Chapter Five
“Torsten doesn’t like the fae, obviously,” Rune grunted, leaning back in the plush armchair where she’d taken up residence. While Florian had healed her surface injuries, she seemed bruised and battered still, moving like she was sore all over. Florian had offered to heal her again, but she’d waved him away, seeming irritated, so he didn’t want to press. Instead, he and Koji had obediently put together a quick meal and hot drinks according to her instructions, and she was now curled under a blanket in her chair with a steaming mug of cider on the table next to her.
Florian nodded slowly, unsure where this was going, as he took a few bites of the warm, buttered bread. The glow had faded from his skin a little while ago, but it was the least of his concerns now. Rune remained silent and pensive for a long moment, looking down at her blanket.
“He had been... okay with Jerah, your father, doing his research around here before. He didn’t like it, but he allowedit,” she finally said. “And my... my parents helped him out a lot. They were the ones who scouted out the Arrows around here, since he wouldn’t have had a way to easily travel the water otherwise.”
Florian’s mind had gone silent as he stared at her, processing. “My dad was here?” he finally blurted, though he knew it sounded stupid as soon as he said it. Of course Jerah must have been here. Florian knew he had done research and some recon missions to try to narrow down the locations of the Arrow, but somehow he had not considered the implication that they had welcomed his father here and in the dragon kingdom—or at least tolerated him. And Rune’s parents had helped him?
“Yeah,” Rune sighed, looking even more uncomfortable now. “And that’s how they... When they passed. It was out in the ocean. They had found the area where the Arrow was out there. And I guess they wanted to help by bringing it to him, since it was so far. He didn’t ask them to, but they wanted to. And they didn’t come back.”
Everything clicked into place: Torsten’s hostility, his and Rune’s conflict, the way he had gone so quickly from mad with concern to helpless with defeat when Rune was hurt. If Torsten had only tolerated Jerah’s presence in the kingdom, Florian imagined it would have been easy to blame Jerah entirely for the deaths of his family members—no wonder Torsten didn’t want him here doing the same thing with Rune. Had there been someone like that in the dragon kingdom who had helped Jerah and suffered for it, which was why Tetsuo had been so cold?
“When did... When was this?” Florian asked, still at a loss for words, but feeling like he had to say something.
Rune shrugged. “I was eleven. So fifteen… no, sixteen years ago now.”
“I’m sorry,” Florian replied. Immediately, he felt it was the wrong thing to have said, and Rune shot him a strange,unreadable look in confirmation. “I mean... I understand now. Why he was so mad. If I had known, I would have been... nicer to him, I guess.”
Rune shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. He doesn’t need to be a dick about it either. It may have been his sister, but she wasmymom. It was myparents. And he’s so bullheaded he can’t see that—that not helping you means it was—” Her eyes had become glassy, and she turned away, her voice trembling as she pulled her knees up to her chest. “They would have died in vain if we don’t find that Arrow. And I would never, ever let that happen.”
Florian’s stomach squeezed. He’d had the same thought, though it had been much more panicked, when he feared Rune was dead in the water. If he failed, if he didn’t find the Arrows and figure out how to use them to end the Blight, his father would have died in vain. It made him sick to think about too long, so he could only imagine how much Rune must have been dwelling on the same thoughts from the moment Florian arrived in the kraken kingdom, or even longer.
“Aren’t you scared?” Koji asked, breaking the silence. Florian felt heat rising in his face, confused; but Koji’s eyes were on Rune, not on him. “To find the Arrow your parents died trying to bring back?”
Rune was silent for a long while, eyes downcast, and privately Florian cringed at how blunt the question was. He could understandwhyKoji might ask it, but to say it out loud?
But then, again to his surprise, Rune let out a single laugh and looked over at him with a tiny smirk.
“No way,” she said. “They didn’t have a Changeling with old magic helping them.”
Florian couldn’t hold back the laugh that escaped him, finally breaking the tense atmosphere that had settled over them. Koji chuckled, too. Rune’s smirk spread into a true smile, though somehow it made her look even more tired. When they hadfallen silent once more, she had rested her cheek on her knees, pulling them up to her chest under the blanket and looking at them sidelong with an unreadable expression.
“Thank you for telling me. For telling us,” Florian offered quietly, watching her dark eyes flicker over to him. “It’s made a lot of things make more sense to me now. And... I promise I won’t let their sacrifice be in vain, either. None of them.”
She smiled. “I know.”
They finished the rest of their meal in contemplative silence. Florian tried not to think of Kade as he sipped his cider. Between the four of them, Kade was the only one who had not lost a parent, but maybe that was no longer true. Florian pushed the thought away, instead mulling over everything they had just learned.
Eventually, once Koji was done with his own food, Florian asked him tentatively,
“Do you know if there was anyone like that in the dragon kingdom? I mean, my dad must have gone there, too, right?”
Koji remained silent for a long while, looking thoughtful. Finally, though, he shrugged and said,
“I don’t know. My father has always been very... unconcerned about the other kingdoms. That’s why we never had visitors, or even any reliable contact with other kingdoms. So I’m sure Jerah must have visited at some point to figure out where the Arrows were, and maybe some citizens helped your father along the way. But I never heard anything about it.” He flashed Florian a nervous, sympathetic smile. “Sorry. I guess Torsten has a better reason to be a jerk than my father does.”
Florian laughed, and Rune snorted. Already she seemed to be in a better mood.
“Help me up,” she prompted, and Florian and Koji both helped pull her to her feet. Rune groaned as she tottered toward the stairs. “I’m going to sleep the rest of the day. Come by tomorrow,I guess. I might still be asleep. We’ll figure out what we’re doing after that.”
After Florian and Koji trudged back to their guest cottage, they stood awkwardly in the sitting room for a long moment until Koji gestured toward his room.
“I think I’ll turn in early too,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” Florian agreed, exhaustion tugging on the edges of his awareness now that the adrenaline of it all was wearing off. After Koji had closed the door behind him, Florian unpacked his things and carefully set the quiver holding the Arrow on the fireplace. He looked at it for a long time before finally stepping away into the bathroom, where he peeled off his dirty clothes and bathed.
Despite how tired he was, when he laid down on his piles of pillows and blankets, he felt too restless and jittery to sleep. All the things Rune had said were swirling in his head, mixed with his own thoughts about his father and the Winter Court and the Veil and, as always, Kade.
