Grief had been with him for so long that Albedo could scarcely remember the shape of his life before it. There had been a house, certainly, and people who would turn at the sound of his footsteps. There had been mornings when the world asked very little of him, when a book left unfinished was a reason to hurry home, and the approaching dark meant someone would soon call him inside.

Once, he must have looked toward the evening without wondering what might be moving through it. Once, the night had only been the night, and he had been a boy who believed there would always be another morning.

He carried what remained of that boy beneath the weight of his coat, between the pages of his journals, in the hand that returned to his sword whenever the silence lasted too long. Years had taught him how to follow a trail through the woods and how to read the wounds left on a body. He could speak of terrible things with a steadiness that made others grateful to have him near.

Yet when he tried to remember the sound of his mother laughing, he sometimes had to close his eyes and wait. The memory never came as quickly as the others. Those needed only darkness, only the careless closing of a door.

Alandra had first known him as a quiet presence beyond the children gathered around her book. Pale hair, watchful eyes, a man who seemed to have paused on his way elsewhere and then forgotten to continue. He stayed where the pillars cast their shadows, listening as she gave voices to kings and wandering foxes, as small hands tugged at her sleeve whenever a story threatened to end too soon.

Later, she would wonder how many times he had stood there before she noticed him. How many afternoons had he spent within reach of her voice, asking for nothing, while she wished the children happiness ever after?

She learned him slowly after that. His thoughtful pauses, the slight change in his expression when a question interested him, how easily a conversation could draw him closer if she asked about the things he loved. There was such tenderness in the attention he gave the world. He would notice the new leaf on a struggling plant, the uneven markings on an insect’s wings, something small and living that everyone else had passed without a glance.

Watching him, she found herself wondering what sort of life might have belonged to him if someone had allowed him to keep it.

Perhaps he would have filled his rooms with books.

Perhaps his hands would have known ink more often than blood.

When he told her about the village, he spoke quietly. He had been eleven, away from home, and by the time he returned there was no one left to ask where he had been. A vampire had come in the night. His family, the neighbours, the children whose names he could still recall without effort; all of them were gone, and he was left with the unbearable task of continuing beyond the place where their lives had stopped.

Alandra listened without moving. She wanted to ask a hundred things, but every question felt like another door he would have to open, and she could already see how much it cost him to stand before the first.

So she took his hand.

It seemed such a small thing to do in the presence of so much suffering, and still, she could not bear to leave it resting alone between them. Her eyes stung as she imagined him returning to a home that no longer knew how to receive him. Had he called for someone? Had he gone from room to room, hoping there might be one voice left to answer? She could not bring herself to ask.

Instead, she held him a little tighter, grieving for people she had never met, wishing with a helplessness that ached through her chest that someone had been there to gather him close before he understood.

Afterward, when she thought about what had happened to him, she was grateful for the locked door she woke behind each Harvest Moon. The darkness in her own life had always frightened her, those missing hours when she could no longer trust herself to remain gentle.

But she had asked to be restrained. She remembered asking; she remembered the promise that she would be taken care of, and the dungeon waiting when she opened her eyes again.

Whatever hunger lived inside her, it had been kept from other people. She held to that belief with all the relief of someone who had heard what a monster could leave behind and thanked God that she had been prevented from doing the same.

She thought of him then, too. Of how many others there might be who carried a grief like his, who had been made to grow around an absence they were too young to understand.

If only she could spare him any more of it. If only love could reach backward as easily as her hand reached for his, finding him wherever the years had left him, drawing him out of those empty rooms. She had no way to return his family, no words that could make the telling less true. But she could remember when he was expected back. She could look toward the door and smile when he appeared, until perhaps, one day, coming home would mean something other than loss.