Evan wrote the first honest sentence before he could talk himself out of it.
Dear Mother and Father,
I have not been working in an ordinary town. I live at Crag Mountain, inside the dungeon there, and I have been training and working as an adventurer.
He left the words on the page.
The small table in his Undercity room still leaned toward the wall. The folded scrap beneath one leg had flattened over the past few months, and the candleholder now sat on a wooden board so spilled wax would not reach the floor. Nearly everything else had changed.
His first letter lay open beside his elbow. He had described the stables, his room, and the friends he had made while carefully avoiding the reason strangers came to Crag Mountain. The second letter had told Elly that he had become a Guardian and lived in a place that was both dangerous and safe. It had promised the rest.
Evan had delayed that rest longer than he intended.
