“He tried to be.” Feral went back to cleaning. “He died before he could finish teaching me everything I needed to know.”
“You figured it out.”
“I had to.”
The words came out matter-of-fact, but I heard the weight underneath them. Nineteen and suddenly alpha, responsible for hundreds of wolves, carrying the pack on shoulders that hadn’t been ready for it yet.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think you’ve done well.”
He glanced at me, vulnerability passing across his face. “You didn’t know me before.”
“I know you now.”
That landed somewhere tender. His throat worked, and he nodded before turning back to the bookshelf.
We worked in silence for a while longer. Him cleaning, me documenting. Acorn grooming himself on his perch and occasionally offering unsolicited opinions about technique and efficiency that I opted not to comment on.
The office was transforming. What had been a tomb when I first found it was becoming a workspace again. Feral’s father’s things arranged with care instead of abandoned. My equipment on one side, his maps and records on the other.
I liked it very much. I could picture us working quietly together here through the years. Sharing smiles and discussing whatever we were working on.
A buzzing sound cut through the silence, and a messenger sprite flew in through the window, trailing silver sparks.
I walked over to the window and held out my palm. “Take a rest, little one.”
The sprite landed on my hand, her wings still moving fast enough to create a faint hum. Up close, I could see the delicate structure of her body, translucent in places where the light hit her right.
After setting her onto the windowsill, I collected the nectar I’d kept ready, pouring it into a small dish. The sprite dove into the drink, gulping it down.
Feral had stopped cleaning and come over to stand beside me, watching the sprite.
“A message from your grandmother?” he asked.
“Most likely.” I watched the sprite finish the nectar, her tiny hands cupping the dish.
When she finished, she flew up and deposited a tiny scroll in my hand, the paper warm from being carried close to her body. She launched back out through the window opening in a shower of silver sparks that faded as she disappeared.
The scroll magically expanded to its original size, and I recognized my grandmother’s seal on the letter.
Feral had returned to his cleaning, but I could feel his attention on me.
I broke the seal and unrolled the letter, scanning the contents once before reading more carefully.
My grandmother’s handwriting filled the page in her characteristic neat script, the letters formed with the same care she gave everything.
Victoria,
The botanical history you requested proved more extensive than I anticipated. Duskburst appears in wolf pack ceremonial records dating back centuries, though never in decorative or medicinal contexts. The application appears to have been ritualistic.
Oddly enough, duskburst functions as a binding agent in pack seal renewal ceremonies. The plant anchors ritual magic to the physical landscape. It quite literally holds the seal structure in place. Without proper duskburst presence, seals can degrade from the outside in. This degradation would not be dramatic. It would be slow and begin at the roots and work upward through the magical structure.
If plants were removed from seal sites, the seals might erode over time rather than break cleanly.
I read those paragraphs again, my heart rate picking up, before turning to the duskburst specimens on my worktable and the dried sprigs in Acorn’s basket. The pieces were starting to fit together in ways I didn’t like.
One additional observation, though it strays from the botanical subject. I’ve found that the most important discoveries tend to happen when a researcher finally stops working alone. You might consider that.
I smiled at that. She never could resist making personal observations in her correspondence. It was one of the things I loved about her.
