Astrid pulled Fi into a hug.
Brave of her, with Antal so close. With Fi still barbed. In her mind, Astrid was holding her hand as Fi led them through their first Curtain. She was raising a sword, calling Fi a coward. She was kissing Fi with lips of honeyed balm and starlight in her eyes. She was leading a Beast through Nyskya, armed with a crossbow. Warring memories, all with weight of their own.
Fi hugged her back, a bittersweet thing, but as warm as she remembered.
“I’m sorry, Fi,” Astrid said into her hair. “I didn’t want us to turn into this.”
“Neither did I.”
The apology didn’t fix everything. Wounds still festered between them, maybe some that would never heal. But here was the best resolution they’d get. A second chance.
“Make it count,” Fi said.
“You too.” As Astrid withdrew, she brushed a hand along Fi’s cheek. Left a kiss on her temple.
Her glare for Antal was sharp as splintered rubies.
“She likes dahlias,” Astrid said. Hard. “And everything with sugar in it. And you have to let her win arguments most of the time to keep her happy.”
“Excuse me?” Fi protested. “I never—”
“I know,” Antal said dryly. “… Except about the flowers. Thank you.”
Rotten, both of them.
Astrid climbed onto Navek’s back. A wild creature, Fi’s father had always said. All the wilder now, messy with blood and hair tangled against her antlers, that stubborn tip to her jaw as she sat upon a monstrosity. Fi’s last memory was a wave goodbye, the slink of a derived daeyari out of Verne’s ruined hall.
But finally, the ghost of a grin on Astrid’s lips, as somber as the ache in Fi’s chest, as free as she’d always deserved to be.
47
Say it like you mean it
Without them, the room was too quiet.
The firepit hissed with energy, red veins dim like embers through the logs. Here came an ending to so many things. Unknown beginnings.
If Boden were here, he’d tell Fi beginnings were what made everything worth it, even if hers looked different without him. Without Astrid. But this wasn’t her first attempt at starting fresh. Last time was a flight of fear, hiding and scavenging and hoping her past wouldn’t catch up to her. This time, her past lay bloody on the floor.
Once the Beast’s footsteps receded, Antal paced Verne’s body, inspecting every angle with a grim set to his jaw.
“She’s dead.” A trite observation, but Fi needed to say it out loud. “She’ll come back?”
Antal grumbled, “Only pieces of a daeyari ever come back, whatever survives the Void. It will take time. She might be different, might not even return here. That’s always the gamble.”
The weight in his words, Fi couldn’t fully comprehend. To her, Verne was a vanquished foe. Antal studied the corpse like a calculation, a piece moved on the board a century from now. A lifetime for Fi. An eventuality for him. For the first time since they’d met, she felt small again.
Verne was dead. Antal’s territory, his to reclaim. Suddenly, a more cavernous question opened before Fi, too daunting to glance at before now, a tightening of that old fight or flight instinct in her chest: where did she go from here?
“What will happen to Verne’s territory?” Fi asked.
“A new daeyari will need to be nominated. Approved by the Daey Celva and all neighbors.” He rubbed his temple. “There will be many politics to play in the coming weeks.”
“But you’ll return to Thomaskweld?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll do better this time? That was the deal, daeyari.”
