The final evening at Silverwood was unstructured. A fire crackled in the great stone hearth. King Maris had retired early, pleading a rich dinner. Queen Mother Liora was embroidering by the fire, a picture of tranquil inscrutability. Rian had departed after dinner, his duty as a conversational buffer complete.
Leo and Isla, exhausted from the day, fell asleep on a bearskin rug, Isla's head on Leo's shoulder. The sight was so tender it hurt to look at.
Seraphina and Hadrian sat on a worn sofa, a respectful distance apart, but the space between them felt different now—charged not with absence, but with the shared, quiet contentment of the day.
"The canoe was a good idea," she said softly, watching the firelight dance on the children's faces.
"It was Isla's idea,really."
"But you said yes."
He nodded. He had said yes to the mess, the risk, the unscripted moment. It was becoming a habit.
Queen Mother Liora set her embroidery aside. "The lodge was my father's," she said, her voice unusually reflective. "He brought my mother here when their marriage was… strained. By duty, by expectations not unlike your own." She looked at the fire, not at them. "They never found their canoe, as it were. They maintained the constellation. It was beautiful, and it was lonely. I am glad you are not making that same choice. For your sake, and for theirs." She nodded towards the sleeping children.
It was a benediction. From the most guarded person in either of their lives.
After she retired, Seraphina and Hadrian were left alone with the dying fire and their sleeping children. The silence was profound, but it was the silence of a deep, still lake after a day of wind, not the silence of a vacuum.
"I was afraid of this weekend," Seraphina admitted, her voice a whisper in the crackling dark.
"So was I."
"But it wasn't a test,was it? It was just… life. With all its spilled armor and wobbly canoes."
"And fishing with your father,"he added wryly.
A soft laugh escaped her.She shifted on the sofa, and the distance between them diminished. Her shoulder pressed against his arm. He didn't move away.
They sat like that, watching the embers glow, feeling the solid, sleepy weight of their children's presence, and the warmer, lighter weight of each other's company. The romantic void, that great, echoing chamber of their marriage, seemed a world away. Here, in this firelit room at the edge of the wilderness, they had found something smaller, simpler, and far more real: a hearth. And for now, a hearth was enough. It was a place to warm their hands, to rest, to watch over what they loved. And from this hearth, they could finally begin to imagine building a home.