"Lovely like a snake," Sorrel scoffs, but he relents, smoothing one palm across Sina's hair, comfortingly, "She never wrote back to the clan, that I heard of. And do you know, she hasn't said a single word to me, since I arrived?"

He sighs. It's a different problem, a worry that gnaws at him in quiet, dark moments when nothing else exists to pull at him; the clan here wasn't just drifting apart, it was falling apart. Nothing ever goes easy, does it?

"You deserve so much more than someone like that. This Fern betr have been kind to you."

Or... something.

Or else.