Colin was still on the porch when the first rays of the sun reached the sky.
He had not moved since Fall lay down against his boot. The stars had gone out one by one. The hills had gone from black to grey to something with edges, and a thin seam of gold crept along the ridge.
Behind him, past the door he had not gone through, Riley slept the way people sleep when they have nothing left to spend on staying awake.
He had told his father the truth last night. He had said the words in the old tongue, low enough that only the hills should have heard them. And when he did, something had come loose in his chest that had been locked down for three years.
He had thought that would be the hard part.
It wasn't. The hard part was this: the sun was coming up, he knew what he knew, and none of it changed what the day would ask of him.
You're no' a jailer, Colin. You're the man who stayed.
His father's words sat in him like coal. He wanted, badly, to believe them.
