***Aldrik***
I should leave.
I knew it the moment I woke up the next morning, gray light coming through the small window, the sound of the harbor already active below. I lay on the unfamiliar bed and stared at the ceiling and told myself clearly and rationally that staying in Sailcrest was the worst possible thing I could do for what remained of my sanity.
I'd already approached a stranger in the street and called him by a dead man's name.
What came next if I stayed? Following him home? Standing outside his shop in the dark? Becoming the kind of broken, frightening man that decent people crossed streets to avoid?
I should leave today. Pack my bag, settle my account with Petra, ride back to Draven lands and tell Father his plan hadn't worked, nothing would work, and at least at home I could fall apart in private without terrifying strangers who happened to have silver hair.
I should leave.
But I didn't leave.
