Chapter 32-The Route Home

Sam’s POV

  “I was thinking about the route home,” I answered as I returned to the table.

  “You have been thinking about the route home since we crossed Arnald’s eastern boundary,” Halden remarked with knowing amusement.

  “He checks the southern roads every time someone updates the weather,” the vampire representative added while looking toward the map.

  “The southern roads contain fewer people trying to freeze me to death,” I replied dryly.

  Halden laughed once before reaching for the copied patrol summary. The others let the subject go because they knew what waited at home even if none of them said her name. They also knew I had volunteered for an assignment that had lasted far longer than any of us expected.

  The attacks needed experienced investigators, and Zion needed someone he trusted beyond the Southern borders. Both reasons were true. They were not the only reasons I left.

  I had told myself the distance gave Odett years without my secret shaping her life. Perhaps it did. It also left a space she had to explain to herself, and I could not pretend my reasons had spared her pain.

  I had not wanted her childhood organized around waiting for me.

  Rain’s messages made it clear that leaving had hurt her. Zion was less careful about telling me so. Odett’s notes at the end of family reports asked whether I slept, whether the food was still terrible, and how much paperwork one warrior could survive.

  Before I left, I had guarded the boundary in ordinary ways. I never encouraged her to treat my attention as different from the attention she received from the rest of the family. I trained her only when other warriors were present, kept physical affection familiar and brief, and refused every instinct that suggested proximity mattered more than her comfort.

  Odett owed me nothing for keeping those boundaries. She had been a child, and I was responsible for my behavior. Zion and Rain had trusted me in their home long before the bond appeared. I wanted to deserve that trust when I walked back through the door.

  I answered what I could. I never asked her to wait or told her how lonely I felt. She had a right to grow up without feeling responsible for an adult who had chosen to leave.

  The bond might tell her I belonged to her when I returned. It would not tell her that she belonged to me.

  “Sam, you need to see the resident comparison,” Halden said with sudden seriousness while pushing the patrol summary across the table.

  I read the first column before sitting down. The copied gate ledger listed forty-three residents. The protection register listed forty-seven, and the supply request from the previous month had been calculated for fifty-one.

  “Which number did the local officers use?” I asked.

  “Forty-three.”

  “They treated the gate copy as the final resident list,” the vampire representative answered.

  The three different totals might reflect visitors, children entered under family names, or people who had moved away. They might also mean someone had been left unaccounted for. We needed the original records before we could say which.

  “Request the original resident register and the names attached to the supply count.”

  “Don’t call anyone missing until we’ve checked the lists against each other,” I said.

  “Edric will object to releasing family names,” the witch investigator warned as she added the requests to the shared form.

  “Then he can provide the reason in writing and verify the total without giving us the names,” I replied.

  “We need the difference explained, not another fight at the border.”

  We worked until the narrow windows went dark. The copies had given us five questions and no conclusion fit to send south. I was tired of unanswered questions, but I would rather carry them than put a false answer in Zion’s hands.

  Edric’s archivist arrived after dark. He wore the gray uniform of the territory’s administrative guard and carried one original ledger inside a warded case. His mouth tightened when he saw the full team gathered around the table.

  “The king authorized a supervised inspection.”

  “The ledger does not leave this room, and no complete copy may be made,” the archivist announced with rigid formality.

  “Will each of us be permitted to inspect the same pages?” the vampire representative asked, closing her ledger.

  “Yes,” the archivist answered reluctantly.

  “Then we accept the restriction,” I said without hesitation.

  The archivist seemed surprised I accepted. I could live with a supervised inspection if every member of the team saw the same pages. Arguing over possession would only delay the comparison we needed.

  We compared the first week before exhaustion slowed everyone. Several copied entries matched exactly. One time had been transposed, two inspection marks were too damaged to reproduce, and a family departure appeared in the original without the archivist’s explanatory note.

  The differences mattered. They did not prove deception.

  I wrote that sentence at the bottom of the evening summary before sealing it for Zion. Beneath the formal report, I added a separate personal line: If the remaining pages can be reviewed on schedule, I will begin the southern route within the week.

  My pen hovered over the page. Was Odett sleeping? How was she getting on at the Academy? I wanted to ask, but guards and administrators would read this report before it reached Zion. I saved the questions for a family message and returned to what we had found.

  Instead, I wrote: Tell everyone I miss home. Tell Odett I still expect her to defend my portion of breakfast from Jess.

  It was safer than the whole truth without being a lie.

  “You know going home will not make the difficult conversation disappear,” Halden warned as he accepted the sealed report and passed it to the waiting messenger.

  “I know,” I answered quietly.

  Odett was twenty now. The years I had spent deciding what she should know were behind us. When I returned, I would tell her what I had known and listen to what my silence had cost her.

  She might understand my reasons or hate them. She might want no part of the bond after hearing the truth. I would have to leave room for every answer, including the one I feared most.

  After the messenger left, I stepped into the snow. The southern road markers showed beneath the moonlight. I had followed maps toward home for years; tonight I could finally imagine reaching the castle and seeing the people waiting there.

  Kyron pressed forward again, not demanding and not impatient. He recognized the direction as clearly as I did.

  I turned toward the workroom. We still had pages to inspect before we could leave, and Odett had made no promise to be waiting when we arrived. I wanted to go home anyway.