The whole truth comes out faster than Wren expects — the dead knight, the armour found in the hayloft, the parchment with its bleeding ink, the Ember of Aldermere, the harvest moon already three-quarters full, and a village that looked at her because she was the only one standing close enough to the armour to try it on. She has not said so much in one breath since the harvest assembly. She finishes. The stream keeps its argument with the stones. The Brook Woman is quiet for a long moment. She looks at the box. She looks at Wren. Then she lifts the box from the flat rock, carefully, the way you handle something that has been someone else's grief. "The knight who carried this clasp last," she says slowly, "was not supposed to have given it away." A pause. "And yet." She holds the box out. Not quite an offer. Not quite a refusal. The sun clasp gleams between them in the mist.