"And if you don't come back?"

The question sat between us. Not the fear of a man worried about his partner on a dangerous mission. Something older than that — the fear of a man who'd already lost everything once when he walked away from Council, and was watching the thing he'd rebuilt walk toward a woman who'd built silver rooms.

"I'll come back," I said.

"You don't know that."

"I know that my daughter is here. And I know what I'm fighting for. That's enough to come back."

* * *

I went to Lily's room. She was asleep — the deep, boneless sleep of a child who'd spent her energy for the day and surrendered to unconsciousness without negotiation. The wooden wolf in the curve of her arm, the same position every night. The wooden bird on the shelf above her. The silver threads in her hair catching the faint light from the corridor.

I sat on the edge of the cot. Watched her breathe.

Three days ago, my daughter had identified a spy that our entire security apparatus had missed. She'd felt the wrongness in Darya's wolf the way other children feel temperature changes — automatically, without effort, without understanding that what she was doing was extraordinary.

Now I was leaving her. For the first time since the silver room, I was putting distance between us — real distance, days of travel, mountains and forest and the uncertainty of a woman I hadn't seen since before Lily was born.

Lily stirred. Opened one eye. The half-conscious awareness of a child who sensed a presence and hadn't committed to waking up yet.

"Mommy?"

"I'm here."

"Why are you sitting?"

"Because I wanted to see you."

She considered this with the drowsy logic of a seven-year-old. Then she reached out and put her hand on my arm. Small fingers. Warm. The gesture of a child who touched people the way she breathed — without thinking about it, because connection was as natural to her as air.

"Your wolf is busy," she mumbled. "It's thinking about something far away."

I almost laughed. Almost. Because even half-asleep, my daughter could feel the direction of my thoughts better than I could articulate them.

"I have to go somewhere for a few days," I said. "Kieran will be here. And Sera. And everyone."

"Where are you going?"

"To get something we need."

She was quiet. Processing. Then: "Is it dangerous?"

"A little."

"More than a little?"

I touched her hair. The silver threads. The fading scars on her wrists from restraints that her grandmother had designed.

"I'll be careful," I said. "And I'll come back."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She nodded. Pulled the wooden wolf closer. Closed her eyes. Within thirty seconds she was asleep again — the absolute trust of a child who believed her mother's promises because she hadn't yet learned that the world sometimes broke them.

* * *

I left before dawn.

Torren and four scouts. Light packs. Fast pace. The eastern gate, not the main one — fewer eyes, fewer questions.

Kieran was at the gate. He'd been there since I left Lily's room. Not pacing — standing. The stillness of a man who'd already fought the argument and lost and was now doing the harder thing: watching.

I stopped in front of him. The sky was turning gray at the edges, the stars fading. The compound behind us was quiet. Somewhere inside it, Lily was sleeping with a wooden wolf, and Sera was running dawn patrol, and two hundred and sixty wolves were depending on the walls and the alliance and the woman who was about to walk away from both.

"Come back," he said.

"I always come back."

"You know what I mean."

I touched his face. His jaw under my palm. The warmth of his skin in the cold morning air. I wanted to stay there — in the space between leaving and going, where the contact was still possible and the distance hadn't started yet.

But three days was all we had. Maybe less.

I dropped my hand. Stepped back. Turned toward the gate and the dark trail beyond it and the mountains where a woman was waiting with the answers to questions I hadn't finished asking.

Behind me, the gate closed. The sound of it — wood and iron, solid, final — was the last thing I heard before the forest swallowed the trail.

Vera was out there. The archives were out there. And somewhere between here and there, Aldric's search teams were moving through the same mountains with the same destination and a head start I couldn't afford.

Three days. Maybe less.

I walked faster.