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“Aye,” I say after a moment, my voice quieter now. “It’s… not somethin’ I enjoy speakin’ about.”

I swallow hard, watching sparks shift in the hearth.

“It’s painful,” I admit. “And folk around here avoid it like the plague. Think everyone decided long ago it was easier that way.”

The fire pops. Sparks leap and vanish into the dark, and I watch them a little too closely.

“Then we don’t have to speak of it,” he says immediately. “Not if it hurts you.”

Something twists sharply in my chest at the simple kindness of that.

“No,” I say before I can stop myself.

I look at our joined hands, gathering courage I did not realise I was searching for.

“No,” I repeat more quietly.

I lift my eyes to his then, finding nothing there but patience and quiet attention, and somehow that makes this harder.

“I…” My fingers tighten faintly around his. “I think I want to tell you.”

He says nothing after that. Doesn’t rush me. Doesn’t fill the silence to ease it. He simply waits, his hand warm around mine while the fire crackles low in front of us.

“My father was a printer,” I say at last. “Ink and type and paper.” A faint, bittersweet smile touches my mouth. “Mostly sermons and notices. Pamphlets, sometimes. Some poetry. Some political.” My thumb drifts absently against his knuckles. “And some were beautiful things written in our own tongue.”

I pause, gathering the words. “But as we’ve seen, words frightened some of the English more than weapons ever did.”

Alex doesn’t interrupt. His grip stays steady.

“They came over drunk,” I say. “Soldiers.”

My gaze fixes somewhere beyond the fire now, seeing something far older than the room around us. “They were laughin’ when they arrived. Shouting too. They didn’t like something he’d printed, or something he’d said. Or maybe they didn’t like him.” I pause. “They’d already been at the shop earlier that day. Threats. Shovin’ him about. Tellin’ him to mind his tongue.”

My mouth twists. “They came back after dark to make a point, probably thinking the place’d be empty.”

I stare into the flames as if they might answer me.

“Ya know, paper goes fast. Faster than you think. And once it takes, there’s little to do to stop it.”

His fingers hold mine a little tighter.

“I wasn’t home that night. I was staying with Robert’s family. His father is my uncle,” I go on. “My mother insisted because what they were working on was going to take some time to finish, and I wasn’t particularly fond of hangin’ around the press all day and night.”

I swallow. “The men didn’t check to see if the building was empty. They didn’t look. Just left it burnin’, proud of themselves, like they’d done something righteous.”

My voice goes soft, stripped bare by the memory, and by the grief that still lives too near the surface.

“My parents were trapped inside. So was my older sister.”

The words leave me hollow every time I say them, no less painful than the first time.

“I came back the next mornin’,” I continue after a long silence. “The whole street smelled of smoke, and there were people everywhere. Strangers, mostly. Quiet. Avoidin’ one another’s eyes.”

My jaw tightens. “That’s how I knew. Before anyone even spoke to me.”

The fire pops sharply again and I flinch before I can stop myself.

“The soldiers were never punished,” I say, and now bitterness finally bleeds through the grief. “Not a single one. Drunk. Regrettable. No witnesses worth listenin’ to.” A humourless laugh catches painfully in my throat. “The usual bloody nonsense.”