It was funny to think that it was no longer her house, but it wasn’t. Fordwick was her home now and eventually, the new castle would be. She wasn’t sure whether her family even knew she was still alive. She breathed deeply every step of the way through her woods, pulling in every single remembered scent that brought her back to her childhood. Soon she was in the clearing where their small shack stood, and she could see her Da in the front yard, sharpening his scythe, and she could walk no longer. Something—or, more accurately, someone—hit Lawson Cooper like a boulder, and it turned out to be the person he was missing the most, after his wife. “Amber! You’ve come back!” he cried, hugging his eldest tight against him, then standing back and gazing on her with a precise paternal eye. “How’ve you been? What’s happened? We’d heard you ended up at Fordwick and pushed some toff into a fountain!” Faine appeared in the doorway, looking more and more the young woman and less and less the little girl, and finally Starr, her least favorite sister, peering over her shoulder, then, upon seeing who it was, ducking back into the cottage with a sour look.
