Larksong Grotto I don't want to be king, I just want to sing a love song

The glacier. He follows her gesture, making sure to commit it to memory -- a part of the map he has yet to venture, as his travels northward ceased once he joined Drageda. He is curious, but her question seems more pressing. 

"There are four," he says, warmly. "Les petits. They belong to our Heda and her wife, so I see myself as -- oncle, a guardian, even though we share blood." His explanation is not meant as reassurance, for such a thing would not occur to him to need to reassure. It is simply the facts of their complex relationship. "I've also taken a ward, a boy named Ephraim I discovered not far from here, alone." Here his voice softens: poor Ephraim! Étoille hopes his heart is full even if he can never replace whatever family he's lost. Furi he does not mention -- Mirabelle has not met her and she is not present, and so cannot be counted. 

Now his curiosities: "They treat you well?" he asks, glad she has found stable company. "What they flee is not a threat to you," he adds, a typical half-question of his -- the answer he assumes is oui, or else why stay with them. No?