25
Kason
Six Weeks Later
The grey had come into my eyes sometime during the fourth week, though I couldn't have said precisely which day, only that I'd caught my own reflection in a war room window one evening and failed, for one disorienting moment, to fully recognize the man looking back at me.
Six weeks of searching had worn considerably more off me than simple exhaustion accounted for.
I ate because Teodor put food in front of me and stood over me until I finished it.
I slept in fragments, three or four hours at a time, always waking with her name half-formed on my lips and the hollow ache of a bond stretched much further than it had ever been tested before.
My wolf had gone quiet in a way that worried the castle healers more than they said plainly to my face — not calm, they clarified, when I pressed, but muted, the distinct flatness of an animal that had stopped expecting good news and started, instead, simply enduring.
My father found me at the war room's map table more evenings than either of us cared to count, and rarely offered easy comfort, understanding, I think, that easy comfort had stopped meaning anything to me sometime around the third week.
"You remind me of myself, after your grandfather's reign ended and I understood the full weight of what he'd hidden for decades," he said, one such evening, studying the map's accumulated red marks with the particular weary recognition of a man who'd carried his own version of this grief once.
"I didn't eat properly for a month, after I first learned the shape of what my silence had already cost people I never even knew existed.
Your mother used to say grief and guilt wear the exact same face, and it takes considerable practice to learn which one you're actually looking at in the mirror each morning. "
"Which one am I looking at?"
"Both, I suspect. In equal measure." He rested a hand briefly on my shoulder, the same old gesture from childhood neither of us had entirely outgrown.
"The guilt, you can address, eventually, by learning from it properly rather than simply drowning in it.
The grief, you can only carry until it either finds resolution or teaches you how to carry it without it costing you everything else in the meantime.
I'd rather you learned the second skill soon, Kason, whatever the search eventually reveals.
I've already lost one son to this kingdom's dangers.
I don't intend to lose the other to grief alone, whatever the search's outcome turns out to be. "
I didn't have a ready answer for that, and he didn't press for one, leaving me alone with the map and the accumulated weight of six weeks' failed searching.
"You need to eat something," Teodor said, finding me in the war room for what felt like the thousandth identical evening, a fresh report spread across the table that held, I already knew before reading it, no better news than the fifty reports that had preceded it.
"I'm not hungry."
"I didn't ask whether you were hungry. I said you need to eat.
" He set a plate down with more force than the gesture strictly required, the weary patience of a man who'd been having this same argument for six weeks and had no intention of losing it now.
"Halfway through week three you told me you'd manage yourself properly if I stopped hovering.
You haven't managed yourself properly once since. I'm done pretending otherwise."
I ate, mechanically, tasting none of it, my attention already back on the map spread beneath the report — the same map I'd studied every evening for six weeks, red marks accumulating across it like a wound that refused to close, each one representing a lead that had, eventually, led nowhere.
"The Council's growing restless," Teodor said, once I'd finished enough of the plate to satisfy him.
"Halmar's been careful about it, given his own position's considerably weakened since the Sorrowmarket incident, but there's a faction gathering that believes six weeks without confirmed progress means the search should scale back.
Resources redirected toward the Unbound's broader threat rather than one specific captive. "
"She's not 'one specific captive.' She's the Frostmark heir, and my mate, and this Council will redirect exactly nothing until she's found.
" The words came out sharper than I intended, though Teodor didn't flinch from them, long since accustomed to the singular rawness that had replaced my usual composure.
"I know what she is, Kason. I'm not the one you need to convince.
I'm telling you what's building in that Council chamber so you're not blindsided by it when it finally reaches you formally.
" He crossed his arms, weighing something before he continued.
"Your father's held the line so far. But even his patience has limits, and Halmar's faction is gaining ground with every week that passes without a confirmed sighting. "
I understood the political reality he was describing. I found, six weeks into a search that had cost me significantly more than my composure, that I no longer had the capacity to care about political reality the way I once had.
Yeva found me later that same evening, in the small alcove off the east courtyard where Ilinca had once taken her morning tea, and I understood, from the particular gentleness in her approach, that she'd come to say something considerably harder than her usual easy warmth typically carried.
"You're disappearing," she said, quiet, settling onto the bench across from me.
"Not just physically, though Father's noticed that too — you've lost weight you didn't have to lose.
I mean something else. I watch you in council sessions and half the time you're not actually in the room at all.
You're somewhere else, wherever she is, and I don't think that's helping either of you. "
"What would you have me do instead? Pretend I've stopped caring while the search continues?"
"I'd have you remember that you're still needed here, by people who love you, even while the search continues.
" Her voice cracked slightly, the first genuine crack I'd seen in her composure since the crisis began.
"I lost her too, Kason. I know it's not the same as what you're carrying, but I lost a friend six weeks ago, and I've been trying to hold this family together while you disappear into a grief you won't let anyone help you carry.
I need my brother back, even partially, even while we keep searching. I can't lose both of you to this."
Something in her plain, exhausted honesty reached me in a way six weeks of Teodor's careful management hadn't quite managed to. "I'm sorry. I hadn't fully seen how much this was costing you too."
"I know you hadn't. That's rather the point I'm making.
" She took my hand, the same gesture she'd offered at the stables months before, a lifetime ago in a version of our lives that had seemed noticeably simpler before Ilinca's disappearance rewrote everything currently possible for either of us.
"Don't disappear entirely, Kason. Whatever it costs you to stay present, stay present anyway.
She'll need you whole, when we find her.
Not a ghost who's already grieved her before she's even confirmed lost."
I held onto that plea through the following days, forcing myself to eat properly, to sleep in longer stretches, to attend council sessions with my full attention rather than the hollow half-presence I'd been offering for weeks, though the effort cost me considerably more than it should have, every ordinary task now weighed against the ache of her absence.
I visited the archive wing once, during that stretch of forced, deliberate presence, and found I couldn't stay longer than a few minutes.
Her tools still sat exactly where she'd left them, the restoration work half-finished on the shelf she'd been working when Yeva's summons about the Gathering had first pulled her away from it, and I stood among the dust and the old warding lines and felt the specific, specific grief of a space that still expected her return, unaware, in the way rooms are always unaware, that six weeks had passed without a single confirmed sighting.
I did not go back a second time, not until the search finally gave me a reason worth the visit's particular cost.
The break came on the forty-third day, delivered by a rider who'd ridden two days without proper rest to reach us, carrying word that arrived with the particular electric urgency that told me, before he'd said a single word, that six weeks of dead ends had finally produced something real.
"A trader, working the northern passes," he said, still catching his breath.
"Claims he supplied a fortified compound three weeks back — food, medical supplies, substantially more than a small camp would require.
He described the location well enough that our cartographers have narrowed it to a specific valley, isolated, defensible, roughly four days' ride from here. "
"Did he see her? Confirm anyone matching her description?"
"He saw a woman, kept apart from the rest, guarded closely.
Dark hair, he said. He couldn't say more than that — he wasn't permitted close enough to see her face clearly.
" The rider's voice carried the careful honesty of a man who understood exactly how much weight his uncertain report was about to carry.
"But the location matches every pattern we've tracked for Unbound holdings, Your Highness.
It's the strongest lead this search has produced in six weeks. "
I felt something in my chest that I hadn't felt in six weeks of grinding, hopeless searching — not certainty, not yet, but something considerably closer to hope than I'd allowed myself to feel since the riverbank had swallowed her trail.
"Assemble the strike force," I said, already moving, already feeling my wolf stir from its long, muted silence with something that finally resembled purpose again. "Full Iron-Guard complement. We leave within the day."
Teodor was already at my side, matching my pace toward the war room, something like cautious hope moving across his own exhausted features. "Kason. Whatever we find in that valley, I need you steady when we reach it. However this ends."
"I know." I met his eyes, understanding exactly what he wasn't saying plainly. "Whatever we find, Teodor. I intend to be steady enough to face it, and steady enough to bring her home if there's any chance left of it."
Dobrin arrived at the castle gate just as the strike force finished assembling, having ridden hard from the Sorrowmarket the moment word of the lead reached him through channels I suspected Yeva had quietly arranged weeks before, unwilling to let him remain uninformed while the search that had cost him a friend continued without any word reaching the town he'd returned to.
"I'm coming," he said, before I could offer any argument against it, his expression carrying the same stubborn resolve I'd learned to recognize from him during the Sorrowmarket's chaos.
"I know these northern passes better than half your Iron-Guard, Your Highness.
And I'm not sitting in that market town waiting for news a second time, not when there's something useful I can actually do instead. "
I didn't argue. Some fights, I'd learned six weeks ago, weren't worth the energy they cost, and Dobrin's presence, however unconventional for a royal strike force, had already proven its value once.
Yeva found me at the gate as the final preparations concluded, her earlier plea to stay present clearly weighed against the plain, practical need to finally act on the strongest lead six weeks had produced.
"Bring her home," she said, simply, no further embellishment needed between us after everything the past six weeks had already cost our family.
"Whatever it takes, Kason. Whatever you find in that valley. "
"I intend to." I embraced her briefly, drawing whatever strength I could from the fierce, steady love she'd carried for both of us through the worst six weeks either of us had ever lived.
"Watch the castle. Whatever comes of this, I want to know you and Father are safe here, regardless of how the search resolves. "
We rode within hours, the first genuine hope I'd carried in six weeks riding with me the entire way, though some old, cautious part of me understood, even as hope finally returned, exactly how much still stood between a single trader's uncertain report and the woman I'd spent six weeks refusing to let myself grieve for.