Page 126 of Till Death

I’d thought maybe something in our private funeral would be soothing, a balm, but there was nothing there beyond the visceral pain etched into the faces of those crowded around.

Collectively, we’d decided to move back to the Syndicate house, come what may with Drexel Vanhoff. We needed to let our lives move forward. And maybe he’d owned the world, but they were free of him now, and the only way they would ever truly feel that was if they stopped hiding.

When we approached, I’d expected the door to be hanging off the hinges, the whole place to be ransacked by Drexel’s henchmen, out to deepen the wound, but no one had come. Nothing lay in shambles, and the weapons in Thea’s forge hadn’t even been touched. But that had been its own statement. He’d come eventually. It would be on his time. Which was fine, because Chaos and Serenity would be waiting.

“It’s weird,” Paesha said as she pushed the door open. “Even before the Maestro, I’d lived on a schedule he’d crafted. When Ezra would have to report to shows, when I’d danced at Misery’s End by choice, but now, I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Thea nodded. “The magic is gone, and the only thing I want to do is go to the forge and work. For myself. For us.”

“A new routine will come,” Elowen said, pushing the door open. “We just need some inspiration.”

“And a hot bath,” Paesha added, climbing her way up the stairs. “I’m going to sleep. No one wake me for at least a week.”

“I’m going to bed, too,” Quill said, pulling Boo behind her.

Orin waited until her door shut to say anything. “We need to do something for her, or I’m worried Hollis’s death is going to be so damaging she will never fully recover.”

“No one fully recovers from death, son. We just learn to breathe with it in the room.”

“When do we get to breathe again?” Thea asked, leading us out of the entry hall and into the sitting room. “Because right now it feels like never.”

Elowen patted her leg as she sat beside her. “It will come, Althea, I promise.”

“What about the Life Maiden?” I asked from the door. “Why don’t we all shift focus to finding her? Give Quill a new purpose.”

“I was thinking more like a horse or something,” Orin said.

“I think you might have to accept that the Life Maiden is truly not here, Deyanira. Maybe there was too much corruption in the world for her to be born.”

I shook my head. “It just doesn’t make sense. I am her counterpart. We are the cost for each other. How can I exist and not her?”

Orin wrapped an arm around me. “I know how much this means to you, Dey. Maybe we take a few days to make sure Drexel isn’t sitting around waiting, and then we head to the library in Perth. See if we can find some answers. Probably not where the Life Maiden is, but we could try to follow history back to the end of the wars and see what we can learn about the first one.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

We sat in silence for several moments before Thea jumped up and ran out of the room, calling over her shoulder. “I know what we need.”

“Was that a complete thought?” I called after her.

She came back, holding one of Elowen’s pans.

“Thea,” the older woman warned, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. “Thea, don’t you dare.”

She smiled excitedly, her freckles distorting as she scrunched her nose. “I’ll turn it back, I promise.”

“Last time you said that, I ended up with three knives instead of the four you started with.”

Thea looked at me, but I threw my hands up defensively. “I haven’t stolen a knife in forever.”

“You’re supposed to back me up here, Dey. This is important.”

“Fine. I stole the knife for overnight snacking in my room.”

“Real convincing.” Orin smirked. “Great team player, this one.”

“Can we please get back to the brilliant idea?” I asked, jutting my chin toward the pan in Althea’s hand.

“Yes,” she said as she rubbed a palm over the flat side of the skillet, then spun it until it changed into a building before our eyes.