“Promise of it,” Keegan said, hanging his coat. “But a plan, too.”
“Plans are better than panic,” Miora agreed. “Though panic burns more calories.”
I crossed the room and set my hands over hers, gently prying the darning mushroom from her grip. Her knuckles were colder than I liked.
“You waiting up for us again?” I asked softly.
“Who else is going to scold the door when it groans?” she said, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. They were rimmed red,the way eyes get when you’re out of tears, but they remembered the shape.
Since Elira had…no verb really behaved; sacrificed, yes, and also chosen, and also stopped breathing in this world, so the Academy could…sincethatday, Miora had gone thinner at the edges.
She still kept the hearth going, but the pokes had less gusto. She still mended, but the stitches sat sad for a day before settling. She still teased Keegan, but her sarcasm had learned to yawn.
“I brought you something,” I said.
I dug in my satchel and brought out the birch sprig from the Hollow’s plateau.
Its green had refused the cold; it looked defiant in my palm.
“For the mantle. For… continuity.”
Miora’s breath hitched. She reached, then hesitated the way people do when they think taking the good thing will make it disappear.
“Oh,” she said. “Elira always said birch remembers the right kind of trespass.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said.
She took the sprig and tucked it into the old blue bottle on the mantle, where we put found things that felt like messages. The sprig made the room smell faintly of river and stubbornness.
“Karvey,” Keegan called up as he stoked the fire. “We’re in.”
The stone above the lintel rumbled, and Karvey walked into the cottage.
“North wind on your boots,” he said, approving. “The roof felt it. Safe trip, I see.”
“Jealous?” I asked, grinning despite myself.
“Relieved,” Karvey said. “But things around the village are…”
“Are what?”
“Unsettled.”
I nodded. “I think it will remain that way until we close the circle.”
“And you think that is sooner than later?” Karvey asked, glancing at Miora.
“I do. Five days, to be precise.”
“Then you need to rest,” Miora said softly, standing.
“I’m too restless.”
“That’s precisely why you need to calm your soul. I’ll make some tea.”
“What can I do?” I asked Keegan.
“Sit,” he said, chin, jaw, eyes gentled into a smile that lived in the bones. “Tell Miora something ridiculous while she makes tea, and I make dinner out of what your garden called you a slacker for not harvesting.”
