274****** Here I am again, thought Alden, wandering the siblinghold without anyone having invited me.He set his bags down inside the familiar cottage, then stepped out. Zansees flashed in the stream. The night air was heavy and moist. It had been raining right before he arrived, and drops of water still fell from the trees, plapping onto the carpet of leaves. The chairs where they’d often sat together waited empty. Stuart’s either asleep or in the manuscript library.Alden would bet on the second one.How do I do this? What exactly do I say?He’d been writing the lines of the conversation in his head for days, finding words to describe what was true and what he hoped would become so. But those words had scattered. He felt empty-handed in more ways than one, so he went back inside to pick up the bowl of grapes and a cookie shaped like a klerm that waited in a ribboned cellophane bag.“I want you to show Stuart anything about my life that helps him with his binding. When the time comes.” He set the cookie on top of the grapes. “If I end up imprisoned in another dimension, or I can’t speak to him after this…I don’t think it’s going that way, really, but…you know. You used a scene from his life to help me, so feel free.”[I hear you, Alden.]“Same for Kibby. If it’s ever necessary.”Here I go. It’ll be fine.On the way up to the main house, he spotted a wizard sitting in an open window on the third floor, enjoying the outdoor air while he chatted with someone in the room behind him. And there was a woman leaving the house and heading into the forest. Alden thought he recognized her as one of the assistants, probably going toward her own cottage. But the siblinghold wasn’t bustling at this hour, and he encountered nobody else on (...)