Herona spotted the smoke at noon, a dark smudge rising against the distant hills. She stopped walking and watched it thicken into a column. Another settlement burning. Her fingers tingled with the familiar heat of the fire spirit bonded to her flesh. She could reach them in time if she ran. The Thornveil Circle would hear of it, of course. They always did. But if she saved these people, if she proved her methods worked again, maybe they would finally listen. Maybe Jereth would listen. She adjusted the pack on her shoulders, feeling the weight of his letters through the canvas, and started running toward the smoke. She reached the bone cairn at the crossroads an hour later, lungs burning. The windmill stood clear now against the horizon, its sails already caught in flame. People would be trapped in the buildings below it. The pendant around her neck pulsed warm against her skin, the captured flame dancing inside the glass vial. She could feel the fire spirit stirring, eager to bend the blaze to her will. One word and she could pull the flames away from the houses, channel them into the fields where they'd burn themselves out. The Thornveil Circle had forbidden it. Jereth had stayed silent when she needed him most. Herona pulled the pendant out and held it up. The flame inside flickered brighter, responding to the distant inferno. Her other hand moved to her pack, to the hidden pocket where his letters waited. Spring solstice two years before exile. Moonflowers blooming. His careful handwriting with that curved k she'd memorized. The Circle has spoken. Three words that still cut deeper than the exile itself. She could save them and lose any chance of the Circle taking her back. Or she could walk away and keep that door open. The windmill's sails collapsed in a shower of sparks. Herona tucked the pendant back under her shirt and turned from the smoke. Her feet carried her down the western path, away from the burning settlement, toward the forests where the Thornveil Circle made their home. The fire spirit inside her went cold and quiet. Some wounds, she'd learned, never stopped bleeding. But at least this time she'd have her answer ready when she finally faced them.

The forest thickened around her after three days of walking. Herona recognized the old paths now, the way moss grew heavier on the northern sides of the oaks, the particular smell of pine mixing with damp earth. She was getting close to their territory. She found the clearing by accident, taking a shortcut through thorned brush she remembered from before. The stone well still stood at its center, cracked rim thick with moss. Moonflower petals floated on the stagnant water inside, pale and faded. But the clearing itself had changed. Luminous vines covered every surface now, climbing over rotted trellises, choking the spaces where she and Jereth had once walked. The flowers glowed faintly even in daylight, beautiful and invasive. No one from the Circle had been here in years. Herona knelt by the well and reached into the water. Her fingers found something solid beneath the petals. She pulled out a brass locket, green with age, its edges stained. Inside was a portrait she didn't recognize—a woman with kind eyes and braided hair. Not hers. Not Jereth's. Someone else had been here first, had their own moment in this place, had left their own memory behind. The clearing had never belonged to them at all. She closed the locket and slipped it into her pack beside the oilcloth bundle of letters. The fire spirit stirred warm against her ribs, restless. She'd been carrying this place with her like a shrine, proof that she and Jereth had mattered to each other, that the Circle had stolen something sacred. But the wild had already reclaimed it. The moonflowers still bloomed, the vines still grew, indifferent to who had stood here once. She left the clearing without looking back, her arguments suddenly feeling thinner, her grip on the past loosening with each step toward the Circle's home.