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A mix of unease and anger grew inside me as darkness slid over the mountains.

If Étienne couldn’t make it back in time for this, it was over between us. I was going to move back to the Savatier household permanently.

Ciel was starting to be able to hold up his head on his own, and I was delighted to see him poking his head up and pushing off my chest to look around with his bright blue eyes.

I absolutely melted at the sight.

Beautiful, perfect, looking just like his daddy with that clever look and those bright, sharp eyes.

What was Ciel looking at?

He was attuned to his daddy, that was for sure, because I turned in the direction my baby’s eyes were fixed, and there was my husband striding toward me, his tall body, those broad shoulders cutting through the autumn fog.

I felt a stab of emotion, something painfully bright in its clarity.

I knew then that I would love Étienne Bastide until the day I died. Whether I let him know it or not was another question.

And then—someone beside him. But who was that? Hugo? Mano? Where had he been and who had he seen?

No, it was someone shorter—much shorter.

And then my breath caught, painful, jagged in my throat.

But it couldn’t be.

It was absolutely impossible. She was dead. Dead. Réjean had said so!

This was impossible. A trick. An illusion.

And then I was running, holding Ciel tight against me.

It couldn’t—couldn’t⁠—

It must be a trick. Mountain fog sometimes played tricks on your eyes, showed you will-o’-the-wisps that weren’t there.

Was I going crazy now, to see such things?

“Léonie!” she cried, running toward me with her arms outstretched, her long gray braid flying behind her.

Oh, ancestors! It was too much!

“Gran!”

I was crying, tears streaming down my face, when I finally caught up to her, almost still disbelieving it even as I gathered her in my arms.

She felt frail—so frail—thin, weak, feather-light like a bird.

“How—Réjean said you were dead!”

“Honey, he was a lying bastard,” Gran said, with a ghost of her old spirit.

She was very thin, her cheeks sunken, and her hands clawlike as they embraced me. I would have to get good food and bone broth into her immediately.

“How did you find her?” I cried, turning to Étienne.

“Armand and Tilly have been working with the older people on the Pinoteaux lands—the ones who were too weak to flee when I came through. One of the oldest there was a man, oh about 100 years old. He told Armand about an old Pinoteaux hideaway down in one of the hidden hollers out east.”

“A holler? Gran has been hidden this whole time?”