Duck Lake [m]Being born in a duck yard does not matter if hatched from a swan's egg

He had never left her. 

Or maybe, she had never left him.

On the nights he'd curled up by Reverie's side. In the days he'd spent watching and tending her kids. In the long hours he'd spent waiting for Tybault to return. Reina flickered in his heart like a quiet song.

Because she had cared for Reverie. Because she had slept next to them, too. Because the kids knew her as well as they knew him.

She had never left him - and it took the thought of never seeing her again for Everett to realize he never wanted to leave her.

But now things were not so simple anymore. 

She expressed like concern for Tybault, and her care spoke words for Reina, who had once returned with him seething. Or perhaps it spoke words for Tybault. He knew how his brother could be, but he had never given a thought to how he, too, might have changed. Enough for Reverie to bring him to Hearthwood. Enough for Reina to want to look for him now. Enough for Everett to need to find him, too.

He said nothing to this yet; Reina had more to say.

Everett did think her desires unnatural - wrong - and Reverie's, too, and perhaps it spoke in hours silence. But when had he been the model of perfection? His heart rallied against her choices, wants, lasts- but he did not hate her.

And he decided, still, that he never wanted to leave her.

And it sounded as though she wanted that, too.

Everett had never been loved before - except, of course, by Evander, but they had been two halves of a whole, and loving him was like loving himself. At the Gilded Sea, they had feared him. Loathed him, too. And though he had once thought Reverie had loved him...

Maybe she had used him, too.

You are loved, was all he gave her, soft words meant to calm the storm she raged with. And was everything ruined?

Hearthwood, perhaps. The idyllic life they had down together within the Hushed Willows. But it had always been frail. Rusting, like fool's gold.

Come find Tybault with me.

Forgiveness, where Reverie had given him none. This mountain, too, would take time to climb, but he wanted what he saw at its peak.

He reached out to touch her forehead with his nose and a breath, as he had never done before - to give and to take, only if she wished.