A certainty.
A person who walked into your life and made the rest of it easier.
Then my father got himself killed trying to stop a dark warlock and my mother spent the next two years slowly disappearing in front of me.
People talk about grief like it's an explosion.
For her it wasn't.
It was erosion.
A little more gone every day until eventually there was nothing left to save.
I was ten when she died.
Ten.
Old enough to understand she wasn't coming back.
Too young to understand why nobody stayed.
The memory settled over me so suddenly that I had to look away.
The forest blurred slightly.
Not because I was crying.
Not yet.
I could feel Elias watching me.
Waiting.
Giving me room.
The way he always did.
And somehow that made it harder.
Because I knew if I looked at him rig
