Larian was silent for a moment.

"Do you think someone sent him, sir?"

"I don’t know. But the rule is that the question is asked regardless of the answer." He processed the information for a second. "And until we have clear evidence that no one sent him, we operate under the hypothesis that someone did. Someone with resources. With information. And with motives we don’t yet understand."

"Yes, sir."

Brenwick nodded. He poured himself a glass of wine with the controlled calm of someone who’d lived fifty-two years and practiced his trade for thirty. Raised the glass. Brought it to his lips.

And then, exactly at that moment, someone knocked on the office’s main door.

Three knocks.

Uniform.

Paced.

Brenwick went very still with the glass halfway to his mouth.

He looked at Larian.

Larian looked back. His face maintained neutral professionalism, but his eyes communicated exactly the same calculation Brenwick was making internally.

*No one knows this office’s address to knock at this hour.*

Five Anvils Street was a middling commercial street. Brenwick’s office was officially registered as a general imports office. But it was five in the morning. No legitimate import client knocks at five in the morning. No illegitimate one either, because Table operations were coordinated through other channels that didn’t include knocking on doors.

And yet.

Three knocks.

Uniform.

Paced.

Brenwick set the glass down on the desk.

Very slowly.

"Larian."

"Yes, sir."

"Go see who it is."

"Yes, sir."

Larian walked toward the office door. Before leaving the main office, he stopped. Looked at Brenwick.

"Sir. What if it’s someone unexpected?"

Brenwick looked at him.

"Larian. In this trade, when someone knocks on the door at five in the morning, knowing an address they shouldn’t know, with that specific cadence that suggests they’ve been knocking on doors like that their whole life, the correct answer to ’what if it’s someone unexpected’ is always the same. It’s unexpected. Open it. And prepare for the rest of your career."

Larian was silent for a moment.

Then he nodded.

And walked toward the main door.

---

Nathan and Liaraen had left the main road around midday and were now advancing along a secondary path that wound through open fields and small clusters of trees. Selene had marked this detour on the map as the first of a series of routes that would keep them away from the official roads throughout the first stage. The speed was slower, but the exposure was considerably less.

Liaraen had been silent for the last hour, watching the landscape pass with the quiet attention of someone using the journey to internally process things that didn’t need to be processed out loud.

Then, without warning, she spoke.

"Hunter Voss."

"Sprout."

"I’m going to correct something before we continue."

"Go ahead."

"You call it the Northern Kingdom because that’s what humans call it. Its official name is Aelthoren. In formal Elven, it’s written with a root meaning ’the forest that remembers.’ Humans started calling it the Northern Kingdom during the period of the second Shadow King, approximately four hundred years ago, when the Elven language stopped being the common diplomatic tongue between the two kingdoms. The custom stabilized, and now most humans no longer know the original name."

"Aelthoren."

"Aelthoren. Correct."

"Decent pronunciation for a first human attempt."

"I’m being generous."

"Acceptable."

Liaraen smiled very slightly.

"House Sael’thoryn is in Aelthoren’s central region, in a valley protected by three sacred forests. The main house is an ancient structure built around a central tree—not metaphorically. The tree has been growing for approximately nine hundred years, and the house was constructed around it, incorporating it as the central structure. Rooms along the trunk’s levels, halls between the major branches, a library in the canopy. Everything connected by stairs and walkways of living wood."

"That sounds impressive."

"It’s functional. And aesthetically coherent. Humans usually find it more impressive than elves do, because to us it’s simply the house. Like a stone house with a sloped roof would be to you."

"True."

"My room is on the trunk’s middle level. It faces west. It has a large window without glass, because in Aelthoren we don’t use glass in tree-house windows, and a fabric hammock on a small platform." Pause. "I like my room very much."

"It must be nice to have a room you like."

"Did you never have one?"

Nathan thought about it.

"I had several. None that I liked specifically. They were rooms where I slept. Not rooms that were mine in a personal sense."

Liaraen looked at him.

"Tell me about your life before being a Hunter."

Nathan glanced at her briefly.

"Are you sure you want that story?"

"Yes."

"It’s not interesting."

"I’ll evaluate that myself."

Nathan drove the cart for a few seconds in silence. Then, with the specific neutral tone of someone who’d decided to answer honestly but without pretension, he began.

"I was born in a small town three days’ journey east of Greywall. A place with no official name that locals simply called the Crossing, because it was where two trade roads met and split again. My parents were minor merchants. They sold supplies to passing caravans. We were never rich, but we never went hungry either. I had an older brother. His name was Aren."

"Was?"

"He died when I was seven. Illness. Nothing dramatic—just bad luck with a fever during a season when there were no healers available at the Crossing."

"I’m sorry."

"It was a long time ago. I’ve processed it."

"Alright."

"My parents are gone too. My father died when I was sixteen, in an accident with a loaded cart. My mother followed him three years later—complications from a flu that wasn’t treated in time. When she died, I was nineteen. I sold what remained of the business, paid the family debts, and kept just enough to pay three months’ rent in the nearest city while I looked for work. That work ended up being the warehouse I left to come to Greywall."

"How long were you at the warehouse?"

"Three and a half years."

"What did you do there exactly?"

"Loaded and unloaded goods. Kept inventory. Coordinated deliveries for minor clients. By the end, I’d been given some administrative responsibility because the owner trusted me. Then the business went under when the owner lost three major contracts in a row. I took what they paid me as severance, packed my things, and walked to Greywall."

"Why Greywall?"

"Because it was the nearest large city with a reputation for accepting outside personnel. I thought I was going to get work at another warehouse, or a minor administrative post. I didn’t think about Hunter guilds. I didn’t have a Seal. The guilds weren’t an option... even though I took a risk and went to ask for Hunter work without a Seal."

"And then the alley."

"And then the alley."

Liaraen was quiet for a moment, thinking.

"Hunter Voss."

"Yes?"

"Did you have anyone waiting for you when you left for Greywall? Friends? A partner? Anyone who would have noticed if you didn’t come back?"

Nathan thought about it.

"No."

"No one?"

"The warehouse owner, maybe. He liked me. But he was dealing with his own bankruptcy. The other workers scattered when it closed. Each went their own way. I didn’t stay in touch with any of them."

"Extended family?"

"An uncle on my father’s side. Up north. I haven’t seen him since I was twelve. I don’t know if he’s still alive."

"So when you left for Greywall, there was no one in the world specifically waiting for you."

"No."

"And if something had happened to you on the road."

"No one would have noticed immediately. Probably months later. When someone crossed through the town where I was born and noticed I hadn’t come back."

Liaraen was quiet for a long moment.

"That’s lonely."

"It was." Nathan glanced at her briefly. "Objectively. Yes. But I didn’t process it as lonely at the time. It was just how life was. You do what you do, go where you go, survive. Elaborate concepts about loneliness and connection were luxuries I couldn’t afford."

"You have people who care about you now."

"Apparently I do."

"Selene. Berran. Mira."

"Selene out of structural interest. Berran out of professional habit. Mira out of unresolved curiosity, and honestly, I involved her in my situation."

"Nathan."

"Yes?"

"The three reasons you just gave are constructed specifically to minimize the actual connection. I’m going to overlook them. The three people care about you. Period."

"Alright."

"And I do too."

Nathan looked at her.

Liaraen looked back—something that had been hard to say and wouldn’t be repeated, but also wouldn’t be taken back.

"Accepted," Nathan said, his voice slightly lower than usual.

"Good."

There was a silence.

The chestnut horse continued its march. The afternoon sun illuminated the fields with the specific golden tone of the end of a long journey’s first day. Neither of them spoke for several minutes.

Then Liaraen said, without turning:

"When we reach Aelthoren, I’m going to show you my room."

"You’re going to show me your room?"

"The view from the window. It’s the best part of the house. You can see the forest to the west, and sometimes at sunset the birds pass in large formations, and the leaves change color depending on how the light falls. It’s the most beautiful view I know."

"I’ll look forward to seeing it."

"Good."

"Sprout."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for asking about my former life."

"It’s the least I can do, considering you’ve been risking yours for mine for two days. And considering that for probably the rest of my life, I’m going to be talking about you to people in Aelthoren, I wanted to have accurate information."

"Fair. Very fair."

"Good."

The cart continued along the path. The sun continued its descent toward the horizon. And the first day of the journey to the kingdom that was no longer North but Aelthoren—the forest that remembers—made its way toward its first night outside Greywall, with Nathan Voss at the reins and Liaraen Sael’thoryn beside him, speaking for the first time not as rescuer and rescued, but as two people who had decided that the appropriate word for them now was *traveling companions.*