Crescent Hollow received us home the way a pack receives wolves back from a war it wasn't sure they'd survive with relief that curdled quickly into the thousand questions of what came next.
Because that was the thing about winning. The war had a shape. Peace didn't. War asked one question do we survive and peace asked a hundred harder ones, and none of them could be answered with a blade.
We rode in through the gate I'd once been dragged out of, and the pack came out to meet us, and I watched them count the wolves who'd ridden into the dark against the wolves who rode back out, and I watched the joy of return meet the grief of the ten who didn't, in the same faces, at the same moment. Kestrel's brother was there, in the crowd from Greywater. I made myself find him, and dismount, and tell
