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He smirked.

“Probably donate most of it to the orphanage. I wanted to grab a few things at the market tomorrow.” I lived on the castle grounds and ate dinner with my family sometimes, but I carried on an independent life. Earned my own money gambling or finding work in the village. Sometimes, I harvested crops with the farmers, and other times, I picked up a few shifts at a local pub serving beer to its patrons. I’d thought I would find more treasure than I could handle on my journey as a pirate, but I’d ended up losing everything instead.

My father told me the royal treasury was open to me for whatever I needed, but he never pushed it on me. He seemed to respect the fact that I wanted to take care of myself, and he never suggested it again.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Zehemoth said you were playing cards tonight. Assumed this was the place.”

“You wanna play a hand?” I scooped the cards into a pile in the center of the table then shuffled them. “No bets, of course.”

My father took a drink from his tankard then licked the foam off his lips. “Let’s go.”

We played a couple hands, the two of us quiet most of the time. My father was an unpredictable player without obvious tells. And he knew me well enough to read my tells easily. We were evenly matched.

“How are you?” he asked after he got his second beer. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Just getting used to home.” I traded some of my cards for new ones then glanced at my hand before I covered it once more.

My father did the same. “Winter shouldn’t be here so soon, but I think it’s upon us.”

“Yeah.” I felt the chill in the evenings. The days were mild but had a cool crispness. Flowers were absent, and the trees were already withered. “That storm was severe.”

“I suspect it’ll be a difficult winter.”

“Will you reduce tariffs?”

“I think I’ll remove them entirely.”

“Really? You’ve never done that before.”

“Because I think this will be the harshest winter we’ve had in a long time.” He set his hand down for me to see.

I put mine down, and he beat me.

He seemed to be finished playing because he didn’t pile the cards in the center. He grabbed his tankard by the handle and took a drink. When he emptied the contents, he set it to the side, and without his asking, the waitress brought another.

My father always felt so much older to me, but now that we were almost the same age in appearance, it felt strange. We looked more like brother and sister than father and daughter. Being fused with Khazmuda had frozen him in youth, barely thirty. We were still six years apart, but that gap was growing thin.

“When I was your age, we had a winter that eclipsed both fall and spring. Toward the end, we were sustaining off onions since those were the only things we had left. My father not only lifted tariffs and taxes for that season, but the entire year, so everyone would have time to recuperate their losses.”

“You were eating onions too?”

“Yes,” he said. “My father believed the best way to rule the people was to be one of the people. So, when they suffered, we suffered too. When they thrived, we thrived. It was the best way to understand and anticipate the needs of the kingdom as a whole.”

“Is that why you don’t eat onions?” I noticed he never had them in stew. They were never prepared in our cooked meals. When we were served salads, only his plate wouldn’t have sliced onion.

“Yes.” He smiled at the memory. “I’ve had my share.”

“Well, hopefully that doesn’t happen again.”

“I’d rather eat whatever Khazmuda catches than that.”

“Like bear?” I asked in surprise.

“I’ve had it a couple times. Not so bad.”

I took a drink from my tankard, wanting to taste the beer and stop thinking about onions and bear. I thought about the warm islands where the air was always moist, when there was always warmth all year-round. Traveling there for the winter didn’t sound so bad…if it were closer. “How have you been?”