Hushed Willows tomorrow never comes until it's too late

Please just come home.

Something broke in her. Or — no, not a breaking but a falling away; that constant tightness in her chest, so familiar by now that she hadn't truly felt it until it loosened all at once. Her eyes burned with another surge of tears. This time she didn't care.

He wanted her to come home. Maybe she should have known that, but all she'd wanted was to hear him say it. Mae nodded, swallowing hard and drawing in a deep breath before she trusted herself to speak.

Okay, Little more than a whisper, but her voice grew stronger as she went on. Okay. I'll come home. I just gotta - I need to know they're gonna be taken care of, too. I'll figure it out. She was already half picturing how she might pull this off, but her head was all a mess and she couldn't hold her focus. She was going home. She was going home with her dad. That simple fact felt so much bigger than anything else.

And she too wanted to close that distance, had wanted it for so long, but she had never known how. It was easy with Arric. Once it'd been easy with Akavir, too, but as hard as she tried she couldn't seem to bring that feeling back. Not yet. Mae took a single step forward and lingered, hesitating. The thought of a second felt insurmountable. Maybe she wasn't ready.

But she was going home. They were going home, together. One step at a time.