Olive sighed. “I know Cassian’s struggling too. They were close. He’s been visiting this place since he was a little boy, and now that he’s grown, I see so much of Boris in him. Sometimes I can’t even look at him.”
“You’ve known Cassian his whole life?” I asked.
“Not quite. I started working here about fifteen years ago, when I was in my early twenties. Cassian was nine or ten. I used to always rotate glazed pumpkin muffins onto the menu when I knew he was visiting because he loved them so much.” She gave a light chuckle. “He still does.”
I smiled. It was sweet to see her speak so fondly about Cassian after hearing Cassian’s belief that she and Griffin didn’t like him. “How long has Griffin been here?”
“Oh, longer than me,” she said, nodding. “Must be about twenty years now.”
“Wow. He must be taking Boris’s passing pretty hard too.”
Olive glanced at the inn’s front door. “That’s got to be why he’s been so hard on Cassian. He wants Cassian to be Boris, but Cassian is Cassian. They got along until Cassian took his place.”
“Why did they stop getting along?” I asked.
Olive shrugged. “Griffin just suddenly wanted nothing to do with Cassian as soon as he came back from Ladiall. I’ve tried to ask him, but he won’t talk to me about it.”
“Cassian lived in Ladiall?” I asked. Why wouldn’t Cassian admit that? It was a harmless piece of information. Seemingly.
“Yes, for a few years,” Olive said, smiling wistfully. “Didn’t see much of him while he was out on his own.”
“What was he doing there?” I asked.
Her smile fell away like she realized she shouldn’t be talking about this. “He had an apprenticeship, if I recall.”
“Doing what?”
“Hm… I’m not sure,” Olive said, tugging on a lock of hair and examining the nearby sofa.
Before I could ask any more follow-up questions, the inn door opened. A windblown woman walked inside, dusted with snowflakes and piled high with luggage.
Olive clasped her hands together. “Welcome to Fibbersnap Inn! We’re so happy to have you here!”
The woman crawled out from beneath her heavy pack and slumped it to the ground. “I heard you have free rooms here?”
Jasmine re-entered the lobby with a lidded wooden box in hand, grinning at the customer. “Good morning! I can help you over here!” she called out.
Olive and I watched the woman approach the counter, where Jasmine explained the situation, patting the box’s lid at the end of her speech. The woman lifted her eyebrows as she examined the box, and then she nodded, reaching into her pocket to pull out three gold coins and dropping them inside. Jasmine beamed at her, and then at me.
The plan was working.
Chapter Three
CASSIAN
Griffin pouted like a little boy all the way out to the crossroad intersection, and he looked silly acting so petulant at his age.
“Big smile, Griffin!” I said, placing two fingers at the corners of my mouth.
He did not smile. “I don’t need to smile at people to convince them to take advantage of us.”
“But it helps!” I said. He meant it negatively, but taking advantage of something wasn’t always bad.
Only a few minutes passed before a lone woman trudged up the snowy trail. She barely glanced at us until I called out about free rooms, and when she marched up to me, she said, “Free rooms? At Fibbersnap Inn?”
“That’s right!”
“I thought the inn had closed.”
