. “Khazad khazad.”

That was all.

No ritual.
No light.
No great magic.

Just truth said aloud where the water could hear it.

When we got back, Seraphine saw our faces and did not ask what had passed between us.

Some understandings do not need witnesses.