Larkspur Hollow threw its first genuine party in three years that night, and it showed. But not in scale, exactly, since it was still a small town with a modest budget and even more modest warning, but in a kind of desperate, overcorrecting sincerity that no amount of manic cheer could have faked. Someone dragged tables into the square. Someone else produced a truly alarming quantity of bread. Mayor Wells stood on the lip of the well itself to give a short, badly-composed, entirely heartfelt speech that got about four words in before he started crying again, at which point the crowd simply cheered and let him sit back down.
"For your service to Larkspur Hollow," he said later, considerably more composed, pressing a modest but honest pouch of coin into Xavier's hands, "and for my daughter. There isn't a sum that covers the second part. Please don't think this is meant to."
"It's plenty," Xavier said, and meant it, though the weight of the pouch felt strange in his palm compared to the weight of what he'd actually traded to get her back. Thought that was a comparison he kept carefully to himself.
Tobias, delighted to have an audience that would remember the night afterward, insisted on a celebratory round of orange juice "made the normal way this time, I promise," and even produced, with something like ceremony, an actual juicer. Stephan drank two full cups before asking, loudly, if it counted as the same achievement if it wasn't cursed anymore. Bruce told him, with great feeling, to never speak of the original incident again in his presence.
Wren spent most of the evening orbiting the party at a small, curious distance, still relearning what having hands felt like, occasionally sneaking close enough to solemnly inform Xavier that she remembered him from "the walls," which he decided, after a moment of consideration, not to ask more about. At one point she presented him, with tremendous ceremony, a slightly squashed acorn she'd apparently been hoarding for reasons known only to a girl who'd spent three years thinking in far smaller, far more practical terms than most seven-year-olds ever had to. Xavier accepted it with the same gravity he'd have shown a knighthood.
Stephan, for his part, had appointed himself the evening's entertainment, attempting to teach a small crowd of increasingly delighted children an elaborate and entirely made-up sword-fighting routine using stick props, at least three of which ended up broken by the time the night wound down. Bruce spent a solid hour being quietly, thoroughly interrogated by the town blacksmith about the mechanics of his hammer, and left the conversation looking more energized than he had all week.
It was, all things considered, a good night. Xavier let himself have it without overthinking it, for once.
The diary, Emory, and the mystery of Roswell's history with a demon could all wait until morning.
***
Morning arrived considerably less gently than the celebration had, mostly in the form of Bruce shaking Xavier awake with the specific urgency of a man who had somewhere to be.
"Elrick's message came by hawk overnight," he said, holding up a small scrap of paper covered in cramped, impatient handwriting. "Something about not dawdling. Also something about how, and I quote, 'the second one won't wait around for you to nurse a hangover.'"
They found Josh exactly where they'd left him the night before, having apparently slept through the entire party, the noise, and the subsequent sunrise without so much as shifting position.
"Morning," Josh said, blinking awake at the first knock, entirely unbothered by twelve hours of unbroken sleep in a wooden driver's seat. "We heading out?"
"That we are," Xavier confirmed.
The ride back through the Larkwood felt shorter with the fog behind them instead of ahead, and by the time the Warrior School's gates came into view, Josh had already dozed off twice and woken up both times without missing a turn, guided, as ever, by horses who plainly knew this route better than he did.
Elrick was waiting for them just inside the gates, arms crossed, tapping one foot with the specific impatience of a man who had absolutely nothing better to do and had chosen to spend that free time being dramatic about it.
"There you are. I trust the werewolf hunt was suitably werewolf-free."
"There was no werewolf," Bruce said, for what felt like the tenth time in two days.
"There never is. Good. Onto the second task, then. And I'll warn you now, this one actually matters, so try to take it more seriously than you took my numbers this week." Elrick produced a folded letter bearing a wax seal Xavier recognized instantly: the Windstrom crest, the same one branded into every memory he had of waking up in that manor with no memory at all.
A familiar shimmer unfolded in the air in front of him.
[Elrick's Second Task: The Windward Escort] (Personal Quest)
Description: Escort Lady Vidora Windstrom safely to the Wind Shrines and back for House Windstrom's yearly pilgrimage.
Reward: House Windstrom's formal gratitude — and, per Elrick, "a small fortune, though I mostly just want to see the look on her face when she meets you three."
Failure: Unspecified. Elrick did not elaborate, and his expression suggested he'd prefer not to.
"Lady Vidora Windstrom," Elrick continued, "is the Duke's mother. Family elder, technically retired from anything resembling official duty, except for the one duty she's never once skipped in longer than anyone at this school has been alive: the Wind Shrine pilgrimage. Every year, without fail, she visits every shrine scattered across the floating islands of the Ventus region and pays her respects."
"Respects to what, exactly?" Xavier asked.
"The Wind Spirit, officially. Whether you believe there's an actual spirit listening is your business. I've never asked her directly. Not one has, really. I'd advise you not to be the first ones." Elrick's grin flickered, just slightly, into something more careful. "Unofficially, it's also the thing that keeps House Windstrom's claim over this whole plateau legitimate in the eyes of, well, everyone. Religious devotion and political theater, tangled together so thoroughly at this point that even the family's stopped pretending they're separate things."
"And she needs bodyguards for a yearly errand she's apparently done her whole life?" Bruce asked, skeptical.
"She's needed them every year. This year, she specifically requested new faces. Something about being tired of grumpy middle-aged men." Elrick's grin came back in full, sharp and entirely too pleased with himself. "I may have mentioned you three youngsters were available. Don't make me regret it."
Stephan, who had been quiet for most of this, finally spoke up. "So we get to guard an actual noblewoman on an actual pilgrimage to actual floating islands?"
"Try not to sound so delighted about it. She'll notice, and she notices everything." Elrick was already turning to leave, tossing one last comment over his shoulder. "She's expecting you within the hour. Try to look competent. I know it's a stretch. But still try. For both our sakes."