Instead, I found something I’d never expected to see again: my own father bent over a cast-iron surface plate, marking out a new design on a sheet of shining metal with a prick punch and a hammer.

My breath stopped in my throat. My voice came out in a cracked whisper. “Dad?”

He glanced up at me with an absent smile. “Ah, Mia. There you are, love. Pass me a scriber, will you?”

Numbly, I crossed the workshop floor to pick one out from its shelf. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. I just need to get a bit more…aha! There she goes.” Beaming, he set down the punch and the hammer and sat back on the tall stool, reaching for the steel rod in my hands. “Now, then. Did you want me for something?”

“I…heard a crash.”

“Ah.” He shook his head with a rueful chuckle. “That was just me being clumsy, I’m afraid.” He pointed to a hammer on the ground. “As long as you’re here, would you mind picking it up? I’d do it myself, but—”

“Of course.” I hurried to kneel down and scoop it up. It was nothing to me—a moment’s effort, no more. Even with the special braces that I’d built for his legs, though, it pained my father to crouch nowadays. It had ever since the fire that had destroyed our old workshop and trapped him inside, pinned beneath a fallen beam until I’d finally managed to pull him free…

Which was the last time he’d ever stepped into any workshop, after a lifetime spent lovingly working metal to the highest of standards. He had never so much as glanced inside the workshop I’d built here for the two of us before, and I’d given up on invitations—and hope—months ago.

“What are you making?” I had to swallow hard to keep my throat from choking up.

I’d been watching him work from the time I was a newborn infant propped up in a cot nearby. I hadn’t realized until now just how desperately I’d missed it.

“Oh, just a knick-knack, really. It was an idea your young man gave me the other week when he stopped by.”

“My what?” I blinked to a standstill as the shadows in the windowless room shifted and the Countess stepped into the open doorway, her dramatically upswept silver and black hair backlit by the bright afternoon light from the kitchen behind her. “I don’t have a young man,” I muttered. “Don’t be absurd.”

“Oh, no?” Dad raised his eyebrows. “Well, then, our neighbor, young Fabian, who’s always dressing his best and looking for any excuse to hang about you—”