“It sounds like his heart is in the right place. He just doesn’t remember what children are like. How they need not only safety and someone to look after them, but also family.”

Forgive him, but he doubts spirits gifted with a clear and singular purpose could ever truly understand the hopelessness of a life that was not wanted. That serves no purpose beyond survival. Modern worlds may be forgetting the seasons, but thousands of years of experience can’t be compared with the innocence of a child whose only way of making sense of evil is to blame itself. It’s a despair he’s seen again and again. He channels his own understanding of their plight into a facsimile of worry. His brows draw together, eyes narrowing in what’s meant as concern before slackening into a questioning gaze that he directs toward Hazel.

“What will happen to her during the Winter? She won’t be able to understand why he’s gone. All she’ll see is that she is comparatively unimportant to him. Children are so impressionable. They take every rejection as a reflection of their personal worth.”