Page 53 of Homeward for a Spell

“To getting paid,” Bramble adds, their voice already slurred at the edges.

“To never being this gods-be-cursed cold again!” Nura shifts closer to the fire and takes a long swig of her own mead.

“To Phi Runesong,” Sage says, meeting her eyes across the fire.

Araphi has to look away.

“Where will you all go after Kingfisher, once we’re all paid?” Nura asks, looking around the fire.

“I’ll be going back to Tule, of course,” Bramble says. “Can’t stay away from the village longer than I must, the way things are.”

Araphi reaches around the circle to squeeze Bramble’s hand, but they slip quickly from her grasp. “I’ve got to use the washroom,” they say as they rise, by which they must mean the snow dunes behind the temple.

Perhaps she’s not the only one who finds herself dreading their return trip, and the parting at its end.

“It’s back to Kingfisher for me,” Nura jumps in. “But no more fighting pits. Now that I’ll have plenty of coin to give my family, maybe I’ll keep traveling. Maybe I’ll take up animal care somewhere. I’ve always been good with them, but my mother said, ‘No one can make a life’s work out of befriending dogs.’ ”

Araphi lets herself laugh at that and raises her mead. “To proving our parents wrong.”

“What about you then, Phi?” Nura asks. “Going home or headed elsewhere?”

“Well. I suppose there are…responsibilities I’ve been putting off back home. Things I’ve been running from. But if I’ve faced down a dragon god’s ghost, perhaps it’s time to face them,” she says in the same moment the realization comes to her.

Across the campfire, Sage goes very still.

Araphi wants to explain, to protest, to reassure the ranger that she doesn’t mean it like that. But exactly what she means, she isn’t certain. Not yet.

Perhaps for tonight, she can stop worrying and simply be. Here. Now. With this adventure party she’s come to trust, and certain party members she’s come to—

No. She can’t dwell on that, or it will start her worrying all over again.

“And you, Remy?” Araphi prompts rather than continuing to stew.

“Once the Client’s man takes the tooth off our hands and gives us our purse, it’s little of your business where I go next,” he answers, though he’s grinning.

“You mean they don’t need to see the artifact first?” Araphi asks. She’d assumed that something so dearly sought would need to be in the Client’s palm before they received their fee, but what does she really know about the business of adventuring?

“He’ll be equipped with a spell to verify the tooth’s origins and properties,” Remy explains. “The Client is otherwise occupied, and I’m not riding all the way to Hazelbend to turn it over.”

Hazelbend?

The name rings deafeningly through her head, drowning out whatever Sage replies. Surely Remy doesn’t mean Hazelbend? As in her Aunt Menorath’s summer home, where she and Araphi’s mother are currently in residence, making preparations for the wedding before wintertime renders travel across the kingdom too unpleasant for their liking? But there’s no reason the Client’s man should head there; nobody in the little hamlet surrounding the estate has anywhere near enough denaris to pay the party their promised fee. They couldn’t save enough in a lifetime to afford it.

Only a Clauneck could.

It’s for a good cause.

That’s what she’d promised the spirit of the beast whose bones once rested at the river’s bottom, and whose tooth Remy is determined to hand over. She’d even believed it. But if her aunt and uncle are involved, that couldn’t possibly be true.

Araphi swallows hard. Surely there’s some other estate or small village in the kingdom with the same name? She twists her pendants, biting the inside of her cheek as she attempts to stop herself from panicking.

Sage finds Araphi’s gaze once more, lifting an eyebrow.

Araphi shakes her head subtly as an answer, then stands. “I have to…”

“Use the washroom?” Remy guesses wryly.

That excuse won’t do; she needs a moment alone to think, not to cross paths with Bramble. “No, I’ve just got to get something out of my bedroll. I’ll be back in a moment.” Setting down her mead to pick up a lantern, Araphi hurries away down the hall, her boots crunching over the dusting of snow that’s fallen through the holes in the roof. She makes her way past the chamber where they’ve been bedding down and into the temple proper, where the painted dragon fades and peels away on the wall behind the smashed altar. It’s cold so far from the fire, but quiet too, so that she can concentrate on every worried thought swirling through her head all at once.