## Chapter 479 — Home Again

The western road became familiar long before the house appeared.

Lethira knew the last stretch by its smaller irregularities now: where the verge narrowed against an old root, where cart wheels tended to hold water after rain, where the stream could be heard through the trees before the land opened enough to show it. None of those details had mattered when the holding had first been a property boundary and an empty possibility.

Now they meant she was nearly home.

Her pack sat heavier than it had on the outward journey, though she had brought little back: clothing, travel food, a few copied notes and the small collection of things which accumulated whenever several days away became several days among old friends. The island papers were no longer with her. Aelira had what she needed copied under her own authority, and Lethira had retained only her working material.

The heavier weight was mostly tiredness.

The journey from the settlement had been uneventful in the best possible sense.

Known roads. Known hazards. People able to answer questions about the next bridge without first requiring an argument over whether the creature beside it could crack stone with a claw. Lethira had slept in ordinary places, eaten ordinary food and passed one overturned cart whose greatest danger had been an embarrassed mule.

She had appreciated all of it.

The holding came into sight between the trees.

The repaired roof caught the afternoon light first. Beyond it, the earthwork of the range remained a blunt interruption against the land. The southern parcel lay beyond the house. Ownership had gradually stopped feeling like a legal event and begun feeling like geography.

Lethira slowed slightly as she approached.

The house looked exactly like something she had left for a few days.

That pleased her.

No impossible monument had appeared in the field. No new wing had attached itself to the building. No road had become a marble avenue while she was gone.

She crossed the last stretch to the door and shifted the pack from one shoulder.

For a moment she simply stood there.

The settlement had been home once in the unqualified way childhood places sometimes remained home long after a person had developed other answers. She still knew its paths in darkness. She still had people there who could identify her footsteps before seeing her face.

This was different.

This was the place she had chosen after leaving.

Lethira opened the door and stepped inside.

The room received her: table, chairs, the kitchen beyond and the particular distribution of objects produced by two people actually living somewhere. Her eyes went almost automatically towards the window.

The violet-edged flower was there.

It had changed since she left. The petals had lost some of their island tension, and one edge had begun to curl inward, but the colour was still startling against the quiet room.

Lethira smiled despite herself.

She set her pack down beside the wall.

Then she listened.

“Ian?”

“Hello my love, I'm in here,” Ian said from the kitchen.

Lethira's expression softened immediately.

She left the pack where it was and crossed through.

The kitchen carried the signs of occupation she had missed more than she had expected. Nothing about it competed with the Wood Elf settlement for age or beauty.

It did not need to.

Lethira found Ian there and went straight to him.

“Hello.”

She put both arms around him and held him close for several quiet seconds, cheek resting against him. Then she drew back only far enough to look at him.

“I'm home.”

“I can see—this is fantastic news.”

Ian kissed her.

“How was your visit?”

Lethira kissed him back without hurrying, one hand settling against the side of his neck. When she drew away, she stayed close.

“Good.”

The answer came with the easy satisfaction of someone who had enjoyed where she had been and was equally pleased to have finished travelling.

“Mirelen is back where she belongs, complaining about trainees again. I saw people I wanted to see. Aelira took the island report seriously without turning it into a royal expedition before we'd finished speaking.”

She rested her hands lightly against him.

“She is keeping the detailed report restricted for now. She'll tell her father that the geographic information exists, but not spread all of our creature notes around merely because they're interesting. If we decide to take more people, she wants to know before we do.”

Lethira's expression changed slightly.

“There is one thing she caught that we didn't.”

Her eyes stayed on Ian's.

“We cleaned the flower before bringing it home.”

A short pause.

“We did not do the same thing to our boots, clothes, packs or arrows.”

Once named, the omission reached farther than the equipment itself. Packs had been opened and cleaned inside the house; clothes and boots had crossed the house and holding after carrying whatever dust or mud the island had left on them. If anything foreign had survived the journey, housekeeping could have spread it before either of them thought to ask.

“Oh.”

“Shit, I should've thought of that.”

“Shall I... correct that?”

Lethira's mouth tightened briefly.

“Yes.”

Annoyance sharpened the answer. Both of them had missed something obvious once Aelira named it.

“If you can do it now, please do. Anything we brought back from the island that could harm us, other people, animals, plants or the environment here.”

Her hand remained against Ian's side.

“And include everywhere the clothes and equipment have been since we returned, not only the things themselves. I don't want us cleaning the packs and leaving whatever came off them in the house.”

She glanced towards the room beyond, where the flower sat by the window.

“Leave the flower as it is. You already dealt with that properly.”

Ian removed any pathogen, bacteria, virus, seed, lifeform, or anything else that could contaminate or harm the continent, and returned any such material to the green island they had visited.

Nothing visible changed.

Lethira watched him for a moment, then let out a quiet breath.

“Good.”

Her hand moved once along his side before settling again.

“I'll tell Aelira it has been dealt with.”

Some tension left her shoulders, leaving the irritation of a lesson learned late.

“Next time, we make that part of returning instead of remembering afterward.”

“Shall I send her a missive, so she doesn't worry for days?”

Lethira considered it, then nodded.

“Yes. Briefly.”

She glanced towards the front room, already thinking of the report.

“Tell her the possible contamination from both visits has been removed and anything foreign that could harm this continent has been returned to the island. That is enough.”

Her attention came back to Ian.

“She does not need an explanation of how unless she asks.”

The missive was sent.

In the Wood Elf settlement, Aelira was still at work when it arrived.

She had already put the island report away. The maps and copied observations were no longer spread across her table, leaving room for the less exotic problems which had accumulated while Lethira and Mirelen were travelling: timber rights, a boundary complaint, two Warden assignments and a request whose author had somehow required three pages to explain that a bridge needed repairing.

The new missive interrupted none of that gracefully.

Aelira opened it.

It said what Lethira had asked Ian to communicate: the possible contamination brought back during both island visits had now been removed, anything foreign capable of harming the continent had been returned to the island, and the oversight had been corrected.

Aelira read it twice. The meaning was simple; *removed* covered rather more ground in Ian's hands than it did in most people's.

She set the message beside the island file, opened the cover and added a short note beneath the earlier biosecurity concern.

*Resolved after return. Future expeditions require a decontamination procedure established before departure.*

That was enough.

No reply followed. The problem had been identified, corrected and incorporated into the next set of precautions.

Aelira closed the file and returned to the broken bridge.

---

At the western holding, nothing announced that the message had arrived safely.

Lethira did not need it to.

She stayed near Ian for another moment, then finally stepped back enough to look towards the front room and the pack she had abandoned beside the wall.

“Well.”

The island had followed her home as paperwork, contamination and a flower. All three were now under control.

Her attention returned to Ian.

“How were things here while I was away?”

“No major emergencies. I've had work in my reality—which unhelpfully has been several days for you, because time is complicated.”

Lethira accepted the mismatch in elapsed days. Ian's work belonged to a reality whose local time refused to stay usefully aligned with hers; several quiet fantasy-side days gave her no measure of how much of his own life had passed alongside them.

“It was nice to have Mirelen here, although explaining myself fully to each new person is mentally exhausting. Maybe I should have a small book made.”

“I did miss you though.”

Lethira listened. At the mention of a book, one eyebrow rose.

“I understand the temptation. I am less certain I want *Ian Kirk: A Short Explanation of Why Reality Is Misbehaving* lying around where somebody can borrow it.”

She stepped back into him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Mirelen had been one old friend, chosen carefully, and even that conversation had required deciding repeatedly which facts belonged to Ian and which belonged to other people.

“You also do not owe everyone the full explanation simply because they learn one strange thing about you. Mirelen asked, and you chose to tell her. That does not need to become the price of meeting you.”

Her expression softened.

“And I missed you too.”

Lethira kissed him, then stayed against him with her forehead resting lightly near his.

Ian stood on his toes and kissed her.

“It is also quite nice to be missed.”

He smiled.

Lethira smiled back, then bent enough to kiss him again without making him reach for it.

“Yes.”

Her hands settled comfortably at his waist.

“I noticed the absence more at the ordinary times. Morning. Coming back from somewhere. Reaching the end of a day and thinking of something I wanted to tell you.”

She stayed close for another moment.

“Being away was good. Coming back is better.”

“I'm also curious to know what other strange islands this world has, but I have resisted the temptation to look, or ask.”

“I'm not sure I can cope with your enthusiasm for exploration that much.”

Ian grinned at her.

Lethira laughed.

“That is probably wise.”

She gave him a brief squeeze around the waist before easing back enough to see his face properly.

“If you tell me there is another unknown island full of impossible animals, you lose the right to complain when I want to go and look at it.”

“So keep resisting for a while. I have only just come home.”

“Let me get you a tea.”

Ian moved into the kitchen, with Lethira following close behind. He set water to boil and went through the freshly labelled jars before choosing one of the herbal infusions.

Lethira stayed in the kitchen, leaning against the edge of the work surface while he made tea. Her pack could wait.

“I did look at heavier arrowheads while I was away,” she said after a little while.

The kettle began to murmur.

“Nothing miraculous. Mirelen and I found a few patterns worth testing, but neither of us wants to turn a good bow into a bad spear merely because the island has large teeth.”

She glanced towards the front room, where the violet-edged flower was still just visible from the kitchen.

“So that can be another ordinary problem for another day.”

“I did quite like being deployed as your 'weapon'.”

Ian blushed slightly.

Lethira looked at him.

“That is an alarming way to describe it.”

Amusement softened her words. On the island, she had called for Ian only when the tools in her hands could no longer solve the problem in front of her.

She stepped closer and touched two fingers lightly beneath his chin.

“I liked knowing you were there when I needed you.”

A small smile returned.

“But if you start asking to be carried around in a sheath, I am leaving you at home.”

“I'm refraining from any comments about hilts.”

Lethira stared at him for a beat.

Then she laughed, properly this time, and shook her head.

“That was probably your last sensible decision for the afternoon.”

The water had begun boiling behind him. She reached past to take the cup once the infusion was ready, still smiling into the steam.

“I am choosing not to improve that metaphor.”

Ian made his own tea and pressed against her.

“Do you still want to return to the island?”

Lethira rested one hand against his back, cup warm in the other.

“Yes.”

There was no hesitation in it.

She looked past him towards the front room, considering what a return would require.

“Not tomorrow. And not with the same assumptions.”

The second visit had given them more than spectacle. It had shown how far Warden judgement and weapons could carry them, and where they failed. Aelira's contamination question had added a failure neither Warden had noticed in the field at all.

“I want the heavier arrows tested first. I want a proper return procedure so we do not bring half an island home on our boots. And if we take anyone else, I want to know why they are there before we invite them.”

Her hand moved once along his back.

“But yes. I want to go back.”

“Other people will get... complicated. I am not sure how I feel about widening the circle of knowledge, of my power. It gets risky.”

Ian kissed her arm.

Lethira's expression sobered.

“Yes.”

Mirelen had been one old friend, chosen carefully, and even that had required several conversations about what could be said, what belonged to somebody else and how much knowing changed a person's relationship with Ian.

Her thumb moved slowly against his back.

“A larger island party does not automatically mean a larger circle.”

“We could decide that access stays with people who already know enough. Or we could decide that nobody new goes yet. The island is not going anywhere.”

Lethira took a small drink of tea.

“But if we ever do widen it, I would rather choose that deliberately than let somebody learn because they happened to see you do something impossible when an animal was about to eat them.”

“Mirelen's rapid acceptance of me is nice, but unusual. I don't think everyone would react in the same way. If it became public knowledge, it could be... devastating.”

Lethira was quiet for a few seconds.

“Mirelen accepted *you* more quickly than she accepted what you can do.”

Mirelen had laughed with him, eaten at his table and followed him to the far side of the world. She had also asked hard questions, admitted that the scale of his power still concerned her and watched his interventions with a Warden's habit of noticing what went wrong as well as what worked.

Lethira set her cup down.

“And yes. Public knowledge would be dangerous.”

Her hand stayed against him.

“Everyone would react differently. Some would want protection. Some would want favours. Some would want proof. Some would decide you were a weapon, a god, a threat, an answer to whatever problem they already had.”

She frowned slightly.

“Kings would care. Guilds would care. Temples would care. People who had never met you would begin making decisions about what you ought to do.”

A pause.

“And once enough people know, you cannot make it private again without doing exactly the sort of thing you do not want to do to people.”

“Yeah, I don't want worshipers.”

Ian put his tea down and held her waist.

“I just want you.”

Lethira looked at him for a moment.

Then she set her own cup aside and put both arms around him.

“You do have me.”

She held him close, cheek resting lightly against his hair.

“That does not make the rest of it simple.”

Her hand moved once along his back.

“But this part is.”

Ian closed his eyes, smiling, and leaned into her.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Lethira's arms tightened around his waist.

“I love you too.”

She rested her cheek against the top of his head and simply held him there, letting the kitchen fall quiet around them.

“Reed and Wheel for lunch? Or dinner? Yet again, I have no idea what time it is.”

Lethira glanced towards the window.

The afternoon light had already begun to lengthen across the front room. Between her arrival, tea and the fact that neither of them had shown much interest in keeping track of anything since she walked through the door, lunch had comfortably escaped them.

“Dinner.”

She smiled.

“Definitely dinner. You have not lost an entire day this time.”

Lethira picked up her tea again and took a drink.

“Give me a little while to unpack and wash the road off me. Then I would like the Reed and Wheel.”

“Of course, my love.”

Lethira smiled and leaned in to kiss him once before finally retrieving her abandoned pack from the front room.

She carried it upstairs, unpacked only what needed unpacking immediately, then washed away the accumulated road dust and changed into cleaner, lighter clothes for the evening.

By the time she came back down, her hair was still slightly damp around the temples and the stiffness of several days' travel had eased from her shoulders.

She looked towards Ian.

“Ready when you are.”

“Walk? Or... more efficient methods?”

Lethira considered it for barely a moment.

“Walk.”

She picked up the light outer layer she had left near the door and settled it over her shoulders.

“I have spent several days travelling. I am not going to ruin a perfectly good walk by disappearing halfway through it.”

A small smile touched her mouth.

“And I want the road.”

Ian took her hand.

“To Merrowford, my Lady.”

Lethira gave him a sideways look.

“My Lady?”

The corner of her mouth lifted. She squeezed his hand and opened the door with the other.

“That sounds dangerously close to manners.”

Outside, the evening had cooled enough to make the walk inviting. The road curved away through the western trees towards town, carrying none of the island's hidden teeth, impossible tracks or creatures large enough to alter geography.

Lethira stepped onto it with Ian's hand still in hers.

“Come on, then.”

They walked towards Merrowford.

The road was dry enough that their boots raised only a little dust. Evening light came through the western trees at an angle, catching the higher branches and leaving the hollows beside the road already cooler. The stream accompanied them for part of the way before turning away behind the holding.

Lethira kept Ian's hand in hers.

Another mile on foot felt easy. Tonight there was nowhere beyond it she needed to reach. No inn waiting at the end of a day's march. No report to organise before sleep. No map whose blank spaces needed defending against enthusiasm.

Merrowford was simply where they were going for dinner.

A cart passed heading west, its driver lifting one hand in recognition of Lethira before continuing towards the scattered holdings beyond town. She returned the gesture with her free hand.

Farther along, the road showed the ongoing work more clearly. One repaired section had settled enough that cart wheels no longer sought the old rut automatically. Fresh material was still slightly lighter than the older surface, but traffic was blending the join.

Lethira looked down at it as they crossed.

“Mirelen would approve.”

She walked another few paces before adding, “She would then find three things wrong with it so nobody became complacent.”

The trees thinned gradually.

Merrowford accumulated along the approach before the gate: another side track joining the road, fenced ground, sheds, the first houses sufficiently close together that neighbours could call to one another without trying. Smoke rose from evening fires. Somewhere ahead, metal struck metal several times before stopping.

Lethira breathed in.

After the Wood Elf settlement, the town looked young.

After the island, it looked wonderfully overexplained.

Every animal in sight belonged to somebody or was at least recognisable. A dog slept beside a doorway. Two chickens scratched beneath a fence. A horse stood tied outside a building with no apparent intention of swallowing anything larger than grass.

Lethira's fingers tightened lightly around Ian's.

“I have developed a new appreciation for livestock.”

Beyond the outer buildings, the west gate remained open to the evening traffic. They passed through it with the last carts returning to the old town, then followed the tighter streets towards Bridge Street. People were finishing work, others beginning to think about supper, shutters being adjusted rather than closed. No one paid much attention to the pair beyond the recognition Lethira had accumulated during her time in Merrowford.

The Reed and Wheel lay ahead near the west end of Bridge Street.

Its sign came into view between buildings, moving slightly in the evening air.

Lethira looked towards it and smiled.

“Now that looks appropriately dangerous.”

“I wonder if my pudding recipe has made it to the normal menu.”

Lethira glanced towards him.

“The last evidence we have is that I told Caswick to make it again after we ate both experimental ones.”

Her smile widened slightly.

“That may have been sufficient market research.”

They reached the Reed and Wheel and stepped inside.

The common room was already well into its evening rhythm. Several tables were occupied, the hearth had been allowed to fall lower with the warmer weather, and the kitchen was sending out its mixture of bread, onions and roasting meat. Little had changed since they stopped living upstairs.

Caswick saw them before they had moved far from the door.

Recognition came with a brief glance at Lethira, then Ian.

“You two.”

Her eyes narrowed fractionally.

“If you're here to ask whether that apple-and-berry pudding survived its trial, the answer is yes.”

Lethira turned slowly towards Ian.

Caswick continued before either of them could become too pleased.

“Not every night. Apples, preserve and yesterday's bread still have to cooperate with the rest of the kitchen.”

She picked up two cups from the counter and set them onto a tray.

“But people order it when we have it.”

Lethira's expression became deeply satisfied on Ian's behalf.

Caswick looked between them.

“Table for two?”

“Yes, please, Caswick.”

Caswick nodded towards a table near the side wall.

“Take that one. I'll be with you in a moment.”

Lethira kept Ian's hand until they reached the table. They had used it often enough during their weeks upstairs to know the particular unevenness in one chair leg.

She sat opposite him.

The Reed and Wheel carried on around them. Someone near the hearth was telling a story loudly enough to have acquired listeners from two neighbouring tables. A pair of travellers farther back were studying a road map between bowls of stew. From the kitchen came the scrape of a pan and Caswick's voice asking somebody whether they had remembered the onions.

Lethira looked around with quiet satisfaction.

“This still feels slightly like coming back to somewhere we used to live.”

Caswick arrived a little later with two small menus and set them down.

“Pudding is available tonight,” she said. “Since I know at least one of you was going to ask.”

Lethira looked across the table at Ian.

“You have achieved permanence.”

Caswick ignored that.

“Kitchen has lamb stew, roast chicken, river fish, and the usual smaller things. Drinks?”

“I'll take a lighter mead, nothing too strong, if you have it. And the lamb stew please, lamb is my favourite meat.”

Caswick treated the qualification about strength as routine.

“We've a lighter honey mead. More drink than challenge.”

She marked the order on the small board she carried, then glanced at the stew pot visible through the kitchen opening.

“Lamb's a good choice tonight.”

Lethira had been looking over the menu while Ian ordered. She lowered it.

“I'll have the river fish. And the same mead.”

Caswick collected both menus and disappeared towards the kitchen, leaving them with the common-room noise and the promise of food.

Lethira looked across the table at Ian.

“I didn't know lamb was your favourite.”

“Bacon, then lamb, then...”

Ian paused. He knew the next word would not translate for her.

“Beef burgers?”

The second word failed to translate.

Lethira's brows drew together.

“The first part I know.”

The mead arrived before she could pursue it further, pale gold in two cups. Lethira waited until Caswick had moved away, then looked back across the table.

“What is a burger?”

“You mince the beef, I think, form it into flattened wheel-shaped things, then cook them. That is called the patty, I think. You then put it between two bits of bread, with melted cheese and other stuff. We will have to try making them.”

“I'm very hungry now.”

Ian smiled and let her reply.

Lethira followed the explanation with increasing amusement, assembling the missing food from components she recognised.

“So you take perfectly respectable beef, chop it apart, put it back together, cover it in cheese and trap it inside bread.”

She picked up her mead and tasted it. The lighter drink carried honey with only a mild alcoholic warmth.

“That sounds excellent. We should make them.”

“What do you prefer? I've noticed you go for fish a lot.”

Lethira glanced towards the kitchen, where the smell of the evening's river fish was already reaching their table.

“I do.”

She settled back in her chair and considered.

“Good river fish, probably. Especially roasted with herbs and the skin crisp. I like lamb, and I like venison when it has been cooked properly, but if an inn offers fish and I trust the kitchen, I usually choose the fish.”

Her mouth curved slightly.

“You noticed before I did, apparently.”

“Occasionally I pay attention, almost exclusively if it's you.”

Ian lifted his cup and tried the mead for the first time.

It was pale and lightly sweet, honey over mild fermentation. Caswick had described it accurately: a drink made for food.

Lethira watched him over her own cup.

“Well?”

“I am not a fan of alcohol, but this is acceptable, as I like honey.”

“I thought I'd try something different.”

Lethira nodded, turning her own cup slightly between her hands.

“That seems a better reason to drink it than deciding you ought to like alcohol because other people do.”

She took another small sip herself.

“And if you hate the next different thing, you can simply stop drinking it.”

Their food arrived before the subject needed anything more. Caswick set Ian's lamb stew in front of him, rich with onions and root vegetables, then placed Lethira's river fish beside a smaller dish of greens.

The smell of the stew reached Ian immediately.

Lethira looked at his expression and smiled.

“You did say you were hungry.”

Ian tucked in.

“My dinner is almost ready here too, excellent coordination.”

Lethira paused with a piece of fish halfway to her mouth.

Then she understood which *here* he meant.

“That is either excellent coordination or a very complicated way to have dinner twice.”

She ate the fish, still faintly amused.

Around them, the Reed and Wheel carried on at its evening pace. Ian's stew was hot and substantial, the lamb tender enough to break apart easily against the spoon. Lethira's fish had been roasted until the skin crisped at the edges, with herbs worked into the flesh rather than piled over it afterward.

For several minutes, hunger did most of the talking.

“Lamb's good.”

Lethira smiled and returned to her fish.

“That sounded almost passionately delivered.”

She left him to his stew after that.

For a while the meal settled into the easy quiet of two hungry people eating something they had chosen well. The lighter mead suited the food, distinct but unobtrusive.

By the time Ian's bowl was nearly empty, Caswick passed close enough to catch Lethira's eye.

Lethira glanced towards Ian, then towards the kitchen.

“I think your pudding has survived long enough to deserve another inspection.”

Ian offered a prayer to the gods of puddings.

Lethira watched the brief solemnity with growing suspicion.

“You realise that if any deity actually answers that, I am blaming you.”

Caswick arrived a few moments later carrying a warm dish between folded cloths. The apple-and-berry pudding had browned across the top, darker fruit showing where the filling had risen against the edges.

She set it between them with two small bowls.

“Thank you, Caswick, first priestess of my new pudding-based religion.”

Caswick stopped with one hand still resting on the edge of the table.

Her expression was impressively level.

“I already run an inn. I have enough people asking me for miracles.”

She divided the pudding between the two bowls with the practised economy of someone refusing to become involved in theology merely because dessert had gone well.

Lethira covered her mouth briefly with one hand, but not quite quickly enough to hide the smile.

Caswick set the serving spoon down and returned to the kitchen.

Ian put his spoon into the pudding and took the first bite.

“I could actually create a Goddess of puddings.”

Lethira stopped with her own spoon just above the bowl.

“Please do not. I know you are joking, but you are also capable of it.”

Ian chuckled.

“This is very nice.”

Lethira finally tried her own spoonful.

The top had gone soft where the fruit had soaked into it, while the browned edges kept a little structure. The berries were sharper than the apple and stopped the whole thing becoming merely sweet.

She nodded once.

“Yes.”

She took another spoonful, and Ian reached across for her free hand.

They finished the pudding, then the last of the lighter mead, and ate their fill.

By the end, Ian's stew bowl had been cleared, Lethira's fish reduced to little more than skin and bones, and the pudding dish between them showed only streaks of dark berry against the glaze. The Reed and Wheel had grown louder around them as the evening settled in, but their table sat comfortably outside the centre of it.

Lethira sat back, still holding Ian's hand loosely across the table.

“That was exactly what I wanted.”

Caswick eventually appeared to clear the last dishes and leave the bill.

Lethira looked at it, reached for her purse and set the money down before Ian needed to decide anything about it.

“My turn.”

Ian smiled, enjoying being kept.

Lethira caught the expression as Caswick collected the payment.

Her eyes narrowed with amused recognition.

“You like that far too much.”

She tucked her purse away and kept his hand in hers beneath the edge of the table.

“I'll remember.”

Ian blushed a little.

“Maybe.”

Lethira's smile turned quietly satisfied.

The bill was paid and the bowls were empty, but neither hurried to leave the comfortable noise.

Her thumb moved once across the back of his hand.

“Come on.”

She stood, drawing him gently up with her.

“We walked here. We can walk home too.”

Ian followed her lead, holding her hand.

They stepped back out into the evening.

Merrowford had quieted. Light showed through windows along the street, and the last of the day's business had given way to people moving more slowly between homes, inns and whatever small obligations remained before sleep.

Lethira kept an easy pace towards the house.

For a while they said nothing.

Their joined hands swung lightly between them as the town thinned into scattered buildings, then road, then trees. Darkness gathered gradually.

Ahead, the western holding waited beyond the bend.

Lethira glanced towards Ian.

“Good dinner.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Good return.”

“Great company.”

Lethira looked at him, the smile coming easily.

“That too.”

She leaned in just far enough to kiss his temple without breaking stride, then settled back beside him with their hands still joined.

By the time the holding came into view, the road had gone mostly dark beneath the trees. The house showed itself first through its windows, warm light catching the edges of glass and timber.

Lethira slowed slightly as they reached the final stretch.

They crossed the last of the road together and reached the door.

Lethira stopped before opening it.

Still holding Ian's hand, she looked at the house, then at him.

“I really did miss this.”

Ian took her other hand, stretched up a little and kissed her.

“Let me take you upstairs, and welcome you home properly.”

Lethira's expression changed at once.

Warmth, amusement and unmistakable understanding all arrived together.

“I think I can allow that.”

She kissed him again, slower this time, then let him lead her through the door.