Page 6

“Orpheus.” Vera’s voice cut through the growing buzz inside his head. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t think they need to be punished, just that a little discipline would benefit everyone!”

For a moment, silence hung. Vera made a face. “What?”

“Uh…never mind.” Orpheus hunched, as cowed as any one of her fifteen grandchildren. Particularly when Vera lowered onto the bench beside him.

Orpheus swallowed and forced himself to meet her eyes.

Like the rest of the Rawkner family, Vera’s hair was blonde, the wisps escaping her loose bun sparkling with the suggestion of grays, the pale blue of her eyes closer to aquamarine than the cold ice that were Fenrir’s. There was a sternness that, surface level, seemed counter to Fenrir’s personality, but Orpheus recognized in the mantle of authority Fenrir wore as a general. That discipline Fenrir spoke of—that he expected from the men and women he commanded—was no different from the confident corralling Vera performed on the Rawkner household each day. A command Orpheus suddenly found himself subject to, when Vera said, “We need to talk about Fenrir.”

Orpheus struggled to swallow. In his lap, his hands clenched.

Vera narrowed her eyes. “Come with me.”

Wide pine boards groaned underfoot, joints creaking with hundreds of years of carefully-maintained weight. Orpheus followed Vera up the narrow staircase, light slanting in through the cracks in the fieldstone walls. Three tall stories composed the inside of the barn, the bedrooms and dining area and kitchen closed off from the soaring beams that held the vaulted ceiling aloft. An elevated lounge area sat atop the interior structure, couches and tables tucked close together near a railing that overlooked the rest of the space, a squat potbelly stove built into the adjacent wall, black soot staining the fieldstone in a shadowy arc.

Sunset had turned the space molten, the red-orange burn lending an anomalous aura to what should be a homey space. Orpheus stood awkwardly at the top of the stairs before Vera gestured at the oldest of the couches. Caught in a stripe of bright light, it was threadbare but stain-free, waiting expectantly for Orpheus to walk over and lower himself onto the cushion.

This close to the railing, he had a view of the rest of the barn, an open sprawling space that could be used for anything the family needed: a garage for working on equipment, an art project, or—as demonstrated by its current use—storage for the foodstuffs that would become a feast for a king.

Enough food to feed thousands of people.

Enough food for an Empire.

Next to him, the cushion dipped, Vera claiming the empty spot at his side.

“I’m worried about Fenrir,” she said without hesitation.

It took everything inside Orpheus not to sneer. “He is under quite a lot of pressure,” was easier to say than, well, it’s about time.

“It’s not that I’m worried about.” The apron Vera folded her hands atop of was a meticulously cared for cream. It made her hands look older, skin creased into trenches, calluses weathered by time as much as hard work. Strong, capable hands Orpheus knew well—or at least others like them. He’d spent a winter cared for by hands like those, after all. “Do you know this is the first he’s visited us in years?”

Orpheus swallowed, unsure what she wanted him to say—this was a conversation the two of them should be having.

“He’s told you about us, hasn’t he?”

“A…little,” Orpheus admitted carefully.

“About what we did. What I did.”

Orpheus sneaked a glance towards the stairs and wondered where that annoying brat Roland was now that he needed him.

“The mine. He’s told you about that?”

“You sold him,” Orpheus finally blurted out. “I know you sold him to—to a mine.”

Vera didn’t say anything. She caught Orpheus’ stare and then refused to let it go, the hard angles of her face unsoftened by the twilight, a tempered steel in opposition to the guilt she surely must feel.

Right?

Orpheus squirmed again, hands closing over his wrists, suddenly missing the sleeves of the robes he no longer wore.

“I won’t make excuses. After fleeing the Rim, we couldn’t continue feeding all our children. He was the oldest, and the strongest. He fetched a fair price.”

“All hells,” Orpheus laughed, voice strained. “And you wonder why he doesn’t come around more often?”

Vera inclined her head. “He’s going to be in charge of a whole empire. Soon, that will be the kind of choice he has to make.”