Sera's Pov
I went outside after Mara left the room. I didn't decide to. My feet just took me there, down the back stairs, out the door near the kitchen, into the cold evening air, the same steps where I'd sat that first week and let myself fall apart quietly where no one could see.
I didn't cry this time. I just stood at the edge of the compound, looking at the tree line, at nothing in particular, the way you look at something when you're not really looking at it at all. The sky was doing the thing it did this time of year, gray bleeding slowly toward dark, the cold settling into the ground in a way that meant winter wasn't far off now.
I heard him before I saw him. Not footsteps exactly, more a shift in the air, a presence arriving without announcing itself. Riven came to stand beside
