This is an ongoing companion piece to be read after completing the Snakesblood Saga. Because it takes place during the final chapter of the last book, it will be very full of spoilers. It’s also unedited first draft fluff… just for fun! Read at your own risk, and expect installments no closer together than once a month.
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He was different when she saw him again. Firal did not know how to explain it, but she sensed the change in the air between them as soon as he saw her. It was tense, charged, but not in the way Kytenia might have her hope. Instead, it made her skin prickle and crawl, made her dread what was to come. That was not the sort of expression a happy man wore, she knew. But he was troubled more than angry, though an undercurrent of dissatisfaction lapped at the edges of his presence.
Despite it all, Firal offered a smile. “I’m sorry,” she said as she hurried closer. They had agreed to meet in the waiting area just outside the Spiral Palace’s Gate rooms, and from the look of things, he’d been waiting for some time. “It took longer than I anticipated. Kytenia had a lot to say.”
Rune stood to greet her. “Is she well?”
“Settling in. The same as all of us, I suppose.” She stopped before him and tried to cling to her cheer, but it felt false and her smile faded the moment his eyes swept past her to settle somewhere else.
“My lord,” someone called, the title both halting and breathless. “Wait a moment. Please.”
Firal turned, expecting a page. Instead, she found a scholar, his robes disheveled and his spectacles hanging crooked at the end of his nose.
He fixed those as he gasped for breath. “Lord Kaim-Ennen. Forgive me, I came as soon as—I won’t take but a moment, I was told I—this was to be delivered directly, but in person, to give formality.” The man straightened and offered a sealed letter.
Twin lines etched themselves between Rune’s brows as he took it, but he did not need to ask anything, for the scholar went on the moment the letter left his hands.
“The Academy is expanding, with the king’s blessing. We understand you have formally retired from His Majesty’s army, and so we would like to offer you a permanent position as a tenured professor.”
“Tenured?” Rune repeated with as much frown in his voice as there was on his face.
“The full details of the offer are in the letter,” the scholar added. “You may review it at your leisure, but we look forward to hearing from you.”
Firal’s brows rose, but she said nothing until the scholar said his goodbyes and disappeared. “An interesting choice for that role.” She kept her voice light, playful, but he did not seem to notice. Instead, he looked at the letter in his hands.
“Professor of what?” he murmured.
She wondered that, too. He’d always been exceptional with magic, but she could say nothing of his academic skills. Whether they existed or not, she could not say; he had so seldom attended classes at Kirban Temple, she wasn’t sure he’d received much education at all.
He did not open the letter, though, leaving her curiosity unsatisfied. He slipped it into his pocket as a mage stepped through the doorway.
“Your Gate is ready,” the woman said without giving them a second glance.
The casual way the people of the Spiral Palace managed Gates still left Firal unsettled. She’d had her own Gating parlor in Ilmenhith’s palace, but the portals had been managed with a certain measure of decorum that was neglected here. The Triad’s capital had diplomats and other people of importance coming and going at all hours of the day and night, and the mages who opened and closed the portals worked in shifts as if the task were an ordinary job.
Rune motioned for her to lead the way, and Firal strode followed the white-robed Master mage without another word.
They traveled that way often enough that there was always a mage on shift who could open a Gate directly to his house. Firal was still unsure if ‘house’ was an appropriate description of the place, given its size, but acknowledging the place as an estate with accompanying lands still made her itch. She was not jealous; at least, not of that. But how easily he had carved a space for himself in this new world was strange, and in the wake of everything she’d lost, she admitted it was hard to face. He’d been uprooted from everything, cast into the world without anyone to aid him, and he’d managed to flourish.
On the other hand, she’d been a queen, and she didn’t even know where her people were.
Rune guided her through the Gate without so much at flinching at its magic. He’d always been that confident, and she wasn’t sure why she’d expected it would change after the cleansing of his Gift. They had not discussed the changes in his power. She did not think they would soon.
He opened the door for her, but the distant look in his eyes told her his mind was elsewhere.
“I’ll prepare a meal for us,” she offered. “You are hungry?”
“Sure.” He did not reach for the letter in his pocket, yet it had to be eating away at him. As she expected, the moment the door was shut, he turned toward the leftmost hall that branched from the grand entryway. He’d be off to his study, then, would settle at his desk and see what the letter had to say.
Firal forced herself to smile. “I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
He disappeared into the hallway and the moment he was gone, she second-guessed everything she’d done.
Should she have tried to hold his hand as they walked? Should she have invited him to help her cook? Maybe batted her eyes at him and lean close enough to let her actions ask for a parting kiss? The racing thoughts were enough to make her groan.
This was going to be harder than she thought.
~:~:~:~:~:~:~
Little hands gripped the edge of the table, too close to the cutting board for comfort. Firal dared not shoo her away. After all they’d been through, part of her still feared letting the girl out of her sight. Leaving for her meeting with Kytenia had been a challenge, and though nothing had happened in her absence, her nerves were not soothed.
“Here.” She scraped a handful of chopped vegetables into a bowl and pushed it toward those tiny fingers. “Take this to Minna.”
The girl beamed as she took the bowl and hurried across the kitchen. Lulu was small for her age—or at least, for her stage of development—but she was steady on her feet and deliberate with her little hands. She presented the bowl of vegetables to her nursemaid with pride.
How quickly Lulu had taken to the ruin-folk woman. Firal was grateful; there were few she trusted as much as Minna, and her presence had been a blessing, yet watching her elderly friend with her child left a sense of guilt dragging in her chest.
“There, that’s everything.” Minna beamed at the girl as she accepted the vegetables and added them to the pot. “Thank you, little one.”
Firal swallowed against an uncomfortable thickness in her throat. “Will you be joining us for the meal?”
“Oh, no, my lady, we’ve already eaten. Not to make you feel sorry for coming home late, of course. Your business in the Royal City is important.” The old woman’s whole face crinkled with her smile. “If it’s all right, I think the little one and I could do with some time in the garden while you eat.”
“Of course.” Firal was of no mind to deny Minna anything, not after everything she’d done. Every time they had crossed paths, Minna had been eager to step in and help, even when there was little to no reward. It was so different from what Firal had grown used to—scheming mages and politicians, all out to advance their own standing by any means necessary—that she hardly knew how to respond. “Thank you for everything you’ve done today. I can finish from here.”
“Very well. Come along, then, Lu. Let’s go outside.” Minna offered a hand to the girl beside her, who tucked her chubby little hand into the old woman’s grasp and eagerly made her way toward the back door.
That guilt came back as Firal watched the two of them slip into the yard.
How many moments like that had she missed while she was on the throne? While she’d been occupied with managing a kingdom instead of her own household? She’d fought to be involved with her own child, contrary to what was expected of a queen, but she’d still missed it. She’d missed so much, and it made her heart ache.
How different things would have been if they’d gone to plan. If they’d stayed in Core and called her single-room dwelling home, or if they’d moved to the surface settlement to reside in the house her husband had tried to build for her with his own two hands.
It was gone, now.
The house. The caves of Core. Everything she’d known.
Even his hands had changed.
Firal struggled to push the thought away as she replaced Minna by the stove and stirred the thickening stew.
This was nothing new, she told herself. She’d lost everything before, and more than once. She had rebuilt then and she would rebuild now, but this time, the foundation would be all the things that mattered most.
Her family.
Her daughter.
Her home.
She fixed those thoughts so intensely in the forefront of her mind that she missed the soft sound of footsteps and only realized she was not alone when a chair scraped back from the table. She looked back with a start.
If Rune noticed he’d surprised her, it did not show. He settled in his chair and rubbed his eyes with one hand, no less weary or troubled as he’d been when they returned home.
A warning, perhaps, of what that letter had contained.
“It’s almost ready,” she said with a smile, in hopes it would soften the edges of whatever bothered him now. “Do you want to eat in here?”
He seemed confused by the question, for he looked at the table and chairs and then glanced around the room. “Where else?”
“The big dining room?” Firal retrieved bowls from the cabinets and savored the way the ordinary ceramic felt in her hands. She’d grown used to luxury over the years she’d spent in the palace, but it had never made her feel like she belonged. The dishes they used at meal times in his house were simple enough to be grounding, reminding her of where she’d started.
The temple had never offered anything fine, and neither had Core.
She liked it that way.
“That room never gets used,” Rune replied dryly, as if the question were enough to make him reconsider the room’s existence.
“It did when everyone was here.” She didn’t need to specify when; he’d been gracious to host her closest friends when Ilmenhith fell.
He did not seem amused. “I’m not interested in entertaining.”
“I never thought you were.” She wouldn’t argue, then. Most of their meals were taken in the kitchen, and that would be fine. She filled their bowls and carried them to the table, then retrieved a pitcher of water and cups for both of them. “Are you done with business for the day?” She meant the letter. From the look of consternation that crossed his face, he knew.
He scooped a bite of stew into his mouth without regard for the temperature, then sucked air in through his teeth.
“That good of news, was it?” She settled across from him. Sitting by his side still struck her as too familiar, and yet, they should have been familiar. Wasn’t that the goal?
Rune shook his head. “They want me to teach history and culture.”
An odd proposal. Mages were long-lived, but many had lived far longer than he. She had never asked after his exact age, but given the circumstances of their childhoods, she knew they were a scant few months apart. Among mages, that was nothing. “History of what?”
“Elenhiise. The ruin-folk, specifically.”
Oh.
Firal tempered her inward response with a small smile. That stung; she had led them for years, had lived alongside them the same way he had.
Yet she’d never been integrated into their ways like he had. They had accepted him, honored him, and given him one of their names.
That name still came to the tip of her tongue sometimes, whenever she tried to speak of him.
“Are you going to accept?” She didn’t know what else to ask.
“I don’t know.”
She’d expected as much. “How are they doing, by the way? The ruin-folk? I’ve heard so little since Tobias took over the work of settling them.”
“I haven’t heard anything, either.” He scarcely looked up.
Firal pushed her spoon through the stew in her bowl.
She was terrible at this. Small talk had always been awkward, but it was so far removed from the way they’d always related to each other that it struck her as unnatural now. There had to be a better way to get through this, to re-forge the sort of deep and introspective connection they’d shared before. She worried her lower lip between her teeth and stared at her food without seeing.
She still had yet to take a bite when he spoke again.
“Listen. I know a lot has changed,” he said slowly, as if testing his words. “Everything has changed. But I thought maybe…”
Firal glanced up, curious.
A shadow of doubt hung on Rune’s face. “It might be a good idea for us to… meet with someone. Speak with someone. About everything.”
She sat a little straighter. Yes; that was a good idea. Tobias was busy, but there had to be those in the Royal City who knew what was going on throughout the Triad, who would let her do her part to help organize the groups of refugees who had once been her people. “A councilor, perhaps?”
He paused with his spoon in midair, surprised. “Yes.”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea.” Her grasp of the regional dialect was not the best, but he was fluent, and if the two of them went together then she would have no difficulty in communicating with the people in charge.
“I’ll arrange it tomorrow,” he replied, almost in a rush. “We’ll start as soon as we can.”
His eagerness, coupled with the way he visibly relaxed, should have been her first warning.