I was exhausted by the time I reached home again. I slipped through the dark of night, yearning for my bed as I crept up to my door. The woman had been still quiet when I had dropped them off at one of the safe houses I had set up. The people inside had reassured them and started to usher them off to their room. They wouldn’t stay there long — the safe houses were only safe for so long. Arrangements would be started in the morning to get them off to the next phase of their journey. If I could have, I would have warned them about the journey they had just found themselves on. How long it was going to take. How unsettled they were going to feel. But, eventually, we would get them out of the Ashfather’s empire, and they would find a safe place to call home.
Still, they weighed heavily on my
