#Chapter 129: Homecoming

Ember We make it back a day early because neither of us has said the word rest since the palace appeared on the horizon, and the horses seem to have caught our urgency, their hooves eating up the last miles of road with a rhythm that matches the quiet impatience thrumming through the bond. Jake's guards trail behind us, grinning at each other as Kaine and I push the pace with an eagerness that would embarrass me if I cared enough to notice. I'm still wearing my travel-stained patrol clothes—leather vest over a dirt-smudged linen shirt, hair loose because the tie snapped somewhere on the last hill—and I smell like horse and woodsmoke and the pine-needle wind of the borderlands, and none of it matters because the courtyard gates are opening ahead of us and my daughter is somewhere beyond them. I see her before she sees us. Clara is sitting on the stone bench near the fountain with Lila beside her, working a small embroidery hoop with her tongue sticking out the way it does when she