(Damien POV)
One year.
Twelve months since the night Lyra drew her first breath in this very solar, silver eyes blinking open to a world that had finally stopped trying to tear her parents apart.
I stood in the upper gallery overlooking the bailey, the same spot where I had once presented her to the pack as a newborn. The fortress had changed in ways I still sometimes couldn't believe. Flowers grew thick in every crack of the stone now — moonbloom and starwort climbing the towers in wild, glowing vines. Moss softened every wall. The old well in the center had become a gathering place for children, its rim ringed with tiny white blossoms that shimmered faintly at night.
