Keira shook her head. “No.” She sniffed. “He’s alone. All we really have is each other.” A sob broke free of her lips, ambushing her.
“Oh, poor thing,” Florian pulled her into a tight hug.
Emotion spilled from her, violent tears blurring her vision. It was heartache and bewilderment, self pity and fear and a thousand more unnamable emotions. Keira tried to push it back, to clear her mind, to control her heaving sobs, but she might as well have tried to quell a tempest. She was caught in the winds of a storm she knew too well, and she would have to weather them.
At last her tears exhausted themselves. Keira pulled herself away, trying to remove them at once, her breathing still labored, uneven.
“He’s not just sick, is he?” Florian asked as he released her.
Keira shook her head, taking a place at the foot of the bed. Thaddeus flapped his wings lightly before nuzzling his beak against her cheek.
“I haven’t seen him in years,” she said softly. “I didn’t leave him on the best of terms.”
Florian nodded knowingly. “But he wrote to you?” he said, looking at the letter discarded on the bed.
“He wants to see me. To say goodbye.” The word felt heavy and strange on her tongue. Again she was hit by a wave of impossibility. Ignatius couldn’t be dying. She couldn’t even conjure the picture of him lying ill in bed, frail and old. Her guardian lived in her memory, smoking his pipe by the fire, the embers reflected in his eyes, or hunched over his desk up in his illusive study. She could see the rare spark of compassion in his eyes when he’d told her that her mother and father had truly given her away. The resolved defeat when she’d told him she’d be leaving and they both knew she meant forever. But dying…
“Are you going to be with him?” Florian asked, taking a seat beside her.
“I-” Keira said slowly. “I will have to.” What other answer was there? She wasn’t ready to face him again. That much was certain. But she wasn’t ready to lose him either.
“How far is it? You know Rhea will have the others pack up if you tell her.”
Keira shook her head. “I know, of course she would. But that won’t be necessary. My magic can get me there faster, and I wouldn’t want everyone to-” She sniffed. “Just for my sake.”
Florian sighed, studying her with his ocean blue eyes. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
“It’s better this way,” Keira said, wiping her cheeks once more, cursing the endless tears.
His lips tensed, but he nodded. “At least wait till morning?”
Keira thought to protest, but her eyelids were heavy and swollen, and her body ached from the day’s exertions. Not to mention her mind was murky and awash in emotion, hardly an ideal state for complex spellwork.
She nodded, heaviness falling over her the moment she relented. Keira fell onto the bed unceremoniously.
“Do you want me to go?” Florian asked.
Keira looked up at him, mentally exhausted and emotionally wrung. If he left, she’d be at the mercy of her thoughts again. “Stay?” she whispered.
Florian nodded with a soft smile. He took off his long leather coat and hung it from the back of the door before climbing into the bed beside her.
“It will be a shame to see you go,” he said softly.
“Still hoping for another chance?” she quipped, resurrecting some ghost of humor.
He barked a laugh. “Because you’re my friend.”
Keira smiled. So few people had ever called her that.
Florian shrugged. “And who knows. We might have found each other again. You could only resist this for so long.”
She smiled, but it was a fragile thing. He was just trying to cheer her up with his antics. Without them, the room fell quiet once more, only the sound of Thaddeus’s ruffling feathers and the hum of distant conversation below betrayed the stillness.
“Will you come back?” he asked when Keira had been unwittingly close to unconsciousness.
That question hit her like a blind strike. What was tying her to Stormhaven? What few possessions she kept at Grimlocke House could be replaced. Perhaps she could take up residence in the tower again. Yet what was the point in staying if it meant staying alone? Was she to become like her guardian? Isolated with no company save her regrets?
But she didn’t have to be alone. The Blades had adopted her into their ranks, their fellowship, in a time where she had been entirely lost. Over the last two years, she had built friendships, set roots without truly meaning to. Stormhaven had become more of a home to her than she had realized.
