Wren's hand moves before the argument between should and shouldn't can finish. Her gauntleted fingers close around the box — heavier than it looks, warm in a way that has nothing to do with the mist — and she draws it to her chest. The Brook Woman lets go. Her expression does something complicated, then settles into the thing that comes after relief when you have been carrying something too long. "Press the sun," the old woman says. Wren presses it. The lid opens. Inside, nested in tarnished velvet, sits something the colour of a coal that has just decided to be brave — not blazing, but deeply, steadily lit. Amber-gold. Warm as a held hand. The Ember of Aldermere, looking considerably less dramatic than the parchment implied, and unmistakably, quietly alive. "It answers to doubt," the Brook Woman says. "Carry it certain, or it dims." She pauses. "And you have a long way back."