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Forranach has a duplicity in my life.

Part of him seems to lean into a fatherly role with me. He organised the hired males to move all the belongings I had at the dwelling into the flat above the tavern. He had the new sign commissioned, then bolted above the doors.

He tells me when I haven’t eaten, when my ribs show too much, and when I haven’t slept and so my eyes are painted with darkness.

The other part of him remains gruff and seemingly disinterested in anything at all. There is little warmth in Forranach, even less than one would expect from a dark male.

But there is care in him.

At least for me and Hedda.

But Forranach is no father to me; and he is no replacement for Eamon. He is who he is, and I am grateful for him in this time.

But I am Narcissa Elmfield, and in this life I stand alone. No mother, no father, no sister, no friend, no lover.

It is just me… and Hedda.

So why is it that, while I unpack the boxes in the dwelling above the tavern, Forranach is downstairs interviewing new barkeeps—because I will need at least one for our opening, and maybe more going forward.

Eamon was meant to take care of the bar.

Forranach is better employed in the kitchen, with his wheeled chair having enough space to move around.

And while he sorts out the business of extra help downstairs, I tackle the boxes up here.

There aren’t many boxes, but each of them are disorganised and chaotic. I didn’t so much as pack, more like I grabbed anything that belonged to me or Eamon and chucked it into boxes.

Now I pay for those errors.

The cartilage of my knee aches, I have been on these floorboards too long. Surrounded by shredded boxes that I tore into with impatience, I have made small piles to at least start organising.

I eye up the pile of folded clothes with dread when I am hit in the face with cardboard shrapnel.

I flinch against the sudden assault, then throw a glare at the culprit.

Hedda doesn’t care. She is buried in box rubble, tearing and ripping and shredding every bit she can get her teeth onto.

I brush the cardboard blade off my lap, then dig my hands into the bloated box, too full, too heavy.

My hands clasp around the smooth wood of the chest filled with gold pieces. I lift it out and set it down on the pile of clothes.

This will need another hiding spot when I have a moment to look around—and I wonder if I should perhaps invest in a safe.

Another problem for another phase.

Phase . There is an oddity in that. My whole life, I knew time by day and night. Sun and moon. Light and dark.

Now, I am not so certain I’ll be welcome back into the light if I chose to return. I wouldn’t, but the journey to attend Eamon’s funeral two months ago, it came with the crushing reality that I couldn’t attend.

Pandora wrote me. She attended the funeral, but without Ronan who was not welcome by Morticia.

In the time since I sent Pandora the details of the summit and Mother’s whispers, Ronan was promoted in his ranks for it.

Maybe Morticia believes Ronan had something to do with the assassins who took Eamon’s life.

But if she does, then her blame is misplaced.

Those assassins were not on behalf of the Queen’s Court, but rather they were killers waiting for the perfect moment to strike and claim the bounty on our heads—and they found that moment with Daxeel and Eamon in a dark lane in the middle of a loud festival, enough background noise to muffle their advance.

To them, it was the perfect opportunity.

And it cost them their lives, because they made the same mistake as so many others have done before them.

They underestimated me.

The silly halfling left behind in the parade.

Stupid bounty hunters.

I hope their souls are rotting in the afterlife, writhing in eternal agony.

I hope Eamon’s soul is at peace, with Aleana’s, and that they both stir awake at moments, content, and see what I do, see that I keep on with Eamon’s dream.

For him.

This is all for him.

It brings me no joy to live alone in the flat above a tavern that feels like a graveyard to me; it puts no smile on my face to walk the streets of Kithe, the town I was meant to live in with my beloved Eamon; the silence that follows me through my phases, it offers no comfort, only a constant sense of loneliness.

I have indulged.

I have entertained the fleeting thoughts of foolery—to return to Licht, start my new life there, away from here…

But in Licht, I won’t escape the reminder of Eamon.

And I know, I cannot return to Licht, even if I wanted to. I am not welcome there.

The Midlands is where I belong, now.

But I was meant to belong with him…

Now, I pick through his things, tossed into a box, and I fold his blouses and smooth out his leather wristbands and delicately deposit his golden braid clasps on one pile that I mean to store at the back of the wardrobe, because I will never rid myself of them.

It is a small dwelling, and storage spaces are few. It is one room, merely sectioned apart. The washtub sits by the wall close to the hearth; the bed is doubled and pushed against the wall; the kitchen area is small, but the one in the tavern just downstairs is nothing to complain about.

This dwelling would be much larger if it weren’t for the room next door; the barrel chamber, teeming with wooden drums of aged wines and flavoured ales. The trap door at the centre of the room opens into the bar, and the contraption that lowers barrels down one at a time saves a lot of labour.

But I can’t exactly store Eamon’s things in there.

Perhaps I’ll pry up some more floorboards under the bed or in the small kitchen.

But first, the boxes.

I fold most of Eamon’s clothes into a nice, organised pile, and soon that box is almost empty.

Hedda has turned her attention to it, leaving behind her scraps and shrapnel.

The sigh I exhale is small, and I reach into the box to scrape my fingertips along the bottom, making sure there is nothing left before Hedda destroys it.

My fingertips brush something crisp.

And my heart stops.

For a beat, I am motionless, frozen, hand stuffed into a cardboard box, a grim twist to my face—because I know what is touching my fingertips.

Crisp like the thickest of dried leaves… or, rather, crisp like cotton soaked in blood, then left on floorboards for a phase or two to dry out, then kicked under a bed with other abandoned clothes…

I swallow, thick, then fist my grip.

I draw the bundle out of the box, arm straight, and stare at my nightmare.

The flimsy skirt and top that I wore on the Sabbat. It was a creamy tone when that phase started, not quite white. Now, it is brown.

Eamon’s hybrid blood stains most threads, not black, not crimson, somewhere in between.

The crumpled set is firm in my grip.

Hedda seizes her opportunity.

She lunges for the box and yanks her head to the side, stealing it away from me.

I flinch.

Shrapnel flies at my face. It hits my forehead with a sharp bite, one that earns a wince through my bared teeth.

I drop the blooded rags to the floor. The crumpled pile lands beside the fallen shrapnel.

Only. it isn’t cardboard, not a torn piece from the box that flew out and whacked me on the forehead.

I am staring down at an envelope smeared with the same shade of brown that stains my cotton set.

An envelope…

Memories chug through the mist of my mind.

Daxeel gave me that at the Sabbat. I tucked it into my holster and—then everything happened and I forgot all about it.

It was lost to my mind mist.

I stayed at Eamon’s side until he was hauled off by his mother and father, and Melantha had her arms hooked under my pits, dragging me away as I thrashed and shrieked.

The envelope stayed flat between my holster and my thigh that whole time, even as Melantha took me back to my dwelling and I collapsed to the floor, wailing.

The envelope stayed in place as I was silent on the floor, eyes on an ox bone.

It didn’t move as Hedda sniffed and licked the blood from my face, my neck, my arms.

But, hours later, maybe a phase later, when I woke to a knock of the door, and I staggered to my feet, and I ignored the knock, and I dragged myself to the bedchamber, where I peeled off my cotton set, stripped nude, tore off the thigh holster, then climbed into bed—

The envelope fell with the clothes.

It was buried, lumped under them.

And, phases later, when I kicked the bloody, cotton lump under the bed, booted it out of my sight, the envelope skidded with it, hidden. And when I packed, and I just reached my arm under the bed, and scooped everything I touched into a box, without so much as a glance in my uncaring rush, that envelope was swept into the box.

Now, two months and two weeks since that envelope was given to me by Daxeel, it is here in my trembling hand.

I struggle to focus through the fog that is eternal in my head, a mist that clouds my thought, slows me down.

I think back to the parade, Eamon standing with Rune, and Daxeel giving me this envelope.

‘…burn it. Bury it. But please, take it.’

‘It is a message to our bond.’

That is what he said to me.

Words I forgot until this moment, with old secrets inked onto parchment, and now in my grip.

I loosen a shuddering breath.

The truth is, the letter inside is a lie.

Daxeel meant what he wrote and gave to me that night.

But that was before I plunged a knife into his throat, before I tried to kill him and offer him up to Mother in exchange for Eamon.

It’s something I try not to think about.

I should do that now, ignore the letter, throw it into the flames downstairs in the lit fireplace, or bury it away for another time.

Yet, my thumb glides to the wax seal. It hooks under the fold—then tears it open.

The envelope unfolds into one sheet of parchment:

‘A letter to a dead bond and a distant love.

You don’t know the depths of my regrets, the turmoil I’ll suffer for you—my vicious, immortal punishment.

You can’t possibly know how far I would go to turn time, to change what I did, all for you, that I would crawl my way through broken bones and teeth and shun my gods all to go back to the field when I first kissed you.

I would have told you then, I am here for you.

I never would have allowed your shame or banishment to the Grott. I would have whisked you away, saved you from your father, and brought you here with me.

But I can’t turn back time. I can’t undo any of it.

I would burn all the worlds to ash if it meant undoing all our wrongs. My wrongs.

My love, my evate, my lost one…

But above all, my vicious one.’

I blink on the milky ink smears, tears I didn’t know had brewed spilling down my cheeks.

‘I will be gone with my unit a year in my life as it will be a year in the human realm. I understand that, to you, it will be three short months.

When I return, I will send a raven to you.

If you are willing to consider me as anything, as a mate, a love, a partner, a husband, an eternal groveler, or perhaps just a friend, then meet me at the stronghold upon my return.

Take pleasure knowing that for a whole year of war and battle, I will think only of that moment.

That question will torture me.

Will you show?’

The parchment crinkles in my fist.

I stare at the piles of folded clothes and neatly sorted accessories.

Then I toss the letter at Hedda.

She pounces on it, fast, and I watch its destruction.

I wipe the dampness off my cheeks with a sniffle.

The letter is meaningless; it is empty and lost to time. Daxeel took ink to parchment before the horror of the Sabbat. Those words don’t stand anymore.

And I am not even certain how I feel about that, that Daxeel’s letter matters none at all now.

Do I mourn his grovelling, his desperation? Do I want those words to still be true?

It is hard to feel much through the fog, through the grief. Even this, all around me, the tavern. It was Forranach who convinced me to bring this dream to life, the best way to manoeuvre life through my pain, but also to honour Eamon.

I don’t quite feel anything for the tavern.

Hedda sparks a little warmth in me. I do care for her. But mostly I feel loss, a constant cold sensation aching my whole chest.

That drowns out all the other noise.

I prefer that.

A little shard of honesty; if I am swimming in despair, then it is not so terrible that I live on in his absence.

It is my fault he is gone.

Eamon was challenged in an honour duel because of me. He was targeted because he was pulled into my troubles.

And Daxeel…

He is to blame, too.

Dare told me as much. He and Daxeel killed Taroh, and Eamon paid the price with his life.

The only one whose hands weren’t dirty, were clean of the blood of others, was Eamon.

The true innocent among killers.

Yet it was his blood that was spilled.

I watch the letter be chewed and spat out, some pieces swallowed, and I don’t know how I feel about it; I simply watch until it is gone.

I offer Hedda a bone, then I lock her in the dwelling.

I tread the carpeted steps down to the tavern.

The heat hits me like a sauna at a spa.

The fireplaces roar with freshly fed flames. At the hearth facing leather armchairs, a boy sits, huddled.

Not quite a youngling, but not mature yet either.

My steps are soft coming through the open door, wedged in place by a scrap of wood.

He does not hear me approach.

His ashen face is angled towards the flames, his lashes low over his sleepy brown eyes. The clothes he wears are baggy, much too big for his sunken and skeletal body. He should be fuller, at his age which I suppose is around eleven years.

I pause at the edge of the bar.

I cast a swift glance around the tavern—and see no sign of Forranach. But I hear him in the faint clinking that comes from the swing door to the kitchen.

I slip through the swing door, quiet so as not to disturb the boy half-lulled to slumber.

Across the middle bench, Forranach’s head sways with movement. He leans forward in his wheeled chair and fixes a plate of dinner—wedged potatoes, a meat pie, and a generous lump of mashed turnip.

He glances up at me without a word.

I prompt him, “There is a boy out there.”

“He’s waiting for a feed,” he grumbles, then starts to salt the plate. “Leif. Our new barkeep.”

“A child?”

Forranach lifts his gleaming gaze to me. “An orphan.”

Blankly, I stare at him.

“Lost his mother in the second passage, his father in the rubble of Comlar.”

The fog prevents any pity from piercing me. Still, my words are fair, “He is in luck. This is a tavern for the grieving.”

Forranach has no answer as he abandons the plate for the now-whistling kettle on the stove.

I watch as he pours a hot cocoa, then polishes it off with a dollop of cream.

“The sign came.” He sets the steamy mug on a wooden tray, then fixes the plate beside it. “I’ll get the boy to mount it tomorrow’s Warmth, once he’s had enough to eat and some rest.”

“Where does he stay, if he is orphaned?”

“His landlord booted him last month. He’s been sleeping in the lane at the back of a bakery.”

I don’t ask why. Don’t need to. It’s a prime spot to find tossed food, waste, stale lumps of bread, but food all the same.

“He has no other family?” I ask.

Forranach draws the tray to nestle on his lap. “He does not. But he reads—and he read the sign for help wanted on the window. He rolled his dice.”

“He rolled well,” I say and step back for the swing door. “Will he stay here now?”

“I offered him the room at my dwelling,” he says with a curt glance at me, a gruff smirk prying at his lips. “The room for strays.”

My smile is dim, a struggle to break through my melancholy, but it lingers for a second or two.

I ask, “Where is the sign?”

“Behind the bar.”

My spine presses into the door. I back into it more, drawing it open all the way to make space for Forranach and his wheeled chair.

I let him by, watching as he wheels his way around the tavern to the half-sleeping boy on the armchair.

I consider him for a moment longer, the torn wool of his lumpy coat, the moss that arches over his pointed ear, the oiliness of his nose and hair.

If Forranach didn’t offer him the room at his dwelling, then I would demand he stay here, where there is warmth and shelter and food, and a much-needed washtub upstairs.

That springs a thought through the mist.

Hedda.

I will need to have Hedda familiarise with the boy.

She is fine with folk around her, since we walk Kithe each day to the watering hole, or she accompanies me to the shops and stalls for supplies—but to allow another upstairs into our home, our dwelling, is a different matter. And the boy will be expected to climb those stairs, pass our dwelling door, and head into the storage room frequently.

Hedda mightn’t like that.

Yes, they better get used to one another, and soon.

Because we open in just a few phases now that we have the sign, the same polished blackwood board I wander to behind the bar.

It is custom.

Not the one Eamon ordered, that was made and delivered, but never mounted above the doors to the tavern. It was left in the tavern for months before the phase Forranach took it away and ordered its replacement.

That sign said, ‘ NARI’S ’

But it isn’t mine, the tavern.

Not in heart, not in soul.

I crouch beside the new board, then shift the linen sheet to expose the honey-painted letterings.

‘ EAMON’S ’