My next lesson is scheduled for a week's time, just before Holy Days. The festivities will be strange this year, in a different place and without my mother. But it might not be just me and my dad, I discover when he gets back from work and opens the letter that's been waiting for him.

"It's from my mother," he says. "She wants to visit us for a few days."

I blink a few times. I don't remember ever meeting my dad's family, and I've only heard him mentioning them occasionally in passing, with little elaboration. I always vaguely wondered why they didn't want to get to know me. "Oh," I say flatly.

"If you don't want her to come, I'll – "

I shake my head. I'm not convinced I do, but I at least want him to understand why. "It's just – convenient timing, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"We don't hear anything from her for over a decade, and now that I'm – "

I don't know quite how to phrase what comes next, but it doesn't matter: "That's not why, Tallulah," my dad says sharply.

I don't bother asking the obvious question; I just wait for him to elaborate.

"Your mother and mine hated each other right from the beginning. Try as I might, I couldn't get either to accept the other. Eventually my mother told me that she never wanted to see me married to that woman. So… she didn't."

Oh. Oh. It seems so obvious now that he's said it. "I – sorry. I shouldn't have assumed – "

His silence is a gentle reproach.

"How did she find out about the… separation?"

"I wrote to her. It took a long time for my letter to find her, she changed addresses at some point, but… I suppose we both decided that even though I'll be married a few more months, at least in spirit… maybe I should have reached out sooner. But I was stubborn, and I knew Louise would hate it if I did."

"Why did they hate each other?"

He shrugs. "At the time I thought it was a clash of personalities. They've both always been forceful, set in their ways, so when those ways differed it was bound to end badly. But looking back… I think Louise was more to blame than I could have admitted then." He falls silent, letting me absorb what he's told me.

I'm glad there was a reason. I always thought that my dad's family didn't care about me for some unknown reason, and finding that's not the case silences that old fear. But still… she made no effort to mend things in sixteen years. Was my mother really that awful to her?

It would be nice to have a grandmother, but my dad's mother is a complete stranger to me. I don't know how she reacted to all the newspaper headlines about me, or what she thinks of Malaina, or whether she'd be reminded of the woman she hates every time she sees me. And if those things aren't what I'd like them to be, and she's here for Holy Days… I don't know if I could cope with that.

"Did she – mention me at all?"

"She said she wanted to meet you. And to try and make up for not being there."

That's a good sign, I decide, but I'm still a little wary. But then I also don't want to ruin my dad's hopes of reconciling with his mother, and saying I don't want her here would undoubtedly do that.

Worst-case scenario, I know Edward would happily take me in for a few days. It wouldn't take me longer than an hour to pack my things, and I have enough coin for a coach journey or Portal toll to get me to Ryk. "Well," I say. "I guess we'll both be sleeping on the sofas for a while, then."

"If you're sure?" my dad asks. "I don't want you to be uncomfortable in your own home."

This isn't my home. And I'm not sure how much his good intentions mean. "I'm sure."

"Then I'll write back to her at once."

I leave him alone to do that, and wander back to the bedroom. Since getting back from the language lesson, I've been rereading the history books my dad saved for me. It's been too long since I've touched most of them. Even before I Fell, I hadn't been reading as much as I wanted to, and even when I did it was mostly different texts from the Genford library.

The first book I opened was clearly written for children. No wonder, considering I was eleven when my parents bought it for me, but I'm struck now by the oversimplifications and childlike language. It feels hollow in a way it never used to. And it hurts a little.

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Now I set that to one side, unfinished, and move onto something I have higher hopes for. I bought a history of the First Civil War with the money I earned last summer, planning to use it as background reading for history lessons at Genford. I never made it to a single one of those lessons, and never got the chance to read more than the first chapter of this book either.

It's as good as I thought it would be. I feel a faint longing to ask Miss Jenkins about it after class like I used to, and have snatched five-minute discussions of how it relates to the lessons and its strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes I think those brief conversations were all that got me as far through Genford as I made it. It wasn't enough, in the end.

But burying myself in centuries past is as comforting as it ever was. Until I'm inevitably interrupted by my dad calling me for dinner. I feel a little guilty for not helping him cook, but I couldn't have dragged myself away from the book without him asking me and he decided not to do that.

He updates me on the project while we eat. Tara was as enthusiastic about the idea as I thought she would be; she's already researching the details of what we'd need to prove and piecing together an approach. Simon is… less keen, but he'll tolerate it as long as my dad and Tara don't neglect the rest of their workload or bring the firm into disrepute.

I suspect both of those may be more challenging than my dad is admitting.

"The next step is to get in touch with our expert witness, then, I suppose. Will you write to her?"

None of us want to pay the portal toll just to speak to her, and she has free access to the Portal Network as part of her job, so that's the logical way to do things. "I'll have a letter in the post tomorrow morning. Should I suggest a time, or…?"

"Let's see… if she gets the letter by the day after tomorrow, she probably won't be free to meet the same day, and then it'll be the weekend… I don't see why we can't meet on the weekend, to be fair. Saturday, two after noon, at the office. If that's convenient for her."

Electra's weekends are quiet ones, usually; I doubt it won't be. "I'll write the letter as soon as we're done here, then. How was your day, other than that?"

It seems strange, summoning Electra here. It's silly, of course: she's visited my old home, and she must have come here to find my dad at least once as well. But she's part of the Academy; she doesn't belong in this part of my life.

We don't discuss the project any more after that. Once he's deflected the enquiries about his work as deftly as ever, it's my turn to be interrogated about my day. Which means that I have to tread carefully to avoid bringing up how I spent half of it. I think he gets the impression that I'm bored sitting here on my own.

Small talk exchanged, we eat in comfortable silence and work together to do the dishes by unspoken agreement. Then we disappear to write our letters: him to my grandmother, me to Electra. Well aware of the possibility that Lord Blackthorn might not be the only person monitoring my mail, I keep the phrasing carefully ambiguous: I'd like to meet to update you on the extracurricular project I've been working on.

Though it occurs to me that I don't know how she'll react to my change of plans about who's actually going to file this case. She agreed to me doing it – after Edward practically blackmailed her on my behalf, no less – but what if she doesn't like the idea of it being my dad or Tara instead?

I just have to hope that's not the case.

The next couple of days are the quietest I've had in as long as I can remember. When my dad's not around I read more history books, recite vocabulary and verb conjugations from what I'm calling the Shadow-language to myself, wander around the city. I spend another hour or so researching the creature from the forest in Crelt's library. There are shadows there too, though I doubt it's anything more than a coincidence.

Maybe, I admit to myself on Friday afternoon, my dad wasn't wrong about me being bored. For so long I've always been focused on the next piece of work due, the next crisis to survive, and suddenly there's none of that to worry about and I don't quite know what to do with myself.

And I miss my friends. I grew too used to the luxury of always having Edward or Elsie or Robin there to talk to whenever I wanted, of being alone only when I wanted to be. Now I can go a whole day without talking to anyone except my dad. Stars, I wish I could see them just for a five-minute conversation.

I'm not unhappy, though, for all that. I could use the rest I'm finally getting enough of, the not having to fight just to keep going through each day. And I can feel myself relaxing more by the day.

This place might not be home, but I do fit here.

My dad brings letters for me when he returns from work on Friday. I'm reminded that I haven't told people where I'm living now, I just left my address as "care of Roberts and Bryant". Then again, I don't particularly want my address being widely known, so perhaps it's not worth the risk of putting it down on paper.

There's a brief note from Electra to say that the time is indeed convenient for her and she looks forward to seeing my progress. Elizabeth sends a short letter; she's not one for letter-writing. She wishes me well and outlines what she's been doing to pass the time: a rigorous exercise program adapted from those used in the Army, and volunteering with the Temple ("I'm not that religious, but they do good work"). She seems happy.

Edward also sends a letter, which is also short. Then again, I know a lot of the things he would want to say to me aren't safe to express on paper. Instead he talks about his latest magical theory interests (in far more technical detail than I can understand, but at least when it's written down I can make notes to look up later) and baking with Elspeth ("I would enclose a cinnamon bite, but Elspeth says they won't travel well. As far as I'm concerned that's an excuse to eat it herself; I will have to thwart her plot by making sure I eat it instead.") And he says he misses me.

I spend the evening replying. The two letters are similar enough: assuring them that I'm safe and well, brief descriptions of what I've been doing (leaving out the project and the language lessons). I get my revenge for the magical theory on Edward with a few dense paragraphs on the causes of the First Civil War, and ask him teasingly for the cinnamon bite recipe so I can make my own. That particular scheme has barely any chance of success, but it's worth a try.

And then it's the weekend. The day we're meeting Electra.

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