Spring came again to Frostfall and with it the second anniversary of the assembly.
Elowen marked it not with ceremony but with the natural awareness of someone who has been paying attention to the passage of time long enough to feel it. Two years since she had stood in the Great Hall and said the plain true thing into a room that had not expected to receive it. Two years since the fracture lines had opened and the work had begun in earnest.
She went to the garden on the anniversary morning.
The cherry tree was flowering again. Its second spring, which meant the flowers were more numerous than the first, the tree having established itself through the winter with the confidence of something that had done this before and knew it could do it again.
Alaric came with the tea.
They stood at
