Keira
It was enough to make one wonder whether there really was an all knowing Fate out there, as many believed, maintaining the path of destiny and ensuring all played out according to its design.
When she was younger, she had not put much stock in such things, though even then she had been struggling against its current.
“You hardly look like you’re in the proper celebratory mood,” Florian’s voice sounded as he slid beside her at the bar. She turned, surprised to see him. Normally, they would lose him early into the night to whomever he’d found to spend it with.
Florian was gripping his own mug of ale, wearing his customary twisted smile.
His face- it was pretty. There was nothing else to be said about it, and he knew it too.
His features were cut at wicked, charming angles around eyes of bluish green.
Even his long black hair carried notes of inky blue, like raven wings.
Beneath his leather coat, his shirt had been unknotted to reveal a glimpse of his muscular chest where an iron medallion hung from a simple cord.
Florian went on anyway. “You’ve spoiled us all terribly, you know that, don’t you? Before you, Rhea’s leg would have taken us out of the game for weeks. That or pay half the purse for a healer.” He snorted.
“I’m glad to be good for something at least,” Keira grumbled into her ale.
Florian humored her with a smile. “We both know you’re good for a lot more than that.” He raised his brow in a suggestive arch. “Speaking of, I was thinking maybe I could show you a little magic tonight?”
Keira scowled.
“Oh, come on.” He turned to face her directly. “You know we had a good time that one night back in-”
“I was very drunk that night,” Keira cut in.
Florian leaned backward over the bar, smiling winningly. “Two more, please.”
Of course, the barmaid blushed and chuckled at his antics.
He returned with a victorious smirk as if to say, see, everyone else thinks I’m charming.
“I thought you and Knox were-” Keira glanced at the corner where Knox had stationed himself for the evening.
His silver eyes were nearly luminous in his shadowy corner as he focused on what appeared to be a sketch.
She supposed she’d never looked this closely at whatever it was he busied himself with on evenings such as this, though she forgave herself the inattention. They were hardly close.
Florian shook his head. “You know I can’t be tied down, not even for his fine-”
Keira raised a hand, begging him not to finish that sentence.
“I could always find myself in your room tonight,” he teased as he took another drink. “The others wouldn’t have to know.”
“Nope.”
“You’re sure?” Florian quirked his head to the side. “Because from where I’m sitting, it’s been what, four months since you-”
Keira’s eyes flared angrily, and Florian’s sides shook.
“I only know if I had gone that long without… Well, any port in a storm.”
She’d rather drown. Her expression must have said as much.
“As you wish.” Florian held up his hands. “Can’t fault a man for trying.”
The barmaid set down the ales in front of them.
Keira drained the dregs from her mug, but ignored the others. “I’m turning in,” she said, setting it heavily on the bar.
“Enjoy the succor of your loneliness,” Florian called after her.
She shook her head in a long suffering way, the ghost of amusement stirring within her. He meant well.
After acquiring the key to her room, she made her way upstairs.
The room was tiny. Just large enough for the narrow bed and a trunk for storage.
It was almost strange these days sleeping in a bed.
She had grown so accustomed to sleeping in the library of Grimlocke House.
The old townhouse had been inherited by Knox and Lilith when their aunt died years ago and now served as the party’s primary residence.
It was comfortable enough, even if it was a bit crowded and…
eccentric. With the limited options, Keira had adapted to sleeping on the sofa before the fireplace.
It wasn’t a wholly disagreeable arrangement, especially when she slept in the form of a cat.
She’d even spent a few oddly comfortable nights roosting in the towering bookshelves in the guise of a barn owl.
Her thoughts turning to feathered things, Keira opened the small window over the bed.
It was a struggle to unstick it from the frame, but soon a refreshing night breeze wafted in.
She was unsure if Thaddeus would make his way back to her or spend the night hunting, but she still left the way open lest she be woken by an irritable tapping in the middle of the night.
It was only a short time later, as she had finished preparing herself for bed, that Thaddeus perched on the windowsill, announcing himself with a loud caw.
She turned, preparing to tell him to hush, when she saw he was holding something more than an unfortunate rodent.
“Come,” Keira instructed, holding out her arm.
He flapped over, gripping her bare skin gently to avoid leaving a mark. Keira took the note from him, and Thaddeus hopped away, observing from the bedpost.
Keira’s brows furrowed, knowing who this message was from without question. To send word through her familiar, this was Ignatius’s doing. She hadn’t heard from him since she left home. Three years stretched taut behind her as she reeled to consider if it had truly been that long.
Thaddeus came to perch on her shoulder as she opened it and read:
Keira,
My health is failing me. My magics have stretched my lifetime as far as nature will allow, and I can feel that my days are now numbered.
I know that I have caused you terrible pain, that you left in anger toward me.
It is one of my great regrets. Consider it my dying request that I should see you again before the end of this life.
I wish to make amends and to pass in the company of my only family.
Your guardian,
Ignatius the Red
Keira’s arm fell limp, the page falling into her lap as she lost herself in her thoughts.
The idea of Ignatius dying… It just seemed so impossible.
He’d never, not once, appeared weak or ill or even aging to her.
For a single moment, she considered that this might be some sort of ploy to get her to come home, that it couldn’t be true.
But despite all he had done, Ignatius had never lied to her.
An icy feeling ran down her back. It was fear, panic. She’d already lost Caspian. When Ignatius was gone… she’d truly have no one. She would be alone. Entirely. Completely. Numbness encircled her, slowing her thoughts and warping her senses until even her racing heart seemed miles away.
“Keira?” a soft voice drew her back to reality, to the tiny room in an unfamiliar town. Florian’s head was poking in her door. “I knocked, but you didn’t say anything. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I didn’t want you to think I-”
Keira shook her head. She knew him too well to take offense to his ways.
All his flirting was harmless. He knew his charms lifted spirits and lowered defenses, and he shared them freely as long as they were wanted.
After she had signed on with the Blades of Fate, Florian had been the first one to speak to her in the interest of friendship.
He’d been a dependable companion ever since, always there with a joke or a song, or even a simple friend in the silence.
And yes, there had been one night where he had kept her company in a more meaningful way, but it had never been anything more than that.
Keira looked down at the page, half expecting it to have disappeared as if it were some ill mannered apparition, but there it remained, wrinkled in her grip. A tear fell from her cheek, staining the page.
“What’s wrong?” Florian slipped inside, closing the door behind him.
She wiped her eyes lest any other wayward tears fall.
“It’s from my- my guardian,” Keira’s gaze fell back to the letter. “He’s unwell.”
“Is he with the rest of your family?”
Keira shook her head. “No.” She sniffed. “He’s alone. All we really have is each other.” A sob broke free of her lips, ambushing her.
“Oh, poor thing,” Florian pulled her into a tight hug.
Emotion spilled from her, violent tears blurring her vision.
It was heartache and bewilderment, self pity and fear and a thousand more unnamable emotions.
Keira tried to push it back, to clear her mind, to control her heaving sobs, but she might as well have tried to quell a tempest. She was caught in the winds of a storm she knew too well, and she would have to weather them.
At last her tears exhausted themselves. Keira pulled herself away, trying to remove them at once, her breathing still labored, uneven.
“He’s not just sick, is he?” Florian asked as he released her.
Keira shook her head, taking a place at the foot of the bed. Thaddeus flapped his wings lightly before nuzzling his beak against her cheek.
“I haven’t seen him in years,” she said softly. “I didn’t leave him on the best of terms.”
Florian nodded knowingly. “But he wrote to you?” he said, looking at the letter discarded on the bed.
“He wants to see me. To say goodbye.” The word felt heavy and strange on her tongue.
Again she was hit by a wave of impossibility.
Ignatius couldn’t be dying. She couldn’t even conjure the picture of him lying ill in bed, frail and old.
Her guardian lived in her memory, smoking his pipe by the fire, the embers reflected in his eyes, or hunched over his desk up in his illusive study.
She could see the rare spark of compassion in his eyes when he’d told her that her mother and father had truly given her away.
The resolved defeat when she’d told him she’d be leaving and they both knew she meant forever. But dying…
“Are you going to be with him?” Florian asked, taking a seat beside her.
“I-” Keira said slowly. “I will have to.” What other answer was there? She wasn’t ready to face him again. That much was certain. But she wasn’t ready to lose him either.
“How far is it? You know Rhea will have the others pack up if you tell her.”
Keira shook her head. “I know, of course she would. But that won’t be necessary. My magic can get me there faster, and I wouldn’t want everyone to-” She sniffed. “Just for my sake.”
Florian sighed, studying her with his ocean blue eyes. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
“It’s better this way,” Keira said, wiping her cheeks once more, cursing the endless tears.
His lips tensed, but he nodded. “At least wait till morning?”
Keira thought to protest, but her eyelids were heavy and swollen, and her body ached from the day’s exertions. Not to mention her mind was murky and awash in emotion, hardly an ideal state for complex spellwork.
She nodded, heaviness falling over her the moment she relented. Keira fell onto the bed unceremoniously.
“Do you want me to go?” Florian asked.
Keira looked up at him, mentally exhausted and emotionally wrung. If he left, she’d be at the mercy of her thoughts again. “Stay?” she whispered.
Florian nodded with a soft smile. He took off his long leather coat and hung it from the back of the door before climbing into the bed beside her.
“It will be a shame to see you go,” he said softly.
“Still hoping for another chance?” she quipped, resurrecting some ghost of humor.
He barked a laugh. “Because you’re my friend.”
Keira smiled. So few people had ever called her that.
Florian shrugged. “And who knows. We might have found each other again. You could only resist this for so long.”
She smiled, but it was a fragile thing. He was just trying to cheer her up with his antics. Without them, the room fell quiet once more, only the sound of Thaddeus’s ruffling feathers and the hum of distant conversation below betrayed the stillness.
“Will you come back?” he asked when Keira had been unwittingly close to unconsciousness.
That question hit her like a blind strike.
What was tying her to Stormhaven? What few possessions she kept at Grimlocke House could be replaced.
Perhaps she could take up residence in the tower again.
Yet what was the point in staying if it meant staying alone?
Was she to become like her guardian? Isolated with no company save her regrets?
But she didn’t have to be alone. The Blades had adopted her into their ranks, their fellowship, in a time where she had been entirely lost. Over the last two years, she had built friendships, set roots without truly meaning to. Stormhaven had become more of a home to her than she had realized.
Keira’s thoughts chased themselves until she was too exhausted to follow them any longer. “I don’t know.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome to. We’ll miss you. I know everyone will.”
“They’ll find another mage, I’m sure,” Keira said with a brittle laugh.
Florian put his hand on her arm. “I’ll miss you.”
Keira turned into his touch and he closed his arms around her. She drank in the comfort of his closeness, trying to remember the last time she’d been held this way.
“Will you tell them when I’m gone?”
“If that’s what you want,” he promised. “For now, you should sleep.”
Keira nodded, allowing her eyes to close as she rested against his chest. It came to her then how strange this must look, him lying in her bed still dressed for a night in the tavern.
It occurred to her then that he’d probably given up what could have been an enjoyable evening to spend the night with a blubbering mess.
He was a good friend, she thought as another round of tears budded in her eyes, and curse it all, she’d miss him too.