I found her in the training yard before I reached the manor proper.
She was already there — early for once — standing in the centre of the stone square with her eyes closed and her hands at her sides. Evening light. Long shadows. The mountains purple behind her.
I stopped at the gate and watched.
The concealment came over her like a curtain dropping. One moment she was there, clear and solid. The next she was a gap in the world, a place my eyes refused to focus on.
I counted. Twenty seconds. Forty. A minute.
She let it go and opened her eyes. Saw me standing at the gate. Didn't flinch.
"You're early."
"So are you."
She smiled. It was a different smile than the one she wore in Southshore — sharper, more private. This was the smile she kept for the space between us.
"I've been practising," she said.
"I noticed."
I walked into the yard and picked up a training blade. Not because I needed it — the shadow techniques didn't use weapons — but because holding something gave my hands something to do.
We trained until the light turned orange.
I showed her the shadowstep footwork the way Seth had shown me. She picked it up in three tries. It had taken me a week. I tried not to let it show on my face, but she saw it anyway.
"You're frustrated."
"I'm not."
"You're doing that thing with your jaw."
I stopped clenching my teeth. "I'm not frustrated. I'm just…"
"What?"
I looked at her — standing in the training yard of Ravenholdt Manor, wearing a borrowed tunic, shadow still clinging faintly to her fingertips like she'd been born with it.
"I'm wondering how you do that."
She tilted her head. "The shadowstep?"
"All of it."
She didn't have an answer. Neither did I, really. Some people had a gift for certain things. Elira had a gift for this. And I was standing in the middle of it, trying not to feel like I was being left behind.
She must have seen something in my face, because she stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell the herbs she used — lavender and something sharp I didn't recognise.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said.
"I know."
"Do you?"
I didn't answer. I just reached out and took her hand.
We stood like that for a moment, in the middle of the empty training yard, the shadow settling around us like dusk.
Then I said the wrong thing.
"Don't disappear on me."
I meant it as a joke. Light. Easy. But the words came out heavier than I intended, and I saw something flicker across her face — a shadow within the shadow, quick and gone.
"I won't," she said.
But she said it too quickly.
We left the yard before the torches were lit. The walk back to Southshore was quiet at first, comfortable. The hills were green and gold in the last of the light, and the village smoke rose thin and blue against the sky.
Halfway down the mountain, she spoke.
"I've been thinking about a house."
"A house?"
"On the outskirts of Southshore. Small. Nothing grand. Just… ours."
She said it carefully, like she was testing the shape of the words.
"A garden for herbs," she continued. "A proper kitchen. A room that doesn't smell like ale."
I listened. That's what she needed — not answers, just someone to hear it.
"There's one on the north road," I said. "The old stone cottage with the broken shutter. I noticed it on the way up last week."
She looked at me. "You noticed a cottage?"
"I notice things."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled — that private smile again — and bumped her shoulder against mine.
We walked the rest of the way without saying much. But the cottage hung between us, unspoken, like a promise we weren't ready to name.