She dreamed of her brother.
Not the last time she had seen him, thin and eager in his new uniform. Not the letter she had left wedged in the stone. She dreamed of something earlier, the two of them in their father's library when she was seventeen and he was fourteen, surrounded by books he didn't care about but refused to leave.
Why do you read so much?he had asked, fidgeting on the windowsill.You can't even remember everything.
I don't have to remember everything,she had said.I just have to remember where to find it.
In the dream, he laughed.That's cheating.
It's efficiency.
Same thing.He had jumped down from the windowsill, restless as always.Come outside. There's a world out there, Verity. You can't learn everything from books.
She had not gone. She had stayed with her books, and he had gone without her, and a decade later he had gone somewhere she could not follow no matter how far she traveled.
But in the dream, she stood up. She closed the book. She followed him out into the sunlight, and he turned back to grin at her, and for one perfect moment they were just two people with infinite time ahead of them.
There you go,he said.That wasn't so hard.
She woke to gray dawn and Targesh already stirring beside her. The fire had burned to embers. The stars were gone, faded into a sky that promised clear weather for the descent.
She lay still for a moment, holding onto the dream.
Then she rose, and they prepared to leave, and she did not look back at the boulder where she had left her brother's letter. She did not need to. She knew where it was. She knew where everything was, now.
The mountain would keep it. The mountain kept everything.
Chapter 24
The descent was easier than the climb.
Her thighs still burned, her back still ached, and the cold had settled into her joints, but the weight she carried had shifted. Redistributed. She could feel Corvin's absence still, a hollow space behind her ribs that would probably never fill completely. But it no longer pressed against her lungs with every breath.
It had found its place, and she had found hers, and the two could coexist.
Targesh rode ahead, picking the route through snow that had crusted overnight into a treacherous shell of ice. The horses moved carefully, ears pricked forward, testing each step before committing their weight. Verity let her mount follow without interference.
The sun climbed. The sky stayed clear. By midday they had descended below the worst of the snow, back into the sparse forest where stunted pines clung to rocky soil. The air warmedslightly. That's not to say it was warm, but it was, at least, less actively hostile.
They reached Stonehaven as the afternoon light began to slant golden through the trees.
Targesh dismounted first, checking the horses' legs before leading them to the lean-to. Verity slid from her saddle with marginally more grace than she had managed on the first day.
Inside, the fire pit held cold ashes. The fur-covered platform waited where they had left it, the blankets folded at its foot. Everything was exactly as it had been, preserved in the mountain's dry cold.
She knelt by the fire pit. The kindling was stacked against the wall in neat bundles. She selected the driest pieces and struck the flint. The bark caught. A thin curl of smoke rose, and she leaned close, blowing gently, coaxing the ember into flame. The fire spread to the kindling, crackling as it climbed the pyramid of sticks.
She sat back on her heels, watching the flames stabilize.
"You learn fast." Targesh's voice came from the doorway. He was silhouetted against the fading light, his bulk filling the frame.
"I had a good teacher." She reached for the larger pieces of wood, feeding them to the growing fire one at a time.
He moved into the shelter, ducking beneath the lintel, and began unpacking the saddlebags. Dried meat, hard cheese, the last of the travel bread. He set the food on the edge of the platform.
Verity watched him work. The firelight caught the planes of his face, the scars that mapped his history, the set of his jaw. He looked tired.
She pulled her journal from her pack, uncapped her travel ink, and settled cross-legged on the platform, the journal balancedon her knee, her quill retrieved from where it had migrated into her braid sometime during the descent.
