"That's allowed," I told her.

She gave me the impatient look of someone who already knew, and I enjoyed being unnecessary.

Sella sent a letter from the eastern town. Finn had found a favorite corner in his aunt's workshop and was learning which tools he could touch. His visits to Eveline were being supervised as arranged. Some left him quiet; Lysa and the visiting household officer were adjusting the days around what helped him settle afterward.

There was no miraculous ending in the letter. There was a child being listened to. Sella enclosed a drawing of the fox with far too many legs, and I put it in my desk.

Marta's next note complained about the price of nails. I read it twice, smiling. At the bottom she had added that the ferry was keeping its schedule and Bram's household payments had arrived on time.

I kept that note too.

When the palace held its autumn supper, Tessa refused to spend the whole evening fetching things for me. I had asked her to sit at our table, and she had accepted on the condition that I could find my own shawl.

I found it. She looked almost disappointed.

Brennan arrived after handing over the watch, in a coat without his usual stack of folded reports. Callum reached for the empty space beneath his arm, pretending to search. Brennan ignored him and took the seat beside Papa.

Across the yard, Garrick stood in the ordinary line for food. He no longer chaired the petitions. When someone directed a question about a human household to him, he pointed them toward the woman actually handling the records instead of answering for her.

I noticed. I did not need to reward him for it.

The tables ran between the kitchen door and the garden wall. There were guards off duty, children underfoot, wolf families, human visitors, and people who still looked uncertain about where they ought to sit. Tessa moved a serving bowl to make room for a woman carrying two plates. The woman sat. The world changed by that much.

Callum came up behind me while I was helping Mama fasten her cloak. His fingers touched the small of my back, a question I knew by heart.

"In a minute," I said.

He waited while I finished the clasp.

Mama looked from my face to his and made an entirely unnecessary adjustment to the cloak. "Go on, then. Before he wears a hole in the ground."

He led me toward the musicians. There was no formal announcement, no cleared floor, only a little room made by people stepping aside with their cups.

"I thought kings were supposed to be patient," I said.

His hand settled at my waist. "With borders. Grain. Long speeches."

"But not me?"

He looked at my mouth. "I'm trying."

I rose into the kiss before he had to try any longer. Somebody cheered. Jamie made a noise of disgust from the table, and Callum laughed against my lips.

We danced badly enough to please my father. The old blue ribbon brushed my wrist, softened by wear, and I caught it between two fingers as we turned. Callum lowered his forehead toward mine.

"Happy?" he asked.

I thought of a quiet chair by a hearth in Graymere, of Finn's difficult afternoons, of the scar beneath Callum's shirt. Happiness had not required me to forget any of them.

"Yes," I told him. "Stay here a little longer."

"I wasn't planning to leave."

Much later, after my family had gone to their rooms and the last bowls were carried inside, we walked to the garden's outer path. The watch lamps marked the boundary. Beyond them, the forest breathed in the cool night air.

A distant wolf called. Another answered farther along the ridge, the familiar voices of the patrol carrying through the trees.

Callum's fingers tightened gently around mine.

I leaned into his warmth and listened. The sound was wild still. I did not need it tamed to know what waited beside me.

There would be another morning. He would steal the blanket; I would steal his pear. We would go to the little house when we could, visit my parents when we said we would, and return to the work and people that belonged to our lives.

I turned toward him. "Take me home."

His smile came slowly, softening the face I had once known only through fear.

"Which one?"

I kissed his hand before we started back toward the light.

"Tonight, the one with you in it."