Eirran did not delude himself with the gravitas of what he was about to do.

Ilari did not raise half-bloods.

They did not claim them.

They did not return for them.

But he wasn’t just any Ilar. He was Eirran V’Asanii; the one who revolutionized aerial warfare and turned a powerful army into the very force of the heavens.

He could raise one half-blood girl.

The docks of Astochia bustled with evening noise; sounds clashed and broke against the stone piers. Eirran stood on a high terrace overlooking the harbor, motionless as a statue, watching his ship being readied for departure. His arms were folded across his chest; his wings, usually held with perfect composure, had involuntarily caught the change in the wind.

His thoughts churned like storm waves.

Eilleah.

Eight years he mourned a child he had believed dead, a shameful secret his father had paid to bury. And now… now he was to bring her to Astochia. Into his home.

Keth, his faithful steward, stood at his side, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Everything is ready, my lord. If the wind holds, we can set sail at dawn.”

Eirran nodded but did not answer at once. His gaze drifted to the far edges of the harbor, where the wingless labored: fishermen, dockhands, shipwrights, their faces carved by time. How will Eilleah feel among them? Will she ever find a home in this world?

He did not know, and it troubled him more than he liked to admit.

“Have you decided where the girl and her family will be housed?” Keth asked carefully.

Eirran hesitated. He had not made the decision until now. “The southern wing of the palace,” he said at last, voice low and firm. “Rooms with a view of the gardens. It's peaceful there, away from the noise…”

… and away from curious eyes, the whispers, those who might recognize a truth he was not yet ready to face.

Keth nodded, but something unsaid lingered in his eyes. “People will ask questions, my lord. A human family from Selavetia is not the kind of company usually brought into a palace, least of all into private chambers.”

“They’ll learn to keep silent,” Eirran snapped, harsher than he intended. “She is my ward. That is all they need to know.”

He turned his gaze north, toward Ulm and the girl who waited for him without knowing it. Will she ever stop being afraid? Does she even understand what it means to be an Ilar’s child? He had no answer.

For the first time in his life, he was acting impulsively, led by emotion alone.

He was a soldier, a tactician. He thought, he calculated variables, then he decided. It was not in his character to be reckless.

Except when it came to Noemi. And, by extension, his daughter. No sense in it. No logic.

Ilari did not raise half-bloods. Not publicly. Perhaps some lesser noble had done so in secret once or twice, but Eirran had never heard of it. He himself was far too visible.

He told himself he had weighed the variables, but he knew it was self-delusion.

What else could I do? Leave her in Ulm? Never see her again? Live my life knowing that a part of me, a part of Noemi, still breathed somewhere out there, forever out of reach?

Something sour, unnamed, settled in the pit of his stomach at the thought.

One thing, however, he knew with absolute clarity: he would not force her. Not in anything.

If she did not want to come, if she did not want him, he would let her go. But he would not leave her to poverty. He would not let her starve.

“Have you sent the gifts?” he asked, still not turning his head.

“We have, my lord. Woolen dresses, proper leather boots, food stores enough for months. All for the journey and the first days in Astochia.”

He gave a curt nod. He appreciated that Keth did not add what both of them knew: it was more than anyone else would have given.

“My lord,” Keth continued after a pause, his fingers brushing the scar across his right hand, “there is someone you should see before we depart.”

They descended into the oldest part of the harbor, where the half-bloods lingered among the fishing boats. Keth led him to an old man seated on an overturned bucket, repairing a net with wiry, practiced hands.

“Grigor,” he introduced. “The oldest living half-blood in Astochia.”

The old man looked up. Amid the sea of white hair, a single lock shimmered faintly like mother-of-pearl; a small trace most Ilar eyes would have missed, but not Eirran’s, not now. His hands, roughened by salt and years, stilled as he beheld the wings.

“My lord,” the voice rasped like the timbers of an old boat. He bowed as far as his body would allow, his shoulders instinctively pulling back as if to compensate for the wings he never had.

Keth laid a hand on his shoulder. “Grigor, tell us: when did you first notice the signs of age?”

The old man’s dark eyes; too deep, too unmistakably Ilari; lingered on Eirran’s feathers. “Before sixty, I’d say. My hair started to go gray around eighty.” He lifted a strand where the sheen caught the light. “My father…” He faltered, swallowing. “My father still visits me. He comes at night, when no one sees.”

Eirran’s wings twitched. “How often?”

“Every winter.” Grigor’s toothless smile flickered. “He says he likes to watch the snow gather in my hair. He brings gifts…” From his pocket he produced a tiny carved wooden boat, worn smooth from years of handling. “For my fiftieth birthday. He said, for all the journeys we’ll never sail together.”

Eirran took the boat; the wood was polished by decades of touch, its edges thinned by fingers.

“Do you have children?” he asked, though he dreaded the answer.

The old man chuckled, a sound like ice cracking. “Five. All in the ground these twenty years.” His finger traced the little toy. “My father came to every funeral. Stood under the birch tree while people whispered.”

Keth’s hand brushed Eirran’s arm. “My lord, you must understand… your daughter…”

“I know,” Eirran said, gripping the boat until the wood dug into his palm. He did not need to be told what he already saw: one day Eilleah would lie in the earth, and he would still be standing by her grave with a face untouched by time.

A shout rang from the docks; children raced toward the boats. Among them was a boy with too-large eyes, whose hair glimmered in the sunlight in a way not quite human. Grigor caught his gaze.

“My great-grandson,” he whispered. “Seven years old.”

Nearly the same as Eilleah.

Eirran’s breath caught. The boy laughed, running barefoot over the planks, oblivious to the looks around him — fear, disgust, and, here and there, pity.

“Will your father also still…”

“Visit him?” Grigor nodded, eyes shining. “Until his last breath. Because love, my lord, knows no boundaries of law, faith, or years.”

On the way back to the palace, Eirran’s wings felt heavy as soaked sails. Keth walked beside him, silent.

“Prepare the southern wing as I said,” Eirran said at last. “Those rooms with a view of the gardens.”

Keth inclined his head.

At the threshold, Eirran looked back once more toward the harbor. The fog had lifted; he could clearly see Grigor still at his place, the great-grandson perched in his lap, learning knots from gnarled hands.

He clenched the little boat in his fist. The promise carved itself into his palm: tomorrow he would set out to bring his daughter home. And whatever followed, he knew one thing: he would never stop coming. Not by day or by night, not in snow or in storm.

It wasn’t even a conscious choice, he realized, but something written deep in his bones.

“Will the High Council make trouble?” Keth asked at last, his voice low, a warning.

Eirran did not lift his eyes from the horizon, where sea and sky bled into one. “Not so long as I don’t break the law.”

And the law did not forbid him to have a child.

It forbade him only to give her his name.

That was a battle for another day.

For now, he needed to bring her home.

He knew that bringing her home would be the easy part.

But he didn't know that what would come after… would shake the sky.