Damien's POV
I have been standing here for ten minutes telling myself I am watching the perimeter. The perimeter is fine. The perimeter is not what I am watching.
Lanterns swing from every tree branch, throwing warm gold light across the packed road.
Music drifts from the center circle where fiddlers saw away at their strings. The whole pack has turned out tonight. Laughter rises and falls around me like waves I can’t quite ride.
My father moves through the crowd as though he belongs in every conversation. He claps shoulders, tosses back his head when someone tells a joke, and hands out small pouches of coins to the younger families.
“For the little ones,” he says each time, voice smooth and warm. “Snowdon looks after its own.”
A woman with two small boys at her side takes a pouch an
