Chapter 98 — What Elsbeth Needed to Know

We reached Vale's familiar walls on the eleventh day, travel-worn but otherwise unharmed, and found the household gathered to welcome us home with the particular warmth that had become, across these difficult months, one of the most reliable comforts in my strange, doubled life.

Elsbeth embraced Wren fiercely the moment she dismounted, checking her daughter over with the same anxious thoroughness I remembered from the night of the cottage attack. "You're well?" she asked, searching Wren's face for any sign of harm. "Truly well?"

"I'm well, Mother," Wren assured her, returning the embrace warmly. "Tired, and carrying a great deal to think about. But well."

My father drew me aside once the initial reunion's chaos had settled, his expression carrying the particular worry I'd come to recognize as genuine rather than merely political. "You look exhausted," he said. "And troubled by something beyond simple travel weariness."

"We found what we were looking for," I told him. "Though the finding proved more complicated than any of us anticipated."

I gathered the household that evening — my father, Seraphine, Elsbeth, Arlen, and the others who had remained behind — and relayed everything Hollowmere's ruins had revealed, watching each face absorb the weight of Morrigan's terrible, two-century-old grief in their own way.

Elsbeth's reaction proved the most complicated of all. "My sister," she said slowly, once I'd finished. "She died the same way, didn't she? Lost to something this woman couldn't control, the same way Morrigan lost her own daughter all those years before."

"I believe so," I said gently. "Though I don't yet fully understand the mechanism of how your sister's death connected to Morrigan's ongoing search. Perhaps simply proximity to dangerous experimentation. Perhaps something more deliberate."

Elsbeth was quiet a long moment, processing this alongside everything else she'd already absorbed about her family's hidden history. "I find I can't fully hate her," she said finally, surprising me with the admission. "Whatever she's done, whatever my sister's death ultimately cost our family, I understand now what drove her to such desperate, terrible measures. That doesn't excuse it. But I find I can't simply reduce her to a monster, not after understanding what she's carried for two hundred years."

"That's a generous perspective," Seraphine said quietly, "given everything she's cost your own family directly."

"Perhaps," Elsbeth said. "Or perhaps it's simply the perspective of someone who's also known what it means to lose a child, however briefly I feared I might lose Wren to this same terrible war. I understand, better than I'd like to, exactly how far grief can drive a person who believes, however wrongly, that drastic action might somehow undo an unbearable loss."

My father, who had listened to the whole exchange with careful attention, finally spoke. "What do you intend to do with this understanding?" he asked me directly. "Does it change your approach to this war, or simply deepen your comprehension of an enemy you still must eventually face?"

"I don't know yet," I admitted honestly. "Arlen and I have discussed attempting direct contact, now that we understand her grief more fully. Whether that proves wise, or simply reckless given everything else at stake, I haven't yet fully decided."

"Be careful," my father said, old worry plain in his voice. "Whatever sympathy her grief deserves, you've already told us how much harm she's caused pursuing it. I don't want that sympathy to cost you the caution that's kept you alive through everything else this war has demanded."

"I'll be careful," I promised, grateful for his concern even as I understood the particular risk I intended to pursue regardless. "But I think, Father, that caution alone hasn't resolved this war in two centuries of careful, patient defense. Perhaps something beyond simple caution is finally worth attempting."

My father studied me a long moment, something complicated passing behind his weathered expression — pride, certainly, but also the particular fear of a parent watching a child choose a harder, more dangerous path than the safer alternative available to her. "You've grown into someone I barely recognize from the quiet girl who once seemed content to remain unnoticed," he said finally. "I don't say that as criticism, Liora. I say it with considerable pride, and considerable fear in equal measure."

"I understand both feelings," I told him gently. "I carry them myself, most days."

He embraced me briefly, warm and solid despite his evident worry, and I left the gathering that evening with his blessing, however reluctant, settled alongside everything else I would need to carry into whatever conversation waited ahead.

Seraphine caught up with me in the corridor afterward, her expression carrying the particular worry she'd worn more frequently these past weeks. "Promise me something," she said. "If this attempt goes badly, if she responds with violence rather than whatever fragile openness you're hoping for, promise you'll pull back immediately rather than pushing further out of stubborn hope."

"I promise," I told her, grateful for her protective concern even as my own resolve remained unshaken. "I'm not interested in martyring myself for an uncertain chance at peace, Seraphine. I want to try, carefully, with every precaution available to us. But I have no intention of sacrificing myself needlessly in the attempt."

Seraphine studied me a moment longer, then nodded, some of her worry easing into cautious support. "Then I'll be there," she said, "watching, ready to help however I can, however limited my own gift might prove in a moment like that."

"I wouldn't want you anywhere else," I told her, and meant it completely.

I spent the remainder of that evening in quiet preparation, reviewing everything Arlen had taught me about careful, deliberate contact, rehearsing in my mind the particular balance of openness and boundary I would need to maintain throughout whatever conversation finally unfolded. Sleep came slowly that night, my thoughts circling restlessly between hope and apprehension, until exhaustion finally claimed me somewhere in the deepest hours before dawn.