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My leather boot flattens on the rotten floorboard.

Beneath my weight, a groan shudders through the entire kitchen floor. Mutely, I watch the brown wooden boards as though I can track every creak and moan splintering over them.

Behind me, a bone-chilling moan comes.

I whirl around—and the panic fades, quick.

Eamon wrenches open the door to an old cupboard. A door whose hinges haven’t been oiled in some time.

It’s a narrow cupboard, barely wide enough for more than a broom, bucket and mop.

Eamon inspects it for a moment before he grunts a sound I place as acceptance, then he shuts the door.

My teeth bare against the assault of its obnoxious moan.

If we do take this dwelling, those hinges will be the first thing I tend to. The floorboards, however, are a lost cause. Far beyond my capabilities of mending.

I turn my back on Eamon as he reaches for the sheer curtains separating the kitchen-entryway from the rest of the dwelling.

I walk the small kitchen; my steps slow and careful around the scratched butcherblock in the centre. As I wander the crammed space, I eye the cooktop, the cooler, the scratches and dents on the wooden countertops.

And in a blink, I am back to where I started, where the floorboards sprout off in two directions. To the left is the front door, battered and dented, clanging with swaying locks and chains; and to my right is a wall that gives way to fastened curtains.

I peek around them to the parlour.

Parlour , I decide, is too grand a word for such a small, dewy room crammed with distressed armchairs and rickety tea-tables at odd angles that make me a tad uncomfortable.

I follow the path of wooden floorboards, dark oak with rotted holes, to the narrow door by the dusty bookshelf.

With a glance around the edge, I make out the two slender beds pushed together in the middle of the room and a single wardrobe with mould reaching up its arch.

My mouth flattens,

My home in Licht is decrepit. It falls apart at the seams, it sinks into the earth, rooms are boarded up, too ruined to use. But I have never lived in a dwelling quite as bad as this.

I tug away from the bedchamber and wander to Eamon across the parlour, and I decide it is better termed a sitting room or a lounge.

Eamon looks out the black-framed window that stretches from the scuffed floor to the mouldy ceiling.

“Some sorting of the furniture,” I mumble, “and it will be a fine space.”

Fine , not grand, not pretty, but enough to be homely.

Enough to be home.

All we need is a place to stay for a short time, while we get ourselves sorted. How we sort ourselves, I don’t know exactly.

I’m hoping Eamon does. I mean, he did say he had a plan.

I look to him as though I will read that plan on his cheek. But his thoughts have him.

Lost in his mind, amber eyes reflect off the window. From my angle they look like streams of brown and gold.

So beautiful.

It brings a smile to my face.

I snake my arm around his and lean into his side.

“We have enough coin for a month here,” Eamon tells me, his voice a soft murmur. “But that does not include our meals or firewood.”

“We need” —my face crumples— “to find work.”

But what sort?

My mind is blank.

I have no skill outside of dance. That isn’t paid work.

I am decent in bed, but whoring isn’t to my taste.

“I have another idea,” Eamon says… and that is all. He adds nothing more, his thoughts are kept in his head.

Before I can ask, an impatient jangle of keys comes from the entryway.

I look over my shoulder.

The landlord loiters at the threshold, between the communal corridor and the door to the dwelling.

I eye him for a moment.

A dark halfling who wears a roundish weight to his middle and a swell to his cheeks that I think it a little odd for his fae blood.

He huffs a sigh and folds his arms over his brown sweater, a blotchy red hue warming his otherwise translucent cheeks as he throws his urgent gaze up and down the corridor, as though we take up too much of his time and he has a hundred other things to be doing right now besides showing Eamon and I the dwelling.

These dwellings are cheap enough that we can pay ahead with the monies in the pouch from Daxeel. With what we sell of our own belongings in the satchel, there might be enough to purchase food for a week.

But the affordability of this home comes at a cost, as it often does. The landlord demands that we are to caretake for the corridor, wash the floors and the walls every third Warmth, and if anything is to be fixed in the dwellings, then we’re to see to it ourselves. The black specs of mould on the ceiling, the skitter of mice in the cabinets of the small kitchen, the lean of the bedroom door that pulls off the hinges is for us to simply put up with. And the washroom is down the hallway, shared between all four dwellings on this floor.

Still…

“I love it.”

Eamon turns his chin to look at me. His brow is arched so high that one might convince me there’s a thread needled through it, then lifted.

“Love?” he echoes the strong sentiment, and it takes me a moment too long to realize—he tries to figure out if I lie or not.

There is no tingle on my tongue, no burn in my throat, no itch of my insides. I don’t think it’s a lie.

I love this horrible little dwelling, because…

Because…

I don’t know.

Is it simply that it will be mine? With Eamon, this will be my new home, and that is enough to stir such fondness in me?

Maybe I’m so used to a home that’s damp and falling into disrepair that I don’t mind all the blemishes of this one. Or is it this , that—as I look out the black paned window—I have the most wonderful view of Kithe?

From this very window, I can see so much. The stone streets of Cheapside, the slanted and bloated buildings sinking with the moving earth, the Square just up the way; and way ahead, where the ruins and rubble of what was once Comlar are sheathed in thick darkness, I can faintly make out a fire that devours the tower I once loved, the fire that everyone has ignored because the magick of the dead iilra contains it to the debris, so said Niamh, and somewhere near those angry flames is that eternal tornado of darkness powering the skies.

I lean my temple on Eamon’s arm.

The hardness of his natural muscles isn’t exactly comfortable, but the warmth of him, the soothing swell of his familiarity, it’s all I need.

I smile at the murky windowpanes that I’m sure will need a good scrub, and I should learn how to do that if I’m to take on the duties the landlord demands of us.

Eamon takes such risks for me.

It would be too easy for him to return to Hemlock House. His family would welcome him, the door would open, his bedchamber ready, and the slaves to dote on him.

He could go back to Licht, now that Lord Braxis is dead. He could return home to his village in the Light Court. He could return to his work as a recruiter. He could return to Hemlock House.

But Eamon chose me.

He chose poverty.

The scent of the bakery below kicks up through the air. I decide with the scent of sweet bread wafting up through the cracks and gaps of the floorboards, that I might see my tummy widen some, if we have the coin to spare.

And yet, it remains true…

“I love it,” I repeat with a firm nod.

Eamon presses his mouth to the crown of my head. No kiss comes, it’s a mere gesture, a moment.

I let my eyes shut on the comfort he offers me.

Eamon draws away from me with a retreating step, and he calls out to the landlord, “We’ll take it.”

His response is instant, as though he was waiting, chewing on these words, watching us too closely with too much suspicion: “Month upfront.”

I glower.

Eamon reaches into the pocket of his breeches. He draws out the pouch and, as I wander towards the landlord still in the doorway like an impatient, lingering smell, Eamon is one step behind me.

He counts out the full month’s amount. A shilling, one silver, and a dozen copper nuggets.

He drops the coin into the landlord’s clammy hand.

He closes his fist around the payment, then tosses a key at me.

I catch it with a small, satisfied smile. Then I shut the door on the landlord’s face.

I can do that now.

I can close doors and open them when I like, on whoever I like. It’s a small thing, but I am quickly fond of it.

“I want to check something.” Eamon draws back to the lounge, his determined steps aimed at the windows.

I press my back against the front door with too many locks just in time to watch Eamon open the window, pulling the handles into the dwelling, and it opens like a set of doors.

He climbs out onto the small terrace.

I rush to catch up with him.

I decide when I reach the window that this is not so much a terrace as it is more of a metal fence made to stop tenants from tumbling out of the window after too many drinks.

Eamon uses the fencing to boost himself up onto the overgrown vine lattice, then climb onto the sagging, thatched roof. He perches on the edge and, with a grin, reaches down for me.

I slap my hand to his before he hoists me up.

I could climb it myself, of course. I’m agile, fast, and one hell of a climber. It’s the wound in my thigh that slows me down these days, courtesy of Mika spearing an arrow into my flesh.

It has only been one and a half phases since the Sacrament ended—and no matter the balms that Niamh has spared on me in that time, I feel the ache of it in my bones, like a whisper of wounding lingers.

The minuscule amount of powder Daxeel spared on me for the arrow cut, it did enough to stitch it at the surface, but not through the layers.

Eamon’s grip is firm as he draws me closer to him on the gutter. “Remember the tavern?”

I lower myself cautiously, as though to drop down that bit too hard will dislodge the gutter and we will plummet to the street below.

“The one we viewed before the second passage?” My hand finds the ache and rubs. “My head injuries weren’t that bad. Of course I remember.”

He looks out at the roofs dotted around Cheapside. “We couldn’t possibly afford it.”

I trace his gaze to the rooftops.

Thatched, straw, sloped stone. The further out the roofs reach, the better condition they are in—until they reach the town centre. The roofs are slated there, seemingly plaited. And beyond it, the wealthier homes weaving through winding, hilly streets, where Hemlock House resides.

But if I turn my cheek to the wealthy, and I look in the other direction, I can make out absolutely nothing more than sheer darkness. It’s the smell that gives that direction away, the faint stink of farms.

Eamon points to the darkness. “See that building there, the one with the boarded windows—and the yellow door?”

My eyes squint on the murky outline.

The thickness of fresh darkness makes it harder to see in the faint light of Kithe. Even with the streetlights, the lanterns bolstered to stone walls, the balls of luminescent algae that are zigzagged on clothe-lines from window to window, the darkness is just… denser, now.

Takes me a moment longer than Eamon and his half-dark blood, but I finally make out the silhouette of a bloated building, not terribly unlike the ones surrounding it. But it does stand out among its neighbours for the yellow door.

“It’s an old tavern,” he tells me. “It went out of business years ago. No one has taken it over.”

“Because it’s in Cheapside,” I say with a grimace.

All sorts of shady characters in Cheapside, particularly with a fondness for drink. And it’s not like there is a lot of coin to run through a place like that so far from Kithe’s better half.

“And it’s a lot of work. Years abandoned, whatever is left inside will either be falling apart or rotted by well-fed termites.”

I consider it from the distance.

A small public house that stands alone. Nowhere near as grand as the Gloaming, or the other taverns in Kithe’s centre. This old public house stands empty. Its windows are boarded with black, rotten slats, crates stacked at the front door, shattered glass littering the path at its front.

I flicker my gaze to Eamon’s sharp profile, the liquid amber of his eyes fixed on the tavern.

I watch him for only a heartbeat before I decide, “But you are considering it.”

I am not so sure Eamon hears me.

He muses, “It is not for lease. It is for sale… But I do have paths to explore.” He runs his lips together, as though he traps anymore words that might escape him.

The crinkled look I spare him ends with a grunt.

Eamon’s arm comes around my shoulders. He holds me to him. “Are we still determined to name it after you? Nari’s Tavern ?” I hear the smirk in his voice, teasing me in the soothing calm of the darkness. “Or just Nari’s?”

I smile, small and tired.

My voice is a whisper, almost stolen by the serene calm of the town, now so sleepy and tender in the absence of the Sacrament and most contenders gone: “Nari’s.”

Eamon is quiet a moment. Just a moment. Then I hear the breath exhale from him, his chest deflates somewhat, relaxed.

“Nari’s,” he agrees in a whisper.

I nuzzle into him.

He holds me firm.

The rest of the Quiet, we spend on the roof, staring at the abandoned tavern in silence. Then, at the break of the Warmth, Eamon gives me a single gold piece, and we go our separate ways for a short time.

I take the satchel to the markets of Cheapside and sell what I can to the vendors, until my pocket is lined with some silver but mostly copper pieces.

Eamon sneaks off to Hemlock House to pack his things, steal some food from the kitchens, then cart it through Kithe to our new, shared dwelling.

After the markets, I stop in at Forranach’s.

I sit a while with him, share a tea, and before I leave, I drop some silver pieces into the biscuit tin. He needs it as much as Eamon and I do, since (as I learn over tea) Niamh does not live with him anymore and, it saddens me to know, he lives in this damp draughty dwelling alone, no work since his leg is gone.

I sense a lot of bitterness in him. A male who lost his leg in war—and now, festers in boredom, drink and misery.

The least I can do is pay him back for the food he spared on me. So I do, coin in a biscuit tin, before I return to my new home.

Eamon has claimed a bed by the time I get back.

He has chosen the one closest to the bedchamber door—but he doesn’t trust the sheets and blankets. They have been kicked off the foot of the narrow bed, and now he’s folded up on his side, hands flat together and tucked under his cheek, a makeshift pillow.

The only clothing he discarded for his slumber are the boots toppled over on the floorboards.

I am quiet as I sneak to the second bed, pushed against the wall. Once, like Eamon, I would have mirrored his precious behaviour and gingerly peeled the bedding off the mattress, teeth bared in disgust.

Now, I tumble onto the sheets and, drawing the coarse, scratchy blanket over me, I let slumber take me.

My sleep schedule is too out of sorts. The Quiet is the time for rest, not the first hour into the Warmth.

Yet I find it soothing, in a way.

Eamon left the paned glass window open a crack, and the gentle wafting of the Breeze is pleasant.

My head is touched to the pillow for mere moments before I’m swept to a dream of nothing, no nightmares, no pain, no joy—

Just blissful silence.