Eventually Dev was convinced that the Revinir had been looking for Thisbe and the others and hadn’t found them. Or… maybe she was exploring what was beyond this land to the west and found it totally desolate with nothing to conquer. It was reasonable to believe she’d never be back.

As Dev’s confidence increased, his explorations grew wider. He visited the small deserted village beyond the apple orchard a few times. Some of the homes were structurally sound, but all of them were cleaned out—looted of anything valuable. Dev thought about hiding in one of them if the Revinir ever returned. She’d be less likely to find him unless she and her dragons searched through the narrow streets, which they’d have trouble fitting through without completely knocking down walls and other structures. And while that wouldn’t be difficult for them to do, it would be time consuming and a waste of effort for no good reason… unless they expected to find someone there. The fact that they’d been gone so long without returning gave Dev more hope every day that they’d lost all desire to spend another ounce of time in this isolated place.

After his nightmare that had left him on the floor and packing for the catacombs, Dev had returned to his senses. Leaving his bulbous library would be a big mistake if there wasn’t a need to do so. He loved it here. He had a sofa to sleep on, a fireplace to warm him at night, and books and instruments to keep him company. He had all the fish and fruit and wild plants he could eat just steps away. And he could fix things around the property whenever he felt like it, a little at a time. Even the fox family that had found shelter in the entryway to the stairwell got used to him coming and going, and soon the young kits were big enough to venture out on their own. One of them liked to follow Dev up the stairwell, though its mother always barked at it to come back.

Dev hadn’t heard or felt a roar from the Revinir in all this time. And although he could call up the ancestor images anytime he wanted to, and marvel over how one of them had saved his life, the pictures offered no answers that he didn’t already know. So Dev used his imagination to create his own explanation about what these pictures meant for him.

Astrid had seemed quite certain that the gray man was Ashguard Suresh, the curmudgeon who had lived in this palace long after all his people had been killed or captured by the usurpers. But Dev added on to the story, turning Ashguard into his grandfather. Dev imagined that this dear relative had granted this property to him in a very important document. That he’d been summoned to take care of it.

Thinking about that made him wonder which of his parents was a direct descendant of Ashguard. What had they been like? How did they live? And how did they die? Dev had all the time in the world now to make up answers to the questions he’d barely had time to think about his entire life.