It has been four days since Willers disappeared.
Four days of serving ale to people who don't notice anything is wrong. Four days of pretending I haven't been turning the same questions over and over in my head. Four days of walking past the turn in the road that leads to what used to be home, telling myself I don't need to go back there.
Today I went back.
The burned house is smaller than I remember. That's the first thing that struck me. As a child, it felt like the whole world fit inside those walls. Now the walls are barely walls at all. Just charred beams leaning against each other like tired old men. The roof is mostly sky. The floor is mostly ash.
I stood in the doorway for a long time before I could make myself step inside. The door was still hanging crooked, the same way it's been for years. This house sits far from any road. You don't stumble upon it by accident. You have to know it's here.
Willers found it, though. He never told me how. I only know because something in the way he talked about it — a hesitation, a glance away — told me he'd been here. He didn't share what he saw. That's how Willers operates. Half a sentence, a shrug, and suddenly you realize he's said more than he meant to. Or less. Usually less.
I couldn't stop thinking about it. Not about what he found. About what he might have missed. About whether there was anything left of my father's life still waiting in the ash.
So I came back.
The chest was open.
I found myself sitting on the floor the way my father used to. Cross-legged, surrounded by nothing but dust and silence. He would sit right here and grind herbs with his mortar while I sorted dried flowers into little piles. I can still smell it if I try hard enough. Lavender. Kingsblood. Something sharp that he never let me touch.
He was always careful about what he let me touch.
That was the thought that finally broke something loose in me. All those years of careful silences. All those nights he closed the door to his workroom. All the questions he answered with a smile and a change of subject. He was protecting me from something — I've always known that. But I never asked what.
Now I'm starting to think I should have.
Because someone came back to this house years after it burned. Someone opened this chest. Someone knew exactly what to look for. And that means whatever my father was protecting me from didn't die with him.
It's still out there.
I sat in the ash until the light started to change. Then I stood up, brushed myself off, and walked back to Goldshire.
I gave Marta my notice before the evening rush. She wasn't surprised. I think she's been waiting for this since the day I arrived.
"Where will you go?" she asked.
I didn't have an answer for her. Not a real one. Southshore, maybe. That's where my father's letters came from before we moved to the forest. It's not much to go on, but it's more than I had this morning.
I'm not going to find Willers. That's not what this is about. He made his choices, and whatever trouble he's walking into is his own affair.
But I am going to find the beginning of my own story.
Even if I have to walk the entire length of the continent to do it.