Page 60 of House of Crimson Cloak and Silver Teeth

A family. The kind I never had.

“He didn’t come home,” Eithne says, staring at nothing. “He always does. Even when his patrol runs late, he always comes home.”

There’s such faith in her words. She expected him like she expected dawn. I’ve never known that certainty, never had someone whose return I could count on.

Garrett leans forward slightly, his posture open and attentive. “Tell me about that night. What time were you expecting him?”

“Midnight. I waited all night,” she pauses, swallows hard. “By the time the sun came up, I knew something was wrong.”

Her voice breaks, and she presses a hand to her mouth. Garrett reaches across the table and gently takes her other hand to comfort her.

“Take your time,” he says quietly.

She nods, swallows and continues. “I told myself maybe he’d stopped at the tavern, maybe he was helping another guard, maybe...” She trails off. “In the morning, I went looking.”

“Where did you look?”

“The road from the city. The usual path he takes.” Her voice wavers. “I walked it three times, calling his name. Then I... I found...”

She closes her eyes, and I see her hands begin to tremble.

“The blood,” Garrett says quietly. “At the old oak.”

She nods, a sob catching in her throat. Tears spill down her cheeks and she presses both hands to her mouth, trying to hold back the sound.

Garrett doesn’t speak, just waits. Patient and steady.

When she can breathe again, Eithne looks up at him with devastated eyes. “I’m pregnant, Commander.” Her hand moves to her stomach, protective. “Three months. Marcian was so happy when I told him. He... he wanted to be there. For the baby. He promised...”

The words dissolve into fresh tears.

Garrett stands and moves around the table without hesitation. He crouches beside her chair, one hand still holding hers, the other resting gently on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Eithne,” he says, voice low and genuine. “I’m so deeply sorry.”

She turns into him, sobbing against his shoulder. Something tightens in my chest watching him. This is who he is. He’s not just the golden commander of the Valorian, but someone who genuinely cares. Someone who stays when things get messy and hard.

“Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt Marcian?” Garrett asks, still holding her hand. “Anyone he argued with? Any debts or disputes?”

“No. Everyone loved Marcian. My husband was kind, Commander. He helped people and he—” She breaks again and this time she can’t stop the tears.

Garrett simply sits there, letting her cry. He doesn’t rush her or try to make it stop. I shift slightly in my chair, uncomfortable with the raw emotion filling the small room. This kind of grief is foreign to me—this open, desperate mourning for someone loved and lost. The guild taught me to bury emotion, to treat loss as weakness.

When Eithne finally composes herself enough to speak, she looks at Garrett with desperate eyes. “Will you find him, Commander? Will you bring him home?”

The truth is we’ll probably find his body. Losing that much blood means he’s dead or dying. Four days in the woods with a severe injury? No one survives that. Even if by some miracle Marcian lived through the initial attack, infection or blood loss or exposure would have finished him by now.

But Garrett doesn’t say any of that.

“I will do everything in my power,” he says and it’s not quite a lie. “I promise you, Eithne. I will find out what happened to your husband.”

She nods, clinging to those words like a lifeline. I see the way hope flickers in her eyes, fragile and desperate. Garrett has given her that. A reason to believe, even if just for a little while longer.

We stay for another hour. Garrett asks more questions about Marcian’s routine, his friends, his duties as a Valorian, anything that might give us a clue. Eithne answers as best she can, though grief keeps fragmenting her thoughts. She’ll start a sentence and lose it halfway through, derailed by memory or sorrow.

I listen and watch. Not just the words, but the way she speaks. The tremors and the way her eyes dart to the door as if hoping Marcian might walk through it even now.

Eithne is telling the truth. She knows nothing about what happened. All she knows is her husband went to work and never came home. That simple fact has shattered her entire world.