He grabbed a bucket. Cloth. Soap. He started to scrub, hard. Fierce.
The glass squeaked beneath his pressure. Water ran in thin streams down the sills. Dust became mud. And still he cleaned.
Behind him, Hadria’s voice came soft, “Collin? What are you doing?”
He didn’t turn. “Just... had a dream about dust.”
He wiped faster, because if he stopped, his hands would shake. As if, by making the glass shine, he could stop seeing the blood.
In the days that followed, Collin let the lake and his mother’s journals become his refuge. Sometimes he just watched the water, chasing peace. Sometimes, he readherwords, one entry at a time, like it was medicine.
July 12, 488
I watch as the two little girls cry, their small hands reaching for their mother. But the woman only scolds them, offering no touch, no comfort. Then I see it—that cascade of golden hair. I know that hair. Yes, I nursed the older girl for several weeks after she was born. She has grown so much since I last saw her, and now she has a baby sister—a delicate, beautiful thing.
I will not tell Jiah. It would only break his heart to know he was part of an attack on their village. The stewards have found their mother, it seems, but she refuses to claim them.
Clutching my basket to my chest, I turn away and hurry out of the square. I try to block out the younger girl’s weeping. I am so grateful I didn’t bring Connor and Collin with me today. They must never see heartache like this. I vow again to protect them, for as long as I can.
Before I leave the square entirely, I glance back—just once. I can’t help myself. The little one is sitting now, crumpled on the ground. Her elbow is scraped, a thin trickle of blood running down her arm. The blue ribbon in her hair droops like a flower wilting beneath the punishing sun. My heart aches. No child should suffer such sorrow. I want nothing more than to gatherthem into my arms, to love them, to whisper that they are wanted.
Back within the embrace of the house my beloved husband built, I call for my sons. They come running, eyes bright, faces open with joy. I gather them in, holding them close, loving them with every fiber of my being.
“What’s wrong, mam?” Connor asks. He’s beginning to notice everything.
Collin, still so small, winds a strand of my hair through his fingers. I’m thankful he is too young to understand my sadness.
I smooth Connor’s hair and whisper, “Nothing is wrong, my darling.” I smile, though fear prickles just beneath the surface.
The world is dangerous, so harsh and unkind. I hate when Jiah tells them stories of death, fear, sorrow, and loss. I don’t want my sons to know sadness. I don’t want them to carry pain. I don’t want them to understand how brutal life can be. I want to protect their joy, their boundless love, their innocent wonder.
How do I shield them, when there is so much cruelty in the world? How do I keep them safe?
I want to protect my children. I want to keep them as they are now—radiant, joyful, unafraid. My sweet, perfect boys.
—Ismene
Collin let out a long, measured breath. He closed his mother’s journal, folding away the final page, the final words she had ever written. Gently, he tucked the worn little volume into his book bag, sealing it shut like the lid of a memory box.
Leaning back, he pressed his head into the knotted bark of the old tree and closed his eyes. His lids were heavy, weighted by the grief that crept in like dusk. Though her words were now justfaded ink on aging paper, her fear still clung to him—haunting the seams of every sentence.
At least she had been spared. She’d died before witnessing the horror she so deeply feared for her children. Before she could see the terror that came to pass—before her eldest son met such a senseless death, before her youngest’s soul was tested and failed.
Collin rubbed his eyes. The sun’s sharp reflection off the lake pierced through his lashes, pink and gold still dancing behind the darkness of his closed lids.
Above, hidden in the waxy canopy, a lovesick songbird trilled for an unseen mate—his sonnets bright and unrelenting. The midsummer heat pressed down, thick and breathless. Even the air felt suspended. As though the world itself were waiting.
So was Collin.
It was like standing on the threshold of a precarious echelon—between lifetimes, between selves. Limbo. He went to work, kept the house in order, drank the herbal tea River prescribed to coax him into sleep. But it was all rhythm without substance. Inside, his body braced for an unnamed fear. Some future that might crash into him without warning.
And he wasn't the only one. Everyone, in their own quiet way, seemed poised for a shift.
After the blow-up between Nic and Gravis, the once-beloved dinners had thinned and ultimately dissolved.
Clive had withdrawn once his aunt left. They all missed him, but no one dared tug him back—his mother needed him more.
River was buried in studies, preparing to become a full-fledged doctor. Every hour spoken for. Lekyi was vanishing into responsibility—now head of the junior stewards, forever on the move between villages.
