“He believed you’d be ok,” Boden said, “that Verne would spare you.”
“He didn’t know.”
“And then you left. So call it even.”
Fi’s nails raked the copper tabletop, finding every dent and scrape of old beer mugs. She reached for her coat of barbs, her bristles and bravado. All desperate defenses to hide the fragile creature she kept inside. That terrified girl who ran from home ten years ago, her father shouting behind her that she’d be back—she’dbettercome back, if she cared about her family.
“You weren’t there with him in the end.” Boden kept his voice low, eyes on his breakfast. “He asked about you, when his mind started going. Every Void-damned day, he asked about you.Where’s my little girl? Doesn’t she want her bedtime story?”
Fi’s nails pressed close to cracking. “I couldn’t stay in that place.”
“I know. You don’t have to…” Another sigh. “Forget it. That doesn’t matter now.”
Of course it mattered.
Fi hadn’t just left Astrid to Verne ten years ago. Hadn’t just left their father to die.
She’d left Boden. Left her only brother to care for their ailing father alone, to build his funeral pyre when he passed. They’d found their way back together after that—Boden had found her flitting across Planes like kelp ripped from its roots, had convinced her to settle in Nyskya. For seven years, she’d helpedhim build a home here. Seven years, hoping to redeem herself with the only family she had left.
Only to drop this latest burden on him.
He looked so tired. His eyes, shadowed by worry for his reckless sister. His shoulders, weighed by the news she’d brought. She hadn’t even told him all of it.
“I saw Astrid,” Fi said. “In Thomaskweld.”
Boden straightened. Not the ghost-stricken pale Fi had suffered upon reuniting with her oldest phantom, but still surprised. Still cautious.
“Astrid?” he said.
“She’s helping Verne. Astrid is the reason I—”
The door slammed open. Kashvi stormed inside, a billow of cold at her back.
“Kashvi?” Boden stood in alarm. “What are you—”
Fi snarled as Kashvi grabbed her arm.
“You!” Kashvi pointed at Boden. “Stay. You”—she pulled Fi out of her chair—“with me.”
Subtle as a charging aurorabeast. But Kashvi’s voice didn’t hit that warning low without reason. Fi followed into a hall that smelled of timber and yeast, iced air warring against the heat of Iliha’s cooking. Kashvi shoved her into the kitchen. After catching herself against a wire cooling rack full of scones, Fi swiveled with a scowl, but her assailant had already vanished. She peered down a narrow sightline into the common room as Kashvi took Fi’s chair at the table, hunched over the plate of breakfast crumbs.
The tavern door opened.
13
What’s a little death threat between friends
Fi would have been perfectly pleased to see a rabid moose barge inside. Perhaps a scurry of vengeful squirrels. Anything—anyone—but this ghost she’d evaded for a decade, now set to haunt the rest of her days.
Astrid surveyed the tavern with snow dusting her sable elk coat, frost glistening the low rise of her antlers. Something colder crystallized her ruby eyes.
Fi ducked out of sight in the kitchen, pressed against the cabinets like the small, craven creature she was. She heard chair legs scrape. Boden’s inhale.
“Astrid?” he exclaimed. A talent. He crafted the breathless hush of seeing a long-lost friend, no hint of her name on his tongue moments before.
“Boden,” Astrid returned. Flat as a stripped screw. They’d never been close. Fi, drawn to Astrid like a hand to a flame, Boden hovering nearby lest she burn herself.
“Void take me, it’s been… seven years? Kashvi! This is Astrid. An old friend.”
