No More Running

Mara refused to let me sit through the first hearing.

“You can read the transcript,” she said. “Your body is not a ceremonial object you can put upright for appearances.”

“I would like to hear him answer.”

“You will. After you have stopped shaking while holding a cup.”

I disliked the instruction. I disliked even more that she was right.

We stayed at a guarded residence near the old estate while she checked the effects of the sanctuary. The transfer had exhausted me, and the suppressant dust had left Ronan with a cough he tried unsuccessfully to hide.

I handed him water every time he cleared his throat.

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused.

“A little.”

The hearing began without us. Gareth gave his account. The neutral observers submitted copies of the documents and their record of Julian’s statements. Scouts described the armed men waiting beyond the chapel.

There would be further proceedings, asset reviews, and questions about the people Julian had paid. None required me to remain beside him while he invented excuses.

That afternoon I gave my own statement from a quiet room with counsel present. I described the hotel, the pursuit, the hospital, and the years of threats. When my voice failed, I drank water and continued.

Nobody told me to make it shorter for Julian’s comfort.

Afterward Gareth brought the small evidence box containing my father’s compass.

“Cleared for return,” he said.

I opened it carefully.

There was dirt beneath the hinge. A scratch on the back I did not remember. It looked so ordinary in my hand.

“Thank you.”

Gareth stayed by the door.

“I owe you an apology for Eastmere.”

I looked up.

“The hospital was compromised,” he said. “We knew there was a threat. We still allowed gaps in the protection. I have spent four years thinking about which instruction I should have given differently.”

I thought of my own endless revisions of the same afternoon.

“I climbed into a laundry truck,” I said. “I never told anyone which way I went.”

“You were injured and being hunted.”

“And you were trying to protect two people whose names you didn’t know.”

He looked away.

“I don’t think either of us needs another person to punish us for that day,” I said.

He nodded once, then left before either of us had to find a graceful ending.

Before we departed, I asked to visit my parents’ house.

Julian had altered the front rooms, but the study door still stuck in damp weather. Ronan waited while I pushed it open with my shoulder.

The cedar scent had faded.

Someone had packed my mother’s coat into a cupboard. My father’s glasses were gone from the desk. Dust lay across the windowsill where I had climbed through years earlier.

I stood in the center of the room and felt the difference between reclaiming property and getting anything back.

Ronan did not tell me it would be restored.

He asked what I wanted to take home.

I chose the coat, a photograph, and a small wooden box of seeds labeled in my mother’s handwriting.

Outside, we visited the memorial stones above the garden. I set a sprig of late rosemary beside each one.

“I found her,” I told them.

Wind moved through the dry grass.

“She’s funny. She argues about everything. She turns into a wolf when she gets too pleased with herself.”

I laughed through tears.

“You would have loved her.”

Ronan stood beside me, his hand open at his side until I reached for it.

We left before the light began to fail.

I sent Ruth a message when we crossed back into Silvermoon, just as we had promised. She replied with a photograph of Maisie standing by the window in her blue pajamas.

She has been ready for bed since four, the message said. She says that makes evening come faster.

I showed Ronan. He smiled, then pressed his lips together and looked toward the darkening road.

At the house, Maisie did not wait for us to reach the steps.

She ran from the doorway, shifted halfway across the path, and barreled into my knees as a small, frantic wolf.

I crouched too quickly. Ronan steadied me while I gathered her into my arms.

She sniffed my sleeves, the bandage on my hand, the hollow beneath my chin. Her ears flattened when she found the smell of blood.

“I’m all right,” I whispered. “A little sore. I’m here.”

She whined and pushed closer.

Ronan crouched beside us. She licked his wrist, apparently conducting a second inspection, then burrowed between us until there was nowhere left to go.

I took her inside still wrapped around my neck.

It was nearly an hour before she shifted back. She emerged with both arms holding me and refused to discuss the possibility of supper anywhere except my lap.

Ruth served soup in a wide bowl so I could manage it one-handed.

“Did the wolf help?” Maisie asked.

I took the cloth toy from my bag.

“He was very useful.”

She examined him for damage, then put him between us on the sofa.

“He’s tired.”

“I understand.”

At bedtime she wanted the fox book. I read every page, even the ones she knew well enough to recite ahead of me.

Ronan sat beside us, applying fresh salve to the cut across my palm when she looked at the pictures.

Afterward Maisie asked, “Are you going back tomorrow?”

“No,” I said. “Tomorrow we’re having breakfast here. Then I thought we could plant something.”

She searched my face.

“After breakfast?”

“After breakfast.”

Only then did she lie down.

The final judgments took longer than a night. Julian and Celeste were held separately, their access to Ellis assets suspended while the review continued. Their confessions at the chapel, the correspondence, and the witnesses established their roles in the betrayal at Blackthorn and the pursuit of me.

Larkin was found through payment records tied to Mercer’s steward. She admitted altering the hospital transfer trail. Hearing that truth brought a fresh wave of grief, but it also ended the question of whether I had somehow misunderstood the papers in my hands.

At sentencing, I attended with Ronan.

Julian tried once more to look at me as though we shared a private understanding. I looked back until he lowered his eyes.

They lost their titles and unlawful claims. The tribunal ordered restitution where it could be made, and imprisonment under neutral territorial custody. The wider records concerning Varrick’s agents went to the council for action beyond our family’s case.

When it was over, Celeste called my name.

I stopped at the door.

“You’ve ruined us,” she said.

For years I would have searched her face for the girl who used to share my room.

This time I saw the woman who had followed me into a maternity ward.

“I’m going home,” I answered.

I walked outside with Ronan’s hand in mine.