To keep Leo on the ground, safe and earthbound and never at risk, would have been to let Sterling and the sky and her own grief win the last and quietest victory of all, the one where a mother so fears the loss of her child that she clips his wings before he can use them.

She would not do it.

She would teach him carefully, and well, and she would teach him the thing she had nearly died learning, that the sky does not care who you are and will not be mastered by pride and can only be met with clear eyes and good training and the humility to trust the person beside you.

And then she would let him fly, because love that becomes a cage is not love, and because a boy who wanted the sky that badly was a boy who was meant to have it.