The hawks landed in the yard as the first real light came over the peaks.
Lira was already there.
Someone had sent a rider ahead, which meant she had been waiting through the last hours of the night, standing in the yard with her hands clasped together and her eyes fixed on the sky. When Ash touched down and Emery shifted the sleeping girl forward, Lira saw her.
The sound she made was not a word. It was raw and wordless and it carried across the whole yard, and she ran.
Emery lowered the girl to the ground as gently as she could. The child woke at the sound of her mother's voice and turned, still blinking, and then Lira was there, dropping to her knees in the dirt, and they collided with the force of people who have been kept apart too long.
