Page 98 of Fate

Firen couldn’t look at her.

Which was evidently answer enough.

“Well. Then maybe you ought to start with your own family instead of feeling guilty about Lucian’s.”

“I suppose,” she mumbled, and Mama reached out and grasped her hand tightly.

“Jealousy does not become you,” she offered gently, but firmly. “Eris did nothing wrong, and neither did you. Justbecause her mating went a little easier, does not mean it was a wound against you.”

Not a wound, no. But an irritant. That was unjust and unbecoming, and Firen felt dreadful for it at once. “I suppose,” she drew out with a long sigh, but turned her head so her mother could see her begrudging smile. “You just want to be rid of me. Admit it.”

“Yes, that’s certainly it,” Mama confirmed with a rueful look. “Now go make nice so I can tend to my patrons.”

She did not have to shove at Firen lightly, but she did so anyway. Who, in return, did not have to make an exaggerated expression of hurt, but did it just because.

But a customer was approaching the stall, so the game had to end, and Firen felt a momentary pang to see it. She shouldn’t. She was welcome—Mama had said so.

But it wasn’t expected any longer. Wasn’t a simple fact that market days meant what they always had before. And what had once seemed an exciting venture, full of possibility and newness, now left her feeling like an outsider.

Where once she’d belonged so completely, there were bits of her that were meant to be somewhere else. Not just to sleep and reside.

Would her children know what it meant to grow up in these same stalls? To fly about and learn so many names and trades, it was almost dizzying to recite them all.

And if Eris was with child and she was not...

She shoved that thought away as hard as she could.

She would be more than pleased to welcome another of her sibling’s children into the family. There would be no room for envy. Not in the least.

???

Firen had never been in a fishing cottage. Had never quite experienced what it meant to be so near the docks where barrels of catch were dunked and processed.

The smell was strong. Almost overpowering.

Eris was at the far end, but it did not mean when the wind caught, she wasn’t subjected to another waft of brine and... other odours.

Nets stretched out along the beaches, pinned down and drying in the suns. Men and women alike worked at mending them, backs hunched, wings outstretched to provide some shade from the heat.

She did not expect to see her sister as one of them. She’d expected her to be bustling about in her home, fully prepared to inform Firen of just how perfect her new life was, and how much better a roommate Varrel made than she did.

Eris stood almost immediately, wiping her hands on an apron that had once held some sort of pattern to it, but had bleached near-white from the suns. “What are you doing here?”

Not an accusation, but close to one.

“Mama kicked me out of the stall,” Firen answered truthfully. “Said I had not been attending to my sisterly duties.”

Eris snorted, moving away from the net and coming toward her. “I suppose you haven’t.” She needn’t have agreed. Someone else might have offered a gracious reminder that Firen was busy as well. That their lives had altered quickly, and what mattered most was to make time for one another now they’d settled.

But not Eris.

Firen would not prickle. Would not give back a reminder that Eris had made little attempt at contact, either.

Firen was the older. An example. How many times had Mama said that growing up?

“Well,” she countered briskly. “I’m here to make amends. Can I help in some way? You’d have to show me what needs doing, but I’m happy to try.”

Eris’s eyes narrowed. “I cannot pay you.”

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