The days sharpened into something purposeful.
Kari arrived each morning with her daggers already drawn. No warmup. No ceremony. Just blades and expectation and the demand to be better than yesterday.
The first real weapon Violet held was a training dagger—wood carved to replicate weight and balance, edges blunted to bruise rather than cut.
She'd thought holding a weapon would feel natural. Like something long-awaited clicking into place.
Instead, it felt completely wrong.
"Your grip is terrible," Kari said immediately. "You're strangling it."
"I'm holding it firmly—"
"You're holding it like it might escape." Kari crouched beside her, adjusting Violet's fingers with precise pressure. "A dagger isn't a club. You don't beat things with it. You guide it."
She repositioned each finger individually. "Feel the difference? Light grip. Control without tension. The blade becomes an extension of your hand, not a separate thing you're managing."
Violet adjusted. Felt the difference immediately.
"Better." Kari stood. "Now the stance. Everything we've drilled—footwork, weight distribution, breathing—it all feeds into how you hold a weapon. One weakness collapses everything else."
She drew her own daggers. Moved into fighting position.
"Watch my hands. Not my eyes—fighters use their eyes to deceive. Watch my center of mass. That tells you where I'm actually going."
She moved through a series of slow strikes. Each one deliberate, exaggerated for visibility.
"See how my shoulder drops before I extend? How my weight shifts left before I go right?"
Violet watched. Catalogued. Filed away.
"Now you."
She tried to replicate the movements. Her first attempt was stiff. Mechanical.
"You're thinking too much," Kari said. "Your body knows more than your mind. Let it work."
"Easy to say."
"Everything worth doing is easy to say." Kari moved behind her, adjusting her elbow position. "That's what makes doing it valuable."
They worked until noon. Then through the afternoon. Until Violet's arm shook with exhaustion and her vision blurred at the edges.
When Kari finally called a halt, Violet collapsed to sitting in the snow.
Her training dagger lay across her knees. Just wood. But it felt different than it had this morning.
Less foreign. More hers.
"You have natural instincts," Kari said, gathering her things. "Raw and untrained, but present. We'll build on them."
She paused. "But instinct without discipline gets people killed. Remember that."
"I will."
Kari looked at her for a moment longer than usual. Then, quietly: "Your father came to see me yesterday."
Violet's head snapped up. "Papa?"
"He wanted to know your progress. Whether you were ready for what was coming." Something shifted in Kari's expression. "He loves you, that man. In his way. Which is quietly and without saying it very much."
Violet's throat tightened. "What did you tell him?"
"That you were becoming something." Kari's lips curved slightly. "I didn't specify what. Seemed more interesting to let him wonder."
She turned to leave.
"Kari." Violet hesitated. "Did he seem... worried?"
The snow leopard paused without turning.
"He seemed like a father," she said finally. "So yes. Terrified."
Then she was gone.
***
That evening, Violet found Garrett at the woodpile.
He was splitting logs with mechanical efficiency—axe rising and falling, wood cracking apart with each strike. The sound carried across the quiet village like a steady heartbeat.
She sat on the fence nearby and watched.
He knew she was there. Garrett always knew. But he kept working, giving her space to speak when she was ready.
"Kari said you came to check on me," Violet said finally.
Axe fell. Wood split. "Did she."
"You could have just asked me directly."
"Could have." He set another log upright. "But then you'd have said you were fine. And I'd have had no way to know if that was true."
Violet smiled despite herself. "You don't trust me?"
"I trust you completely." He swung. Crack. "I don't trust you to accurately assess your own limits. Different thing."
She was quiet for a moment, watching him work.
"Papa."
"Mm."
"Thank you." The words felt insufficient. Too small for what she meant. "For everything. For building the cottage. For hunting in the cold so we could eat. For training with me and arranging Kari and—"
"Violet."
"—for choosing to stay, when you could have—"
"Violet." His voice was firm but gentle. He lowered the axe. Turned to look at her properly. "You don't need to thank me for any of that."
"But—"
"Being your father isn't something I did for gratitude." His weathered face was serious. Steady. "It's something I did because you're mine. Because the moment your mother decided you were ours, that was it. No conditions. No reservations."
He picked up the axe again. "You don't thank family for being family."
Violet's chest ached in the best possible way.
"Go eat," he said. "You look like you haven't had a proper meal all day."
"I ate—"
"Go eat something that isn't trail bread and stubbornness."
She laughed. Couldn't help it.
"Yes, Papa."
She slid off the fence and walked back toward the cottage. At the door, she paused and looked back.
He was already working again. Axe rising and falling. Log after log split and stacked.
Quietly taking care of his family.
The way he always had.
The way he always would.
***