Piotr

Piotr is Yara's younger brother, four years old when their mother walked into the forest. He does not remember her. He reads constantly: their father's books, histories of border wars, anything available, consuming them without preference until the supply runs out and he starts again from the beginning. He is practical, perceptive, and has learned which of Yara's questions to push and which will make her go quiet for the rest of the evening. He cannot sense death. He can sense when someone is lying.

Sixteen and already taller than Yara, which he finds important and she finds inconvenient when reaching shelves. He has their mother's eyes: dark, direct, unimpressed by evasion.

Quiet, observant, mature beyond his years in ways that are both admirable and sad. He hugged Yara before she left, the first time since he was thirteen, and told her she wouldn't write, but to come back. He is the anchor Yara cannot cut loose, the reason she cannot simply walk away from Ilya's demands.

None supernatural. Piotr possesses sharp emotional intelligence: he reads people with an accuracy that does not require magic. He knew Yara was lying about the reason for her departure. He let her go anyway.