Linhaven looked like it had been carved out of a sigh.
A scattering of cottages crouched near the edge of the bluff, their roofs heavy with sea salt and years. The harbor below swayed with the slow rhythm of boats that hadn't been out in days. Maybe weeks. The wind carried a chill that wasn't entirely from the sea.
Kitsune pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he and Lafayette dismounted in what barely passed for a village square. Calia trotted ahead, nose down, tail low. The locals didn't speak. Didn't wave. Just watched from windows or doorways, eyes shadowed and sharp.
"This place doesn't like strangers," Kitsune muttered.
Lafayette didn't answer. He didn't have to. He looked like he felt it too. That weight in the air. Not quite hostility. Not quite welcome. Just closed.
They took rooms at a squat little inn that leaned like it was tired of standing. The man behind the counter slid them a key without asking for names. No smile. No small talk. Just turned away and disappeared into the back.
Kitsune lingered a moment before heading upstairs. "Friendly."
"Suspicion's a kind of hospitality, in places like this," Lafayette said.
For the first day, they didn't ask questions. They watched.
Kitsune walked the coast and learned the way seaweed gathered on certain rocks when the tide changed. He counted the number of fishermen who left in the morning and who came back. He watched a girl leave food at a doorstep no one ever answered.
Lafayette spent his time listening. Not prying. Just present. People had a habit of filling silences eventually.
It was on the third day that something shifted. Kitsune found Lafayette down at the docks, talking quietly with an old man mending a torn net with hands like driftwood.
"She's still up on the cliffs?" Lafayette asked.
The man nodded without looking up. "Aye. Doesn't leave much. Doesn't talk much."
"She sick?" Kitsune asked, stepping into the sun.
The man gave him a glance that was part curiosity, part warning. "Not in the way you mean."
"You knew her?"
"Everyone did. Before." His hands paused. "But time has a way of blurring people. Makes it easier to remember them the way we need to."
Kitsune waited, but the man said no more.
That night, the wind turned. A storm gathered on the edge of the horizon, distant thunder rolling like it was still trying to decide if it was real.
Kitsune stood by the window of their room, watching the sea rise and fall. "She knew someone would come eventually."
"She's too careful not to," Lafayette said from behind him. He was sitting with his boots off, sword leaned against the wall, looking more tired than Kitsune had ever seen him.
"So why not vanish? Why stay somewhere she could be found?"
Lafayette didn't answer right away. Then he said, "Maybe because there's still something left that matters."
"Or someone."
They left before dawn, when the sky was a soft gray bruise and the storm hadn't yet arrived.
The trail up the cliff was narrow and wet, lined with brush that clawed at their cloaks. Calia led the way, darting ahead, doubling back, always listening. The house was barely more than a shadow against the rock. Small. Weathered. Quiet.
Kitsune knocked.
Nothing.
He waited, knocked again. Louder this time.
Still nothing.
The door didn't open easily, but it wasn't barred. It gave with a slow groan, the sound of a place that hadn't been disturbed in far too long.
Inside, the air was cool. Lived-in, but barely. Dust lined the shelves. The hearth was cold. But the quilt draped over the back of the chair wasn't old. The papers on the desk weren't brittle.
Someone had been here. Maybe still was.
Kitsune moved toward the desk. Letters, faded and torn. A pendant tucked between them. Silver, worn smooth, marked with the royal crest.
He picked it up carefully. "She kept this."
Lafayette scanned the room, brow furrowed. "She left in a hurry."
Before Kitsune could answer, Calia barked once. Short. Sharp.
They rushed to the door. Just beyond the trees, something moved. A cloak vanishing into mist. Too fast to be old. Too sure-footed to be afraid.
"She waited for us to come," Kitsune said.
Lafayette nodded. "And now she's making us chase her."
They didn't speak again as they ran, following Calia's lead, feet pounding over wet stone and tangled roots. The trees thickened, the wind whistled, and somewhere ahead, the past slipped just out of reach.
But they weren't going to stop now.
Marah Veil had run once.
She wouldn't be allowed to disappear again.