Promises
On the road outside Milton, the trees began to change.
Lark noticed it first as a subtle shift in the light. The green canopy overhead had taken on a warmer cast, the leaves catching the sun differently than the maples and elms they had been walking beneath for days. Then she looked more closely and felt her stomach drop.
Golden oaks. The leaves were broad and lobed, their color a rich, glossy amber that marked these southern lands as surely as the silver oaks marked the north or the red oaks surrounded Autumncrown.
She had grown up beneath these trees, had walked roads lined with them for twenty-five years without really seeing them.
Now, after turns away, they felt like a warning.
“The trees are different here,” Pippa observed, craning her neck to look at the canopy. “I’ve never seen oaks of this color.”
“Golden oaks,” Rion said. He had noticed Lark’s silence and moved closer, his hand finding hers. “They grow only in the southern territories. Just like the silver oaks in the north, or the green oaks of the High Greenwood.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s Summerbright.” Lark’s voice came out flat. “We’re close now. A day and a half at most.”
The others exchanged glances but didn’t press. They knew enough of her history to understand why this road was harder for her than for them.
They walked in silence for a while, the golden oaks rising around them like sentinels. Lark found herself scanning the treeline, searching for landmarks she recognized. That outcropping of rock. That bend in the road. The stream they crossed at midday, its water tasting faintly of minerals.
She had traveled this route many times before. Heading away from Summerbright, toward targets in other cities, other towns. Returning with blood on her hands, coin in her purse, and the empty satisfaction of a job completed.
The unwelcome memories pressed in.
“You’re quiet,” Rion said softly, falling into step beside her as Pippa and Darian moved ahead.
“Just thinking.”
“About Summerbright?”
“About who I was when I lived there.” She watched a golden oak leaf drift down, spinning lazily in the still air. “I spent most of my life in that city. I know its streets better than I know my own face. And none of those memories are good.”
“They don’t have to define you. The person you were then isn’t the person you are now.”
“Isn’t it?” She turned to look at him. “I killed people, Rion. For money. For Isolde. I was good at it and never questioned it. I just did what I was told, collected my payment and went back to a house I thought was a home.”
“And then you learned the truth. And you left.”
“I killed her. Or my magic did. I still don’t know exactly what happened.”
“You survived.” His hand tightened around hers. “You got out. You went looking for answers, trying to understand what had been done to you. That’s not the same as being complicit.”
“Tell that to the families of the people I killed.”
He was quiet, and when he spoke again, his voice was cautious.
“I’m not going to pretend what you did was right.
You wouldn’t respect me if I did. But I also know that people are more than the worst things they’ve done.
You were manipulated. Used. Shaped into a weapon by someone who saw you as merchandise. That matters.”
“Does it?”
“It does to me.”
They walked hand in hand, not speaking, the golden oaks casting dappled shadows across the road.
Lark turned his words over in her mind, examining them from different angles.
She wanted to believe him, wanted to accept that she could be more than her history, more than the blood on her hands. But she wasn’t sure she could.
They made camp that evening in a clearing that Lark recognized.
She didn’t mention that she had stopped here before. Five turns ago, on her way north to Wintersorrow after everything had fallen apart, she had sat by a fire much like this one, shaking with shock and grief and rage, trying to understand what had happened and what she was supposed to do next.
She had been so lost then. So hollow from the revelation of what Isolde truly was, what she herself had been all along. She hadn’t even known where she was going at first, only that she couldn’t stay.
And now here she was, coming back. With people who knew what she had done and stood beside her, regardless.
Strange how much could change in a few turns.
“Lark?” Pippa’s voice pulled her back to the present. “Are you with us?”
“Sorry. Yes.” She shook off the memory and focused on the fire, on the faces of the people around it. “What were you saying?”
“The plan. For tomorrow.” Pippa glanced at Darian. “We should finalize the details.”
They talked it through again, the same conversation they had been having for days.
Rion and Pippa would approach the enclave’s gates openly, presenting themselves as travelers with information about the Ashen Enclave’s movements.
Lark and Darian would find a place to hole up in the city proper, somewhere the guilds wouldn’t think to look, and wait for word.
“The Broken Wheel,” Lark said when they asked about safe locations. “It’s an inn on the south side, near the tanneries. The smell keeps most people away, which means the clientele tends toward those who value privacy over comfort. The owner doesn’t ask questions.”
“You’re sure it’s still there?” Darian asked.
“It was there when I left a few turns ago. I doubt much has changed.” She touched the dove-gray cloak folded beside her pack. “I’ll keep my hood up once we’re inside the walls. My hair is too recognizable. But the outer districts should be safe enough if I’m careful.”
“And if you’re recognized?”
“I won’t be.” She met Darian’s eyes steadily. “Not immediately, anyway. I was never careless enough to be seen clearly on jobs, and Isolde mostly kept me away from guild politics. My guess is that most of the people who could identify me are dead or have no reason to be looking.”
“Most isn’t all.”
“No. It isn’t.” She held his gaze. “That’s why you’re coming with me. Two sets of eyes. Two sets of blades if it comes to that.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. Pippa looked less certain but didn’t argue.
The conversation moved on to other details.
Meeting points. Signals to indicate success or danger.
They settled on using the city’s messenger birds, Brightwings, to communicate.
They went over the timeline they were working with.
Rion took notes, his handwriting precise, the scholar in him unable to resist documentation.
Eventually, the fire burned low, and the others drifted toward sleep. Pippa curled against Darian’s side, her curls bright against his dark cloak. Noctis had claimed his usual spot near Rion’s bedroll and was already snoring softly.
Lark remained by the dying embers, unwilling to close her eyes just yet.
Rion settled beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. “Can’t sleep?”
“I don’t want to.” She stared into the coals. “Tomorrow everything changes. I want to hold on to tonight a little longer.”
“It doesn’t have to change. Not the important things.”
“Doesn’t it? Once we’re in Summerbright, we’ll be separated. You’ll be doing the important work while I hide in a tavern.”
“The important work is staying alive. For all of us.” He took her hand, turning it over in his, tracing the lines of her palm with his fingertip.
She shivered at his touch. “Besides, it won’t be forever.
A few days, maybe a week. Once we’ve made contact with the enclave and established some kind of alliance, we’ll figure out the next steps together. ”
“And if they don’t listen? If they’re like Springhope?”
“Then we move on. Find someone else who will.” He paused. “When this is done and we go home, we can figure out what comes next. What we want to build.”
“Home?” The word caught her off guard.
“Autumncrown.” He said it like it was obvious. “Once we’ve done what we can here, once we’ve secured whatever alliances are possible, we’ll need to go back. Report to the council and plan the next phase of whatever this war is becoming.”
Lark stared at him. “You said ‘we.’”
“I did.”
“You mean both of us. Going back. Together.”
His brow furrowed slightly, as though he couldn’t understand her confusion. “Of course I mean both of us. Where else would you go?”
The question had never occurred to her, at least not in those terms. She had been so focused on the immediate problems, Summerbright, the guilds, the enclave, the danger waiting around every corner, that she hadn’t thought about what came after.
Before that, it had been Springhope. Before that, Rion’s rescue.
Before that, his capture. And before that, Duskwood’s attack on Autumncrown.
One crisis after another, each demanding her full attention, leaving no room to imagine a future.
She struggled to find the words. “I haven’t thought about what happens after. There’s always been a more immediate crisis to deal with. I’ve just been trying to get through the next thing.”
“I know.” His voice was gentle. “You told me once that you’ve been surviving, not living. But at some point, all of that surviving has to lead somewhere. And I’d like it to lead to us. Together. In a place that could actually be home.”
Her last home had been Isolde’s house. The room that had been hers since she was twelve years old.
She had called it home because she didn’t know what else to call it, but it had never really felt like what other people seemed to mean by the word.
It had been a place to sleep. A place to return to between jobs.
A place that belonged to someone else, where she existed on borrowed time and borrowed affection.
“I’ve never had a home,” she said quietly. “Not really. Not since Wintersorrow.”