For a while, nothing happened.
No conflict, no urgent business. No messengers came knocking in the night. No sorcerers or soldiers arrived at the gate with grave news or any matter of importance.
Vell and Sonder remained in the general's manor longer than they had intended, days turning into weeks without much discussion. There was no need to justify it. No one asked them to leave.
The general loved it, in fact. It had been a long time since he could socialize with someone who shared part of his lived experience so thoroughly and wasn't a baby about it.
For Vell and Sonder, it wasn't home, exactly, but it was quiet.
Vell spent his mornings reading from old books in the general's study and his afternoons walking the gardens or sharing dry observations over tea. Some evenings, he and the general played cards in silence or had conversations the whole time without pause that wove through all manner of subjects.
They bickered now and then. About discipline, about history, about how tea should be brewed, but it was a friendly sort of argument. The kind that forms between two men who have already survived the worst parts of each other.
Sonder, too, found her rhythm.
She spent most mornings training with Cadre.
Unlike Vell and the general's weathered and old friendship, Sonder and Cadre were still new to each other.
They didn't yet know where the boundaries were. And discovering them was a joy.
Some days they fought, not just with swords but with words, with ideas. On other days, they simply sat side by side, talking about small things that somehow meant everything.
Sonder shared fragments of her past—stories of her adventures with Vell, which she thought were okay to tell Cadre.
And Cadre found them all too fascinating.
In the afternoons, if their parents allowed it, they explored the city.
There were places in the city meant for children, and they found them.
Ordinary places with nothing to tell.
And Vell watched all of it with a kind of relief.
Since Sonder was with him, she had lived in the shadow of things no child was meant to face.
Here, she got to be her own age with someone her own age. That mattered.
In the evenings, after the house had gone quiet, she often found her way to the library, where Vell read and wrote by firelight. Sometimes she brought a book of her own. Sometimes she sat in silence and watched the flames against the stone.
Once in a while, she dozed off, curled into one of the oversized chairs, knees tucked beneath her like a cat in winter.
And Vell let her sleep. He never woke her.
She didn't sleep much, not really. Not since they met. Seeing her at rest, truly at rest, did something good to his heart.
It wasn't home. But it was something like peace. And it was enough just to be.