They brought me in two days later.
Fahrad didn’t waste time.
“We know who her father was,” he said. “We thought he died years ago. Apparently we were wrong.”
He told me what they had pieced together. How her father had been captured, how he escaped, how he hid with his daughter in Elwynn and never came back. How he had kept her existence a secret even from them.
“She already knows too much,” Fahrad continued. “And she has skills we need. Seth speaks well of her work. So do you, in your own way.”
He looked at me directly.
“We are offering her a place. Not as an operative. As an apothecary. A healer. Someone who can keep our people alive.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Later that night I walked the hills again. The same path I had taken the night I decided to join. The mist was thicker this time.
I thought about Elira. About her father. About how everything had been connected long before I ever found that emblem. About how tired I was of running and hiding and pretending the two parts of my life could stay separate.
She had already said yes.
I didn’t know if that made things better or worse.
But for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like I was walking entirely alone.
