Corin left Solmere on the first morning of winter recess, before most of the academy had properly woken, his single traveling bag packed the night before with the same careful, deliberate precision he applied to everything. Talon had offered to walk him to the coach station. Corin had declined.
TLN: You don't have to do this alone.
COR: I know I don't have to. I want to.
He'd said it plainly, without any particular coldness behind it, simply a statement of preference that Talon, after a long moment, had accepted with the same quiet understanding he brought to most of Corin's guarded decisions, and Corin had left the dormitory alone in the dark, cold morning, his breath fogging faintly in the pre-dawn air. The journey east took the better part of four days. He traveled by coach where the roads allowed it, and on foot where they didn't, watching the landscape shift gradually beneath the winter sky, Astoria's gentle, well-tended countryside giving way slowly to something harder and more weathered, the particular unforgiving terrain that had shaped Castelgard's whole character across centuries of border conflict. He knew he was close when the first watchtower came into view. It rose from the hillside ahead, grey stone against a greyer sky, one of dozens that marked the province's ancient defensive line, and Corin, seeing it, felt something in his chest tighten with the particular complicated recognition of coming home to a place he had never once, in two years away, stopped thinking of as home despite everything it had cost him. The city itself sat behind a second, inner wall, older still than the outer watchtowers, and Corin passed through the eastern gate as the winter light was beginning its early failure toward evening, the guards there recognizing him with brief, respectful nods rather than any particular warmth, the particular formal distance that had always defined his family's relationship with the people they governed. He did not go directly to the manor. He walked instead through the lower districts first, unhurried, watching the ordinary business of the city continue around him, merchants closing their stalls for the evening, children being called in from the cold, the particular unremarkable rhythm of a place that had learned, across generations of conflict, to hold its ordinary life carefully alongside its extraordinary danger. He passed a recruiting post near the market square, its notice board thick with fresh postings, and stopped despite himself, reading the particular urgent language of a province stretched thin, seeking able bodies for the northern watch, offering terms that had grown considerably more generous, Corin suspected, than they'd been two years before. He did not linger.
The manor sat at the city's highest point, as it always had, its grey stone walls softened only slightly by the ivy his mother had spent years cultivating along its southern face, and Corin stood at its gate for a long moment before finally approaching, the particular hesitation of someone who understood that crossing this threshold meant confronting, at last, the thing he had spent the entire journey trying not to think about directly. A servant met him at the door, an older man Corin had known his whole life, and something in the man's careful, subdued greeting told Corin, before a single word was exchanged, exactly how much had changed since his last visit home.
SRV: Young lord. Welcome home. Your mother's expecting you.
COR: And my father?
The servant's expression shifted, something careful and deliberately neutral settling over it.
SRV: He's in the east study. He's been there most evenings, since.
COR: Since?
SRV: Since he returned, my lord.
Corin nodded, understanding the careful evasion for what it was, and made his way through the familiar halls toward his mother's study first, needing, he found, a moment to prepare himself before facing what waited in the east wing. His mother rose from her desk the moment he entered, crossing the room with a speed that abandoned all her usual careful formality, and embraced him tightly, her composure cracking in a way Corin had rarely witnessed from her across his entire life.
MTH: You came.
COR: Of course I came.
MTH: I wasn't certain the letter would reach you in time. The post from here takes so long, and I worried.
COR: It reached me. I came as quickly as I could manage.
She pulled back to look at him properly, her eyes moving over his face with the particular searching attention of a mother assessing what two years and considerable distance had changed in her son, and something in her expression settled, slowly, into a complicated mixture of relief and lingering worry.
MTH: You've grown.
COR: It's been two years.
MTH: I know. I simply hadn't quite prepared myself for how much two years actually looks like, until you were standing here.
She held his face for a moment longer, the particular tender gesture she'd offered him as a child and had rarely allowed herself since he'd grown old enough to consider such gestures beneath his composure, and Corin, standing in his mother's study with the whole weight of the journey finally catching up to him, found himself, for one unguarded moment, simply a boy home from somewhere far away, rather than the heir his family needed him to be.
COR: How is he. Truly.
His mother's expression sobered further, the complicated warmth of a moment before giving way to something heavier.
MTH: Healing. Slowly. The healers say the worst of the danger has passed, that infection isn't a concern any longer, that what remains now is simply learning to live with what the injury has left him. He is not the man who left for the northern line eight months ago. I want you prepared for that, before you see him.
COR: I understand.
MTH: I don't think you do, quite yet. But you will, soon enough.
She released him finally, stepping back, and looked toward the east wing of the manor with an expression Corin recognized as her own particular version of the careful composure he'd inherited so completely.
MTH: Go to him. He's been asking after your arrival for days, though he'd never admit as much directly. You know how he is.
COR: I know how he is.
He said it with the particular weary familiarity of a son who had spent his entire life learning to read the careful silences of a man who rarely spoke his feelings outright, and turned toward the east wing, his mother watching him go with an expression that carried both hope and considerable worry in equal measure. The walk to the east study felt longer than it had any physical right to be.
Corin stood outside the door for a long moment, gathering himself, and thought, briefly, of Talon, of the offer he'd declined at the coach station, of the whole distance he'd insisted on crossing alone, and understood, standing there in the familiar corridor of his childhood home, that some doors, however much company one had available to offer, could only ever be walked through by the person they actually belonged to. He knocked once, and opened the door before waiting for an answer, and stepped inside.