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Elias closed his eyes, feeling the weight of his son's pain like a physical burden. "It's... complicated, Peter."

"But she loves us," Peter insisted, looking up at him with those achingly familiar eyes. "I know she does. She told me so."

"Sometimes," Elias began, then stopped, searching for words that wouldn't wound. "Sometimes love isn't enough."

"Like with my mother?"

The question caught him off guard, making his breath catch painfully in his chest. "What do you mean?"

Peter shifted uncomfortably, but pressed on with a child's determined honesty. "I heard Uncle Nicholas mention her name. Barbara. That was my mother's name, wasn't it? The one in the portrait Lydia found?"

"Yes," Elias managed, his throat tight. "That was her name."

"Did she love me?" Peter's voice was very small. "Before she... before she died?"

Elias felt something crack inside his chest, a hairline fracture in the walls he'd built so carefully. "She... she never had the chance to know you, Peter. She died bringing you into this world."

"Oh." Peter was quiet for a moment, processing this. "Is that why you won't let Lydia be my mother? Because you're afraid she'll die too?"

The innocent question struck deeper than all of Nicholas's accusations. Elias pulled back slightly, studying his son's face—so like his own, hardly a trace of his late mother in it, yet with an openness, a warmth that was entirely his own. That was Lydia's influence, he realized with a pang. She had taught Peter it was safe to feel, safe to question, safe to love.

"It's not that simple," he said finally, though the words felt hollow even to his own ears.

"Isn't it?" Peter's chin lifted in a gesture so reminiscent of Lydia that it made Elias's heart ache. "She makes everything better, Father. The house isn't so dark anymore. And you..." He hesitated, then forged ahead with childish courage. "You smile sometimes now. Or you did, before she left."

Elias had no response to that simple truth. He could only pull his son closer, feeling the slight tremor in the small body pressed against his chest.

"Will you at least write to her?" Peter asked, his voice muffled against Elias's coat. "Ask her to come home?"

"Peter..." Elias began, but found he couldn't continue. How could he explain to a child what he barely understood himself? The paralyzing fear that gripped him whenever he thought of loving someone that completely again, of risking that kind of loss?

"Please, Father?" Peter pulled back to look up at him, his eyes bright with tears. "I promise I'll be better. I'll study harder, and I won't play pirates in the house, and…"

"Stop." Elias's voice was rougher than he intended. "This isn't about you being better or worse. You are..." He swallowed hard. "You are perfect exactly as you are. Never doubt that."

Peter's lower lip trembled. "Then why won't you fix it? Why won't you make her come home?"

Because I'm afraid, Elias thought but couldn't say. Because loving you both would mean risking everything. Because sometimes the weight of proper dignity is easier to bear than the terrible vulnerability of joy.

"Go to your lessons now," he said instead, his voice gentle but firm. "Miss Nancy will be waiting."

Peter's shoulders slumped, but he nodded. At the door, he paused, Mug pressed close against his legs. "Father?"

"Yes?"

"Lydia says that sometimes the bravest thing isn't fighting dragons, but admitting when you're scared." He hesitated, then added softly, "Maybe... maybe you could be brave like that too?"

Before Elias could respond, Peter was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor. Elias stared after him, feeling the weight of his son's words settle like stones in his chest.

Brave like that too.

He turned to the window, watching the rain trace patterns down the glass. Somewhere out there, Lydia was living her life without them, perhaps already forgetting the way Peter's face lit up when he mastered a new skill, or how the morning light caught the silver in Elias's hair when he forgot to maintain his stern expression.

Nicholas's words echoed in his mind: Barbara's death was a tragedy. Losing Lydia is a choice.

But was it really a choice when the alternative was risking everything? When loving someone meant opening yourself to the possibility of that kind of devastating loss?

The rain continued to fall, offering no answers to the questions that haunted him. In the distance, he could hear Peter's voice drifting from the schoolroom, reciting Latin conjugations with none of his usual enthusiasm.