Vemi had cleaned the same table three times before Vambasta sat down at it.
There was nothing left to remove. The wood had dried between each pass, leaving a dull patch where the rag followed the grain. Vemi went over it again anyway. Keeping her hands occupied was easier than looking toward the places Derpy and his party had filled before they left.
The inn still had work to offer. Chairs needed straightening. Cups waited behind the counter. Somewhere upstairs, a door would not close properly unless someone lifted it by the handle.
None of it required much thought.
Vambasta dropped into the nearest chair and rested her arms on the table. The spiked cuffs were finally off. She rubbed one wrist with the opposite thumb, testing the freedom as though she did not entirely trust it to last.
The agreement had ended the immediate confrontation. It had done little for her mood.
Her ears hung low, and her tail settled heavily against the chair.
“I miss him,” she muttered.
Vemi stopped wiping.
For a moment, she kept her eyes on the rag. Then a broken howl escaped her, too rough to be a laugh and too angry to sound like simple grief. She pressed the cloth hard against the table until the sound had passed.
Vambasta looked up with wet eyes.
“I want a rematch,” she said. “I keep thinking about what I would do differently, and then I remember he is not here to argue with me about it.”
Her mouth tightened. She tried to take a breath and caught on a hiccup instead.
“I hate that I miss him this much.”
Vemi pulled out the chair opposite her. The rag remained in her hands, twisted between her fingers.
“I know. It has been dull since he and his party left.”
Vambasta wiped her face with the back of her wrist. “Dull would be easier if everything else had stopped being irritating.”
That almost drew a smile from Vemi.
“You would find something.”
“I already have.”
Her gaze moved toward the adjoining room.
Seraphine sat where the negotiations had left her, composed enough to make the rest of them look as though they had mistaken an ordinary conversation for a crisis. Her fan opened and closed at measured intervals.
Vemi looked away first.
“The dragon girl is still here,” she said. “And we still have her to deal with.”
Vambasta made a small, unhappy sound that might have become a growl if she had not hiccuped through it.
Near the doorway, Vespera adjusted her wings. Her newly repaired third ring caught the lamplight when she turned, drawing Vemi’s attention to the metal. At least one part of the agreement had produced something they could see.
Queen stood beside her, watching Seraphine through the opening into the next room.
Vambasta followed their gaze and understood the hesitation.
“Go on,” she said, jerking her chin toward the doorway. “Ask before you spend the rest of the day convincing yourself you should not.”
Vespera placed both hands on Queen’s shoulders and guided her a step forward.
“She is right. You need to ask her.”
Queen looked back. “And you are leaving now?”
Vespera’s fingers tightened briefly.
“I am going to find Derpy. I can sense where he is.” She touched her chest. “The contract is still there. I can feel it pulling.”
Queen studied her face, searching for uncertainty and finding little.
“You know which way to go?”
“Enough to begin.”
Vespera pulled her into a hug. It was tighter than Queen expected, and she held her sister back before either could turn the farewell into something easier to dismiss.
“One last time before I go,” Vespera whispered.
When she let go, she did not linger. She moved through the inn’s entrance, spreading her wings once she had room. Wind pressed through the open doorway and stirred the cloth in Vemi’s hands.
By the time Queen reached the threshold to look after her, Vespera was already leaving the inn behind.
Queen remained there for a few breaths. Then she turned toward Seraphine.
“Miss Seraphine, I would like a few days away.”
The fan stopped halfway open.
Queen kept her hands still at her sides. She had chosen the words on the walk across the room and tried not to change them now that Seraphine was looking at her.
“I would like to go home and see my sisters. My family is calling for me.”
Seraphine lowered the fan far enough to uncover her mouth.
“I thought I was your family. Have you stopped considering the Sinister Seven part of it?”
Queen’s wings drew closer to her back.
“You are part of my family. That does not mean I have forgotten the others. I am asking for a few days, not leaving you.”
“At a time when I need you here.”
“I understand that the timing is difficult.”
Seraphine opened the fan fully.
“The King and Joker are the only ones besides you who are not out of commission. I do not have people to spare because you have become homesick.”
Queen looked at the floor for a moment before making herself meet her eyes again.
“That is why I came to ask. I would not go without speaking to you.”
“And I have answered. You will stay.”
From the next room came the scrape of a chair.
“You are such a bitch.”
Seraphine turned her head.
Vambasta stood beside the table with one hand braced against its edge. Her face was still wet. The effort to stop crying had made her breathing uneven, but there was nothing uncertain in the way she looked at Seraphine.
“Do you have a problem with me, wolf pup?”
Vemi rose, leaving the rag on the table.
Vambasta released the wood and walked toward the adjoining room.
“She asked to see her family.”
“I heard her.”
“Then why are you making her feel guilty for having one?”
Seraphine watched her approach over the fan. “I am explaining her responsibilities.”
The first change passed through Vambasta’s shoulders. Her frame broadened, pink fur spreading as her body rose beyond the shape the cuffs had forced her to maintain. The chair she had left scraped sideways beneath the sweep of her tail.
Vemi stopped at the doorway.
The transformation carried Vambasta into the room in a body large enough to make Queen step aside. She bent toward Seraphine, teeth bared, her anger finally given a shape big enough to hold it.
“All you do is give orders,” she growled. “You need this. You want that. Everyone else can wait until it is convenient for you.”
“Lower your voice.”
“She wants to see her sisters.” Vambasta’s voice cracked on the last word. She hated that it did, and the next words came harder. “You cannot even let her have that without turning it into something she is doing to you.”
Queen reached toward her, then stopped short of touching her arm.
“Vambasta—”
“I hate you,” Vambasta told Seraphine. “And whatever we agreed to, I have not forgiven you.”
Seraphine’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“I did not ask for forgiveness.”
Vambasta seized the front of her royal dress and lifted her out of the chair.
Queen recoiled. Vemi caught the doorframe, her first step into the room checked by the sight of Seraphine hanging above the floor.
The fan remained in Seraphine’s hand.
She looked down at Vambasta’s grip, then up into her face. Surprise gave way to an interest Vemi liked considerably less.
“You are a spicy wolf,” Seraphine said.
Vambasta’s arm shook. Her anger had not stopped the hiccups, and one caught her now, humiliatingly loud in the silence.
Seraphine flicked her fan once.
“Very well. I will make an exception.”
Queen stared at her.
“You may go,” Seraphine continued. “A few days with your family, as requested.”
Relief loosened Queen’s shoulders before caution brought them tight again.
“Thank you, Miss Seraphine.”
“But someone will have to take your place.”
Vambasta’s grip changed against the dress.
Seraphine looked directly at her.
“Since you feel so strongly about the arrangement, you can cover her responsibilities until she returns.”
“That was not what she offered,” Queen said.
“It is the exception I am willing to make.”
Vambasta breathed through her nose. Vemi could see the decision passing across her face: the urge to throw Seraphine against something hard, Queen standing close enough to lose the permission she had just gained, and the miserable knowledge that Seraphine had found a way to profit from being lifted out of her chair.
Slowly, Vambasta lowered her to the floor.
“Then let her go.”
Seraphine smoothed the front of her dress. “We understand one another.”
“She gets to see her family,” Vambasta said. “That is the part I care about.”
Queen looked at her, relief complicated by guilt.
Vambasta turned before she could apologize.
“Do not waste it standing here worrying about me.”
Behind her, the fan opened again.
Later, Vemi sat cross-legged near Cinder, trying to settle after the argument downstairs.
Her tail kept moving despite her efforts to hold it still. Each time it brushed against something, she stopped it, only to discover a few moments later that it had begun again.
“What should we do now?” she asked.
Cinder reached for her grimoire.
The movement was familiar enough that she began it before deciding what answer to give. Her hand closed where Pyro should have been and found nothing.
She looked down.
Vemi watched her reach again, slower this time, checking the space as though the first attempt had simply missed.
“Cinder?”
Cinder shifted, searched beside herself, then pushed the bedding away from her hip. There was no book beneath it. She checked the same place twice before she seemed to realize she was doing it.
“Pyro?”
Vemi uncrossed her legs.
Cinder turned toward the other side of the bed. The pillow slipped when she pulled back the cover. She caught it automatically and held it against herself while looking around the room.
“Pyro, answer me.”
The silence made her breathing shorten.
Vemi stood. “When did you last have him?”
Cinder shook her head. She could not put the moments in order while the place where the grimoire belonged remained empty.
“He was—” She stopped and reached once more. “Pyro?”
Her voice broke.
Tears came before she could stop them. She pressed her face into the pillow, trying to contain the sound, but Vemi could see the panic in the way her shoulders drew inward.
The room had been dull a moment ago. Vemi would have given anything to make it dull again.
She moved closer and sat beside Cinder.
There was no answer from the grimoire.
Pyro woke to the movement of a chain.
For a moment, darkness and the steady pull at his binding were all he knew. Then his pages shifted, and he became aware of the person carrying him, the position at her hip, and the dim palace room around them.
It had taken him long enough to find her.
“So,” he said, “you are Lenora Strayheart.”
Lenora looked down.
The book rested against her side, secured by the chain. She stared at it for a moment longer than recognition should have required. Then she looked back toward the room, where every ordinary movement had become something people watched for danger.
Lewd remained close. Vaeloria was occupied with the latest report. Sinister wore Derpy’s face with the ease of someone who had no intention of explaining himself further.
Lenora rose.
“I need to pee,” she announced.
The words were so ordinary that Amy looked at her before she appeared to understand them.
Lenora did not elaborate. She walked toward the door, feeling the book shift against her hip with each step.
Sinister turned his head as she passed.
“Take your time. I am not going anywhere.”
She kept walking.
Behind her, the room resumed its uneasy quiet. Pyro’s chain moved against her clothing, a small, unmistakable weight that had not belonged in the morning she thought she was having.
On the ash shore, Derpy watched Lenora leave through the veil.
He could follow the movement only until the door closed behind her. Then the view held on the sitting room, leaving him with the people still inside and no way to see where she went next.
He became aware of Celica approaching before she spoke.
Blight remained nearby. The sea beyond them had gone still, and the threads across the sky held their pale lines without shifting.
Derpy turned toward Celica.
She stopped close enough that looking back at the veil would have required him to look away from her deliberately.
“Now we begin,” she said.
“You have chosen an interesting time.”
“You will always find a reason to watch the next thing happening outside.” Her gaze stayed on his. “You are here. Use it.”
Derpy glanced once toward the room he could not reach, then lowered his hands to his sides.
Celica watched him settle his weight on the ash.
“Training starts now.”