“Hasn’t left your side since your horse dragged you back in a bloody heap. Youbothneed rest.”
Fi relented to Kashvi’s strong arms pushing her into bed, exhaustion dragging her down against the pillow. Kashvi pulled up a chair, uncharacteristic worry etched into stone-hard cheeks.
“You’re awake. Good.” Kashvi’s sigh came heavy, a hand grasping Fi’s too tightly. All the past snarls and spats betweenthem, vanished into heart-stilling sincerity. “What happened? One minute you were here, then…”
She eyed Fi’s gauze-wrapped shoulder. Damning evidence of a bad decision.
“I ran into Verne,” Fi said. “She’s every bit the bitch you’d think she is, in case you were wondering.”
Kashvi didn’t laugh. Her grip on Fi’s hand tightened. “Fuck, Fi. We saw the bite, but didn’t know for sure. How did you get away?”
“I…”
That was the haziest part. Fi remembered panic. Cutting a Curtain. Where had she gone from there? So much black. The cold emptiness of the Void.
Then…
“I cut a Curtain,” Fi said, too groggy to disentangle the rest. “I ran.”
Kashvi didn’t press for details. For that, Fi was grateful. She settled back while Kashvi inspected her bandages, trying not to shudder at the memory of the Void crushing down on her.
At the image of carnelian eyes, clear enough to send a chill down Fi’s spine.
43
You’ll survive this
Fi didn’t see Antal for the rest of that day. Or the next.
By the morning of the third, she’d grown restless. The bite in her shoulder would take longer to heal completely, but drawing on energy capsules had sped the process, twilight sorel ointment to numb the pain and gauze to protect from cold. Against the doctor’s wishes, Fi dragged herself out of bed and donned her coat. There were others who needed treatment more than her.
And Fi had a pyre to build.
Nyskya’s refugees milled about the abandoned buildings of the mining outpost. Fi nodded to a woman cooking elk on a fire spit, to a man supervising his children playing in the snow. She didn’t know what to say to them. Didn’t know how to be the anchor Boden had provided this village. Kashvi had taken charge of the day-to-day management, ensuring everyone was fed and warm. But supplies were limited, and their presence wouldn’t go unnoticed forever.
They had to confront Verne. Soon.
Fi grabbed the metal haft of an axe and headed into the forest.
A calm came with chopping wood. She Shaped silver energy into an axe head and let it sing against the pines, hewing branches from trunks. A rhythm came to her, the methodicalswing, then crack, then drag of limbs, fuel for Boden’s funeral pyre.
Merciless Void, it hurt. Every swing spiked pain through her shoulder. Call it a form of grieving. Or of penance.
Fi should have told him sooner. She’d had seven years to apologize, to clear the air between her and Boden. Would those years have been different, if she’d confessed at the start? Would things have felt easier between them? Fi could never know.
She should have told him sooner.
She shouldn’t have chased after Astrid.
She should have been at Boden’s side.
Fi had sworn to do better, yet here she was again, always making the wrong choice.
As her pile of lumber grew, Fi started stacking, building a bed for her brother’s body to lay upon. She’d worked up to the third layer when the forest went silent. Even the foraging squirrels and songbirds, bickering over pine nuts all morning, quieted in the boughs.
She turned.
Antal watched from the edge of the clearing. Fi marveled at his stillness, rooted as if he’d stood there as long as the shiverpines. He must be older than a few of them.
