Page 22

The front gardens of Hemlock House are covered in pink and blue chalks.

Rune reclines against the fence in the far corner, a faint frown on his brow and a severe line stroked across his mouth. The gleam of his eyes is bitter, and he looks out into the distant rage of the street festival.

But his sour mood isn’t enough to dim the cheers and hoots from those who march the parade through the streets of Kithe.

The folk of Hemlock gather in the gardens to watch the stream of colour and chalk and paint dance by.

The mood in the gardens is mixed. Morticia and her husband, just arrived from the light lands, are sharing drinks out on the street, laughing as chalk bombs are pifted through the air at all angles.

Melantha is tucked under a blanket on the swing bench, Tris sitting primly by her side, hands firm on her belly. Eamon’s seed has settled in her womb, but she is some time away from showing.

Daxeel considers them from the doorway, arms folded over his chest, not a lick of colour on his black breeches and sweater.

He is about to kick his weight back and push into the home when Melantha stops him.

“Daxeel, go and find your cousin.”

He turns a dull look on his mother.

Melantha merely spares him a swift glance before she drops her gaze to Tris. Tris, who hasn’t been let out of Melantha’s sight since the success of her impregnation.

Tris is more valuable now than she has ever been, now that Daxeel and Eamon are the last of the Sgail bloodline still in breeding years.

“Why?” he asks, as dull as his blank stare.

His mother lifts a tired, yet soft look to him. “Morticia will take Tris to the light lands come the Warmth. Eamon should see his mother off.”

Tris beams, bright.

Her cheeks flush, and Daxeel could swear she scoots that bit closer to Melantha.

Tris is a worship slave, and this is a role she volunteered for.

Better her and Eamon than himself.

He turns his cheek to the slave and watches the fae with flutes dip under the rotten pears that spear over heads.

“Go.” Melantha’s voice is distant, at ease. “And take the moment to enjoy the festivities. This is a celebration of those we have lost.”

The breath that sighs from Daxeel is soft, and it sags his shoulder into the doorframe.

To find Eamon means to go out there, into the paint and cheers of the parade winding through Kithe.

It means to find her .

That familiar ache spreads through him; a cold flooding his chest. It chills his lungs and makes it harder to breathe all of a sudden.

But he masks it in the company around him.

Rune kicks from the fence. “I haven’t farewelled Eamon and Nari yet,” he says, and that decides it, he’s coming along.

Daxeel nods, faint, an understanding of that support Rune offers him.

Melantha stirs a spoon in her teacup, clang, clang, clang. “When do you leave?”

General Caspan called his warriors the Royal Court early, and so this now is the last phase Rune and Daxeel will see each other for some time.

“An hour,” Rune says and considers the parade clogging the street. “Sooner, if the roads clear.”

Daxeel starts down the path to the gate.

And his chest constricts more with each step closer to the parade—closer to encountering Nari.