Ashfen appeared on the horizon in the late afternoon of the second day, the estate's roofline visible first above the treeline, then the walls, then the full shape of it settling into view the way familiar things settled when you had been away long enough to see them clearly again.
Lena looked at it through the carriage window and felt something she didn't have a clean word for. Not home exactly. She had not had a home in any straightforward sense since before the dungeon took her. But something adjacent to home. The specific recognition of a place where she knew where everything was and what everything meant and what was expected of her and what she was capable of within it.
She had been gone less than two weeks.
It felt longer.
---
Ollen was at the gate.
