So much had changed. Could he really call it coming back when the land itself was so different? When the only old haunt that was left was the adoption den, the home for lost boys and girls like he and Lee had been so very long ago?  The Tundra was gone, not a sign of it in the far north, not so much as a snowflake. Just a jagged hook of coastline and the endless sea stretching on past the horizon, where the soft greys of sea and sky blended together into mist until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

Well, so much for an easy visit.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, brushing his lips along Lee’s lovely shoulder, his lips curving into a smile against her soft skin. “We’ll find them.”  Someone had to know something, right? Royal families didn’t just disappear into oblivion. Except, perhaps, when the entire world rewrote itself and changed so fundamentally that it was barely even recognizable as their birthplace anymore.

Still, if anyone was capable of making a name for himself in this new place the old world had become, in gathering his people together and making sure they were safe, it would have been Dad. Dad, who did everything for the good of his kingdom, for the good of his people. And no doubt he would have looked out for Mom; she would’ve been by his side through whatever hell had visited their home, right? And Mari and Lis and little Eione, who...would be so very not little now. And Argo, if Argo had let him. Which was maybe a big if.

At any rate, probably they’d be able to track down at least Mom or Dad.

Which was how the two of them wound up in a long stretch of forest, heading east toward a place called Tephra. Traversing the whole of this new Beqanna to follow a vague lead from some strange mare took time though, and it was starting to get dark. “Maybe we should find a place to curl up for the night, love. What do you think?”