The next morning, Severine was gone.

  There was no noise from upstairs. That wasn’t unusual. But it wasn’t the heavy silence of someone sleeping; it was the sound of emptiness.

  Worry flexed bony fingers around Runa’s heart. She moved quietly, careful not to let the trapdoor or the ladder clatter as she got herself as far into the attic room as she could without breaking anything. Just in case she was wrong.

  She wasn’t.

  There was no sign of Severine in the attic room, in a way that made it clear how little of her had been there in the first place. No belongings, because of course, she only had the swords and her traveling gear. No knick-knacks, no clothes hung out to air, no religious icons tacked to the wall. Everything Severine owned fit into two bags, and she and the bags were gone.

  She must have woken earlier than Runa had ever known her to. Or not slept.

  How had she gotten past Runa without waking her?

  The answer was the obvious one. She hadn’t. Runa’s nostrils flared at the sensation of leftover magic, and she squinted at the air until she found the seam where Severine’s portal-cutting knife had left a mark.

  She was gone. She’d left.

  And she hadn’t said anything. She hadn’t even left—

  Runa let the trapdoor fall with a thud, and the movement sent a fragment of paper rustling across the attic floor. She picked it up and her jaw tightened.

  She had left a note.

  ***

  Baking was great for when you wanted to punch something. To a certain extent.

  Most of the loaves today were turning out strangely flat.

  Junilla hailed her as she stomped up outside the tavern. “Runa! Just the person. Harvest’s coming up, and—”

  Runa shoved the loaves into her arms, grunted, and wheeled away.

  The deliveries that morning took too long and not long enough. Her skin felt scratchy as she headed back to the bakery. She hadn’t managed to say a word to anyone. Hopefully they got the message.

  She shut the door and pulled out Severine’s note again.

  Runa,

  Sorry to leave like this. Something’s come up I need to look after—priest things. After our conversation, I couldn’t risk waking you.

  I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.

  Thanks for everything,

  Severine

  The writing was messy, a hurried scrawl. An afterthought that was almost worse than no note at all.

  Sorry to leave like this? Then why had she? After our conversation—What conversation? Had talking to Runa been so disappointing she couldn’t bear another moment in her boring presence? I don’t know how long I’ll be gone—Did that mean she was coming back? Or was it a polite way of saying don’t complain if she was gone for good?

  She’d taken Bloodburster. The corner where it had stood glowering evilly at her for the past weeks was empty.

  Maybe that was it. Severine didn’t trust her not to pick it up again. So she’d taken herself and the bloody sword as far away from her as possible.

  Runa ground her teeth, swept until the broom handle cracked, and shoved her hands into the water barrel to stop from setting fire to her sleeves.

  Stupid sleeves.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Except rolling them up made her think of how much Severine had enjoyed her not wearing sleeves.

  She rolled them back down.

  They got in the way again.

  Ugh. She should just tear them off again.

  “Runa?”

  Tam sounded anxious. He knocked on the door. Wet revenants, why couldn’t people get the message? She wanted to be alone.

  She needed to be alone. All her happy complacency needed a boot in the ass. It needed a reminder that she liked to be alone, that alone was the way she worked best, that from the first time she’d rode a curse to all those years ferrying danger-prone idiots around the Cauldron, everything in her life had taught her the best way to live was to not rely on anyone else. To always be the one who was heading on to new things.

  Because it turned out, this was the alternative.

  Being the one who was left behind.

  She opened the door as Tam lifted his hand to knock again. “Hey.”

  Tam looked up at her, his expression worried. “Is everything okay? Errant said you seemed a bit off, when you dropped off the bread this morning—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sure! Of course.” His eyes darted behind her, where the only other creature in the bakery was making urgent blopping noises. The creature that had, the whole time Runa had known about it, been very clear that it didn’t want anyone else to find out about it.

  Runa folded her arms and moved to block Tam’s view of the bakery.

  “Did you want to order something else, or what?”

  She sounded like an asshole. She knew she sounded like an asshole. She just couldn’t make herself sound like anything else right now.

  “Um… is Severine…?”

  “She’s gone.”

  His eyes widened. “Gone?”

  “Yeah. She had stuff to do.”

  “Oh.” And then the worst fucking thing in the world happened, which was Tam looking up into her scowling face, and looking sympathetic. Understanding. “Oh. Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” Runa growled, and shut the door in his face.

  Because she was fine. She was completely fine. And also busy. She didn’t have time to waste sitting around sniffling over things she didn’t care about, anyway.

  She baked. She grumped around, stomping and too hot and generally pissed off, and fumbled the next batch of bread so badly the dough bubbled and melted off the bench.

  She put her hands in the water barrel to cool down, and steam hissed around her.

  She was going to burn through all her ingredients at this rate. And her shirt.

  Stupid shirt. Stupid ingredients.

  It was dark in the cellar, but cold? In a few minutes it would feel like a sauna. She didn’t need to worry that Severine had taken the spider-lure knife with her, because without Severine sitting in the light from the stairwell she didn’t need it, but she needed the cold.

  Runa sighed and let her head drop. Chin tucked against her chest, she forced herself to count to ten, the way her mother had taught her.

  There won’t always be lava bombs for you to punch out of the sky, her mother’s voice echoed in her head. Or empty seas, waiting for new land.

  Not that she’d ever figured out that particular volcano-nymph trick. All her mother’s fire, and none of her usefulness.

  If you’re going to visit your father, you have to learn how to hold onto that heat until it’s going to do some good.

  She’d almost melted a glacier, the first few months with her father. A whole childhood growing up looking nothing like her family hadn’t prepared her for a world where she looked like everyone around her, but felt nothing like them.

  But she’d managed. She had only almost melted the glacier.

  And she would manage now.

  Deep breaths. Hands together. Count to ten, or more than ten, as many times as it takes.

  “Unless you see smoke coming through the roof, I wouldn’t worry.”

  Her head snapped up. What the hells was Corvin doing here?

  “What do you mean, smoke? Runa wouldn’t burn the bakery down!”

  “Not intentionally, but…”

  Tam had run off to fetch Corvin, and now they were both talking about her outside her own lichdamned house? Runa snarled in the back of her throat.

  “She’s a troll, though. Isn’t she more likely to, I don’t know. Sing a bad song about it?”

  “You’re the one who told me it was an emergency, Miller.”

  “It is!”

  “Is she injured?”

  Runa stomped up the cellar stairs in time to hear Tam admit, “No…”

  “Severine’s unwell?”

  “Well, that’s…”

  They were talking outside her house, so loudly she could hear them in the cellar. She stormed across the bakery floor to the front door.

  “She’s upset? What do you expect me to do about that?”

  “Well, she’s grouchy, and you’re grouchy, so I thought maybe—”

  Runa flung the door open. Tam and Corvin blinked at her.

  “What,” she growled.

  “Nothing appears to be on fire,” Corvin pointed out.

  Tam gaped at him. “Again, why would anything be on fire?”

  Runa shot Corvin a glare that said Don’t you dare, unless you want YOUR secret identity to be the talk of the tavern tonight.

  In retrospect it probably didn’t look much different to the glare she was already glaring, but he seemed to take the message on board regardless.

  “No reason, I’m sure,” he drawled.

  “Well. Go on, then.” Tam made shooing motions at Corvin, who stared at him with a faint look of outrage.

  “Go on what?”

  “Go on and be grumpy assholes together! That’s what you and Bracklethorn used to do, right?”

  Now Corvin and Runa were both glaring at Tam.

  “I have a better idea,” said Corvin eventually, and smoothly shut the door in Runa’s face, before she could do the same to them.

  Great. Even the town prick thought she was too grumpy to spend time with. Which she didn’t mind. She didn’t want to spend time with anyone.

  She stared out the window, up the hill towards the insufficient town wall and the Cauldron beyond. If a loose curse stampeded past now, would she jump on it?

  Would that fix anything?

  ***

  Nobody else bothered her for the rest of the day.