Coming through the gate, the packhouse appeared through the trees the way it always did, the long stone building set into the hill, large without being ornate, built for a permanence that seemed to deepen every time I returned to it.
I had been gone four days.
It looked different. Not physically, nothing about the stone or the windows or the way the late afternoon light fell across the courtyard had changed. It looked different in the way places look different once you have fully accepted that they belong to you, that you are not visiting them but returning to them.
This was my home.
Not Clearwater. Not the east wing guest room I had been given on my first frightened night here. Not the arrangement, not the treaty, not even the founding bloodline ratification that had once felt like th
