“She is still too young,” Lara answered.

“She is thirteen,” Ilona responded.

“Let our lives settle themselves back into a normal pattern. I will send her to you before the next Icy Season,” Lara promised her mother.

“It is agreed, then,” Ilona said. “Farewell, Daughter.” And she was gone in a burst of purple smoke.

Lara sighed with relief. But for her daughters the castle was now empty of all guests. Everyone had returned home but for those with Corrado. She sought for her daughters, finding them in her private garden. It was a small, pretty space on a promontory that overlooked the Dominus’s Fjord. On three sides of the garden high, vine-covered walls offered a view of the water. On the fourth side a castle tower soared into the skies above. Lara slipped off her shoes before walking out onto the fresh green grass where Anoush, Zagiri and Marzina were now seated near a bed of bright yellow and white spring flowers. A small nearby miniature almond tree was in bloom, its pink blossoms delicately scenting the air. Lara came and sat with them.

“It seems strange without Father here,” Zagiri said softly.

“I cannot sense him at all,” Marzina agreed.

“He has gone,” Lara told them. “Sometimes spirits will linger, but his did not. I do not know why that is, but it is.”

“It hurt too much to stay,” Anoush told her companions. “He told me that before he went. He did not want any of us to stand still as if waiting for his return. He wanted us all to move forward with our lives.”

“Can you sense him at all?” Lara asked her eldest daughter.

Anoush shook her head. “He is gone, Mother.”

“His vessel must have gone far that those accompanying it are not yet back,” Zagiri noted. “It was a magnificent Farewell. I wonder that more Terahns do not do it.”

“Not all Terahns have access to the sea, or have vessels to burn,” Lara replied. “Usually such Farewells are reserved for a Dominus and his family.”