Page 3 of Fate

Her father blinked once, slowly, before rising from his seat. “Someone,” he confirmed. “As in...”

“Yes.”

She didn’t like how his eyes shifted. Didn’t like that instead of the excitement he should feel for Eris’s sake, he instead took on an expression that was far too near to pity. He approached her with measured steps, his arm already coming about her even as she shook her head and hated the lump in her throat. “He seems very kind.”

Because this was not about her.

“Of course he is. No mate of my daughters will be anything less.”

He cupped her chin in his hand—calloused and strong from long days and skilled labours. “Keep faith, Firen. It’ll come.”

He didn’t linger. Didn’t make her say that doubt was creeping in.

It was a large city. She was more than aware she had not meteveryonewithin it. Nevertheless, each fete that ended in returning home alone... it stung.

She watched as Da kissed Eris’s cheek, as he clasped forearms with Varrel. As Mama set the kettle and mugs on the table and urged her to sit with a pointed look.

Mama had less patience for Firen’s discontentment. But while Da’s hints of pity left her with a lump in her throat, Mama’s insistence that all was as it should be left prickles of irritation. Itwasn’tas it should be. Because if she was meant to go without, meant to live at home and help with the fiddly commissions and work the stalls, she should be happier about it.

And she wasn’t.

But she could sit. And hear about Varrel’s home. About his parents and the cottage they’d promised him when it was time, and he was a fisher, and did she mind terribly much to live so near the sea?

He could have lived in a hut in the woods, and Eris would have smiled and thought it wonderful.

Firen sipped at her tea, and it soothed the ache in her throat.

A little.

Enough that she could head up the stairs with her sister. To the room that had been theirs for... well, since Eris had been old enough to share it with her. To the trunk that was always kept packed, because Eris was still hopeful and certain that she would need to be ready.

While Firen’s belongings had ceased to be tidily tucked away, but spread haphazardly across her night table.

The room felt crowded with the three of them in it—Varrel had followed her, and that set another pant through Firen. To feel an intruder in her own room, to wonder if she would ever have access to her own sister for a private conversation.

Which was nonsense. Da and Mama were not always in each other’s company. This was new, that was all.

And yet...

It was so sudden. That was why tears were prickling at her eyes. Eris had only been running an errand—it wasn’t meant to begoodbye.

Varrel saw to the trunk, with Da to meet him at the stairs to negotiate it the rest of the way down.

Eris watched him go with a soft smile about her lips, but she lingered a moment rather than follow immediately. “My linens...” she observed, tugging at her neatly made bed. “They’ll need washing...” Her voice trailed off, waiting for Firen’s offer. That she’d make. Because she was happy for her, and she needn’tworry about things like laundry when there was a whole new life waiting for her.

“Mama and I will see to it.” It was the best she could do, and her tone was a little too tight.

Eris crossed the distance between them and hugged her tight. “I shall miss you,” she insisted, although there was a hint of something that suggested it was not as much as it might have been. It was as if she was already gone, her heart and her attention elsewhere, while Firen stood just...

Aching.

All over.

“Course you will,” Firen answered briskly, lest she dissolve into tears and make things harder than they ought to be. “Because I’m wonderful and am going to wash your linens for you.”

Eris backed up and smiled brightly. “You are, and they’reyourlinens now. Extras. How extravagant.”

Firen nodded because she did not know what else to do. Then watched her sister scurry back after Varrel and her trunk.

---