Two weeks passed.
Violet's training transformed.
Kari moved from teaching individual techniques to combining them—footwork feeding into strikes, breathing informing timing, mana control woven through everything like a hidden thread.
The sessions grew longer. More brutal. More beautiful.
Vael watched from the tree line sometimes, expression caught between awe and jealousy.
"She won't take me as a student until you've trained for a month," he complained one evening, sitting on the cottage steps while Violet treated her bruises with the salve Maria prepared. "It's been three weeks. Almost there."
"Almost isn't there," Violet said.
"I know that." He pulled his knees to his chest. "I'm just saying. Watching you get better every day while I'm stuck doing Bara's endurance drills is—"
"Valuable?"
"Annoying." But he grinned. "Though I did carry three full water barrels uphill today without stopping. So maybe slightly valuable."
Maria appeared in the doorway. "Vael. Staying for dinner?"
His eyes lit up instantly. Tail—hidden under the glamour spell but somehow still audible in his enthusiasm—might as well have been wagging.
"If it's not trouble—"
"It's never trouble." She disappeared back inside, already humming.
Violet watched him practically levitate with happiness.
"You know she's going to feed you until you can't move," Violet said.
"I know." Vael looked completely at peace with this. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me."
***
They ate together.
Maria had made a thick stew—winter vegetables and salt-cured venison, rich with herbs she'd been drying since autumn. Fresh bread on the side, still warm from the fire.
Garrett sat at the table's head, eating with the focused efficiency of someone who'd spent years treating meals as fuel rather than pleasure. But he always ate slower when Vael was there. Something about the boy's enthusiasm for food seemed to remind him that meals could also be enjoyed.
Vael ate three bowls. Maria watched with visible satisfaction.
"You need to eat more," she told him, already ladling a fourth.
"I really don't—"
"You're growing. Growing things need feeding." She set the bowl firmly before him. "Besides, you're too thin."
"I'm actually quite strong now—"
"Thin," Maria repeated with absolute finality.
Vael looked at Violet helplessly.
"Just eat," Violet told him. "It's easier."
He ate.
Afterward, they sat by the fire. Garrett sharpened his knife. Maria mended a tear in Violet's training clothes. Vael sat cross-legged on the floor, turning a small carved wooden fox over in his hands—something he did when his thoughts went distant.
"What's that?" Violet asked.
He looked at the carving. "Bara made it. Weeks ago. He said—" His voice caught slightly. "He said Da used to carve things when he was anxious. That Bara learned from watching him."
Silence settled.
"He gave it to me," Vael continued. "Said I could squeeze it when things got heavy. That maybe some of Da's calm was still in the wood."
The fire crackled. Maria's needle paused.
"That's a kind thing," she said softly. "For Bara to do."
Vael nodded. Kept turning the fox over.
"I miss him," he said simply. Not with dramatic grief. Just honest acknowledgment. "Every day. Some days more than others. Today more than most."
No one offered platitudes. No one said it would get easier or that time healed or that his father was watching from somewhere.
They just stayed.
Present. Witness.
Sometimes that was enough.
***
Later, walking Vael back toward the refuge entrance, Violet noticed something.
The forest had gone quiet again.
Not the comfortable quiet of late evening. Something else. Something with weight behind it.
She stopped. Vael stopped beside her, immediately alert. His hand moved toward the knife at his belt.
"You feel it too?" he murmured.
"Since yesterday." Violet's eyes moved through the shadows between trees. "Something's watching. Not close, but..."
"Persistent," Vael finished.
They stood still for a moment, listening.
Nothing visible. Nothing audible. Just that prickling awareness of being observed by something that had no intention of being seen.
"Could be scouts," Vael said. "If word about the refugees got further than we hoped—"
"It's not soldiers." Violet shook her head. "Soldiers smell like metal and cookfire. This is different."
"Different how?"
She thought about how to describe it. About the feeling that prickled across her skin like static before lightning.
"Old," she said finally. "Whatever it is, it's old."
Vael's jaw tightened. "Should we tell Bara?"
"Already planning to." Violet scanned the tree line one more time. Found nothing. "But tell him carefully. If the refugees panic—"
"They won't." Vael's voice was firm. "Bara keeps them steady. And Kari—Kari doesn't panic. Ever."
They reached the refuge entrance. Vael paused, looking back at her.
"Violet. That thing in the forest—" He hesitated. "Could it be connected to Calla's visit?"
The question landed heavier than it should have.
She thought about Calla in her carriage. About the timing of her arrival. About the way things always seemed to move and shift whenever Calla appeared.
About the fox in the forest weeks ago, dissolving into ash.
*You have something special inside you.*
"I don't know," Violet said honestly.
Which wasn't the same as no.
They both knew it.
"Be careful going home," Vael said.
"Always." She managed a small smile. "Eat less at dinner tomorrow. You're going to make yourself sick."
"Impossible." He grinned. "Your mother's cooking could never make anyone sick."
He slipped through the refuge entrance and disappeared.
Violet stood alone at the forest's edge.
Whatever watched from the shadows watched her still.
She stared back into the darkness.
"I see you," she said quietly. To nothing. To everything.
Then turned and walked home through the cold.
Behind her, somewhere deep in the forest, something smiled.
***