Page 92 of Salt Between the Wolves

Eira laughed.

“You're joking.”

“I wish I were.”

Maelin adjusted the reins and smiled despite herself.

“Aldric thought it was hilarious.”

“That’s your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s clearly wiser than you.”

“Or perhaps he simply wasn't the one cleaning up afterward.”

The exchange earned another round of laughter, and Eira found herself studying her sister again. Listening to her speak so casually about children, household disasters, and a husband she mentioned with easy familiarity felt oddly disorienting. Letters and occasional messages had kept them from becoming complete strangers, but those fragments had never truly conveyed what Maelin's life had become.

Now, riding beside her, Eira was beginning to understand just how much she had missed.

For a while they continued in comfortable silence, the fading daylight stretching long shadows across the snow as the road carried them steadily onward.

Later, as her gaze drifted once again toward the unmistakable curve beneath Maelin’s cloak, she shook her head.

“You have children.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“You have a husband.”

“That too.”

“And apparently you haven’t spent the last several years idle.”

That earned her a proper older-sister look, followed by laughter warm enough to startle Eira into silence. She had not realized how much she missed that sound until she heard it again. The years between them suddenly felt real in a way they never had through letters, rumors, or distant memories.

Eventually the laughter faded, and the road curved between two low hills where the landscape opened before them. They rode in companionable silence until a question slipped from Eira before she could stop it.

“Are you happy?”

Maelin did not answer immediately. Instead, she kept her eyes on the road ahead, watching the last light of day spill across the fields.

“I have a good husband,” she said at last.

It was not truly an answer, and both of them knew it.

Fortunately, Maelin spared them from lingering too long in the uncomfortable silence that followed. She lifted a hand and pointed ahead.

“Do you see it?”

At first Eira could make out only a scattering of lights glowing in the distance. As they continued forward, however, the shape of a large estate gradually emerged from the gathering dusk.

The place looked nothing like Ironfang or Frostvein. It had been built for living rather than defending, with warm windows, broad roofs, and open grounds instead of walls, battlements, and watchtowers. Smoke drifted from chimneys, stables stood beside the main house, and clusters of outbuildings surrounded the estate like smaller satellites. Beyond them, the dark outlines of fruit trees slept beneath the snow.

The entire place felt inhabited in a way fortresses rarely did.

“Is that home?” Eira asked softly.