Kristen had not said much about her parents since everything began.
That was the thing about Kristen. She filled space so naturally, with humor and sharpness and the kind of easy confidence that made rooms feel smaller and lighter at the same time, that it was possible to be around her every day and still not notice the things she kept back. She gave you enough of herself that you didn't think to look for the rest.
Katherine had noticed though.
She had noticed the way Kristen's phone stayed face down during the hours when she might have been expected to call home. She had noticed the way Kristen had listened to Niall talk about his parents during training with an expression that was supportive and warm and just slightly too careful to be entirely easy. She had noticed the way Kristen had volunteered for every extra drill and every late night watch shift in the weeks after they had first arrived at the house, keeping herself busy in the specific way people keep themselves busy when being still means thinking about something they are not ready to think about.
She hadn't pushed.
But she had noticed.
The drive to Kristen's parents was quieter than the drive to Niall's had been, which was notable because Kristen was usually the reason drives were not quiet. She sat in the back beside Katherine and looked out the window with her arms folded loosely across her chest, her blond hair tucked behind both ears, her green eyes tracking the streets with an expression Katherine couldn't quite read.
"Different neighborhood," Dean observed as he turned onto a narrower street lined with older houses set closer together, their yards smaller, their facades more worn.
"They moved a few years ago," Kristen said. "After my sister got married and I left for college. They didn't need the big house anymore."
"Do they know we're coming?" Tierney asked.
"I called yesterday," Kristen said. "Told them I was bringing some friends." A pause. "My mom cried."
Nobody said anything to that. There wasn't anything to say that wouldn't be less than it needed to be.
The house was the third one from the corner, white with green shutters and a small porch with two chairs on it, and before Dean had fully stopped the car the front door was opening and a woman was coming down the porch steps at a pace that suggested she had been waiting by the window the way Niall's mother had been, except this woman was not trying to compose herself first.
She was short and blond and she came straight to Kristen's door before Kristen had even gotten it all the way open and pulled her daughter out of the car and into her arms without a single word, and Kristen, who had walked into every fight they'd had without flinching, who had blinked into enemy lines and come out the other side with her dagger clean and her chin up, made a sound against her mother's shoulder that was very small and very young and very real.
Katherine got out of the car slowly and stood beside it, giving them space.
Kristen's father was on the porch. He was a tall man with the same blond hair as his daughter, more gray in it now, and he watched his wife and his daughter from the top step with his hands in his jacket pockets and his jaw tight in the way of a man holding himself together through an act of will.
When Kristen finally pulled back from her mother and looked up at him he came down the steps and put both arms around her without ceremony, the brief fierce hug of a father who had been frightened and was relieved and didn't have the words for either.
"Okay," Kristen said, muffled against his shoulder. "Okay, I'm okay."
"I know," he said. "I know you are."
He let go and looked at her face with the evaluating look of a parent checking for damage, and whatever he found seemed to satisfy him because he nodded once and stepped back and looked at the group assembled on the sidewalk.
"Come in," he said. "All of you."
The house was small and warm and full of the particular organized clutter of people who had lived in the same space for years, bookshelves that had run out of shelf space, photographs on every available surface, a kitchen that smelled like it was used every day.
Kristen's mother, whose name was Marie, made tea without asking and set it on the table and sat across from her daughter and held both of Kristen's hands in hers and looked at her steadily.
"Tell me," she said.
So Kristen told her. The same careful version they had given Niall's parents, the partial truth shaped to carry the weight without crushing the person holding it. Some people were after Katherine's family. They had gotten caught up in it. They were safe now, mostly. They were handling it.
Marie listened without interrupting, her eyes on her daughter's face the whole time, and when Kristen finished she was quiet for a moment.
"Your sister called me," Marie said. "Three weeks ago. She said she'd heard from you."
Kristen nodded. "I called her. I didn't want her to worry."
"She worried anyway." Marie squeezed her hands. "We all did."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," her father said from across the table. "Just don't disappear again without telling us something."
"I won't," Kristen said.
He looked at Tierney the same way Niall's father had looked at her, the measuring look of a parent assessing the person responsible for their child's safety.
"She talks about Katherine," he said to Tierney. "Has for years. Since they were in school together."
"Dad," Kristen said.
"I'm just saying. We know who Katherine is." He looked at Katherine directly, and his expression was not unfriendly, just frank. "You kept my daughter safe."
It was not a question either. Katherine held his gaze.
"We kept each other safe," she said. "She's saved my life more than once."
Something in his expression shifted, the kind of shift that happens when a parent hears something about their child that confirms what they always believed but were never sure the world would recognize.
"Yeah," he said, a rough warmth in his voice. "She would."
Marie looked at Tierney. "How long will this go on?" she asked. "This handling it."
Tierney met her eyes honestly. "I don't know exactly. But we are close to being in a position to end it properly."
"And Kristen has to be part of that."
"Yes," Tierney said. "She does."
Marie looked at her daughter for a long moment. Something moved through her expression, the complicated arithmetic of a mother calculating fear against pride against love and arriving somewhere that hurt and held at the same time.
"She was always like this," Marie said, not to anyone in particular. "Since she was small. She never ran from anything. I used to worry about that." A small tired smile. "Now I think maybe it was just who she was all along."
Kristen looked at her mother and for just a moment the armor that Kristen wore so naturally and so well was simply not there. She looked exactly her age, exactly like someone's daughter sitting at a kitchen table wanting her mother to know she was okay.
"I'm okay, Mom," she said quietly.
"I know, baby," Marie said. "I know you are."
They stayed for the afternoon.
Kristen's father showed Dean the back garden, which was clearly his project and his pride, and the two of them walked around it in the gray afternoon light talking about things that had nothing to do with magic or chosen ones or Victor Glass, and Dean, to his credit, asked genuine questions and meant them.
When they left Kristen hugged both her parents for a long time on the porch. Her mother held her face in both hands before she let her go and said something soft that made Kristen's eyes go bright.
In the car on the way back Kristen was quiet for a few minutes, looking out the window, and then she turned to Katherine and said, very matter of factly, "I'm glad we did that."
"Me too," Katherine said.
Kristen nodded and looked back out the window and after a moment, almost to herself, she said, "She called me baby. She hasn't called me that since I was twelve."
Katherine said nothing.
But she reached over and bumped her shoulder against Kristen's, and Kristen bumped back, and that was enough.