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Nerissa had been home enough times now that Malphis no longer waited at the front door for her.
He had, at first.
Everyone had hovered those first few visits. Her mother watched her eat. Her father kept finding reasons to pass through whichever room Nerissa happened to be sitting in. Aradia called twice before Nerissa had even made it back to the base Advent stayed in after her first visit. Malphis spent most of the second one pretending there was no particular reason he happened to be in the kitchen every time she came downstairs.
They’d mostly stopped doing that.
Now Nerissa could turn up and find Malphis asleep on the sofa, one arm hanging off the edge and a book facedown on his chest.
She preferred that.
Other things were taking longer.
She still opened the wrong drawer for cutlery. There were photographs everywhere from years she hadn’t been there for. Malpha had a husband and children. Aradia had apparently gone through at least five different hairstyles. Malphis was old enough to have opinions about mortgages.
Eventually, the Ravencroft house came into view around the bend.
Nerissa slowed.
She didn’t really mean to. One second she was walking beside Shiori, the next she was staring down the slope at the dark roof and crooked west tower, trying to match it to the version that still lived somewhere in her head.
Shiori made it a few steps further before noticing.
“You coming?” she called back.
“Yeah.”
Nerissa didn’t move.
Shiori looked from her to the house. “Nerissa.”
“I said yeah.”
“You’re still standing there.”
“I know.”
A smile tugged at Shiori’s mouth.
Nerissa finally started walking again. Their fingers brushed briefly as she passed.
“Don’t even,” Nerissa muttered.
Shiori blinked innocently. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
The Ravencroft house stood below them beyond a fence of black iron and thornvine. It had been rebuilt around the original stone foundations so many times that none of it quite belonged to the same period anymore. Her father had added the west tower during a brief obsession with astronomical instruments. Her mother had turned most of it into storage within the year.
Dark slate covered the roof. Little horned gargoyles crouched along the gutters and screamed whenever leaves or ash clogged the drains. Two enormous ravens sat on the chimney, both with red eyes glowing in the heat haze.
One sneezed smoke.
This time Shiori stopped.
Nerissa looked back at her. “Now who’s standing still?”
Shiori ignored that and pointed toward the chimney. “Is that normal?”
“No.”
The raven sneezed again.
“It has a cold,” Nerissa said like it was the most normal thing.
Shiori frowned. “Can ravens get colds?”
“Probably.”
“You were a raven once.”
Nerissa stared at her. “My mother was a raven.”
“Right.”
“I have always looked like this.”
Shiori’s mouth twitched. “Mostly.”
“You’re very funny.”
“I know.”
Nerissa kept walking, then realized Shiori still hadn’t followed.
She turned.
Shiori was adjusting the contents of her bag again.
Nerissa smiled. “Oh, you’re nervous.”
“I’m not.” Shiori tugged at the strap.
“You’ve checked that bag four times,” Nerissa said.
Shiori glanced down at it. “I don’t want the bottle to break.”
“The bottle?”
“The wine.”
Nerissa slowed. “What wine?”
Shiori looked at her. “The wine I brought for your mother.”
There was a beat.
“My mom doesn’t drink wine.”
Shiori’s fingers flexed around the bag strap.
Nerissa managed to keep a straight face for all of two seconds.
“You told me she did.”
“No, I told you Aradia always brings wine when she comes over.”
Shiori stared at her. “Those are not remotely the same thing.”
“I know.”
“You let me buy a bottle anyway.”
“I didn’t know you bought one.”
Shiori looked down at the bag like it had personally betrayed her.
Nerissa laughed. “Aradia will drink it.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It won’t go to waste either way.”
“I was trying to make a good impression.”
That softened Nerissa’s smile a little.
“You could’ve shown up empty-handed, you know.”
“Yes, well. I didn’t.”
Nerissa bumped her shoulder against Shiori’s.
“My mom will like you.”
Shiori adjusted the bag again.
She’d changed twice before they left. What she’d finally settled on was almost restrained by Shiori standards: pale blouse, black skirt, heavy boots, a dark coat she didn’t need in the heat. Her hair was pinned away from one side of her face with the little silver ornament Nerissa liked.
She’d almost told her that earlier.
Almost.
“You know they know about you,” Nerissa continued.
Shiori gave her a flat look. “That isn’t helping.”
“They’ll all like you.”
“They’ve never met me.”
“My mom likes Bijou.”
“Everyone likes Bijou.”
Nerissa shrugged. “Dad likes Mococo.”
“Your father watched Mococo bite a gargoyle.”
“That maaayy have helped.”
Shiori fiddled with the bag again.
They slowly continued down the road.
Packed red dirt gradually gave way to old blackstone as they reached the property. Heat hung over the fields farther out, where some antlered thing with too many legs grazed among dry yellow grass.
“So,” Shiori said after a while.
Nerissa glanced over. “So?”
“What exactly did you tell them?”
Nerissa’s stomach sank a little.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Shiori said. “Oh.”
“Normal things.”
“Nerissa.”
“What?”
Shiori narrowed her eyes. “How normal?”
Nerissa refused to meet her eyes.
Shiori noticed immediately.
“You told them something embarrassing.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Nerissa.”
Nerissa sighed. “I told them about the prison.”
“That could mean literally anything.”
“Our escape.”
Shiori’s attention went back to the road.
“They asked,” Nerissa added quickly.
“I figured they did.”
“I told them about Bijou. The twins.” Nerissa hesitated. “You.”
Shiori glanced sideways. “Me separately?”
“You did most of the planning.”
They walked for a little while.
Nerissa kicked a loose bit of blackstone into the ditch.
“I might’ve also said you kept me sane.”
Shiori’s head turned so fast Nerissa almost laughed.
“Which was rude of me,” Nerissa added quickly.
“Nerissa.”
“I cried a lot the first time I came home, alright?”
That took most of the amusement out of Shiori’s face.
Nerissa’s expression turned almost pleading. “Don’t get weird.”
“I’m not getting weird.”
“You are. I can tell.”
Shiori looked down at herself as if checking. “I’m walking down a road.”
“Strangely.”
“Fuck you.”
Nerissa grinned.
The gate opened before they reached it. Runes set into the iron flashed a dull, sullen red.
Shiori stopped again.
“Does it know I’m with you?” she asked.
“I assume so.”
Shiori looked a little wary for once.
Nerissa gestured toward the gate. “If it attacks you, dad knows how to fix it.”
Shiori stared.
Nerissa broke into a grin. “I’m kidding.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
They made it halfway up the path before the front door opened.
Malphis leaned against the frame.
He’d grown into their father’s height without quite getting his build. His horns rose higher than Nerissa remembered, and his wings were folded loosely behind him, the feathers untidy enough that their mother would complain the second she noticed.
His hair was longer now too, ends falling into his eyes.
Nerissa kept forgetting that.
“Hey.” She wasn’t quite used to the depth of his voice yet, either.
“Hi”
His eyes moved to Shiori.
“So you’re Shiori.”
Shiori held his gaze. “So I’ve been told.”
He smiled.
Nerissa sighed. “Don’t encourage her.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
Shiori held out her hand.
Malphis looked at it, then at her.
“A handshake?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
He shook it once, then reached for Nerissa’s bag and took it before she could object. When he put a hand out for Shiori’s, she pulled hers closer against her side.
“No.”
Malphis dropped his hand immediately.
“Okay.” He nodded toward it instead. “What’s in there?”
“Wine,” Shiori said.
“Why?”
“Apparently your sister lies.”
Malphis snorted. “I believe that.”
Nerissa shoved him toward the door.
“You’re both awful.”
“Mom’s been cooking since noon,” Malphis said as he went inside, changing the subject.
From somewhere deeper in the house came a shout of, “Malphis?”
He leaned through the doorway. “They’re here!”
Something crashed.
A child yelled.
Another child immediately yelled louder.
Shiori went rigid beside Nerissa.
“How many children are here?”
“Three.”
Shiori turned to her. “You said two.”
“Oh. I forgot Malpha was bringing the youngest.”
“You forgot a person?”
“She has a lot of them.”
“Three is not a lot.”
Nerissa listened to another shriek from inside. “It’s a lot when they’re all screaming.”
A little girl came around the corner at full speed.
“Auntie Rissa!”
Nerissa barely had time to bend before the child slammed into her hard enough to make her stagger.
“Jesus– hi.”
Small arms locked around her waist.
Nerissa rubbed beneath the girl’s halo.
“You got taller.”
“You said that last time,” the girl beamed.
“Then stop doing it.”
“I can’t.”
“Try harder.”
Another child appeared behind her, then the third. All three noticed Shiori at once.
Shiori looked back at them.
The youngest pointed.
“Is that the ink lady?”
Nerissa shut her eyes.
“Malphis.”
His voice came from the hall. “What?”
“You told them?”
“Told them what?”
“‘The ink lady?’”
“Well,” Malphis called back, “she is.”
Shiori leaned closer to Nerissa. “I like it.”
“Don’t.”
The eldest child was already approaching Shiori.
“Can you make stuff?”
Shiori looked down at her. “Yeah.”
“Make a dragon.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
The girl barely missed a beat. “Hi. Make a dragon.”
Nerissa laughed.
Shiori shot her a look. A moment later a thread of black slipped from her sleeve.
That ended Nerissa’s relevance immediately.
The children crowded around while the ink gathered above Shiori’s palm. It folded itself into four legs, a tail, wings–
The head didn’t quite work.
Nerissa bit the inside of her cheek.
Shiori caught her expression.
“Shush.”
Nerissa looked at the little creature. “It’s cute.”
One of the children squinted at it.
“It looks like a frog.”
Nerissa lost whatever fight she’d been putting up and started laughing.
Shiori flattened the thing into a puddle of ink.
All three children screamed in protest.
“Your family is horrible,” Shiori said.
“Nerissa?” Another voice called.
Nerissa’s mother appeared at the end of the hall.
Shiori straightened. The ink vanished so quickly up her sleeve Nerissa almost missed it.
Her mother looked much as she had on Nerissa’s last visit. Dark hair with deep red under highlights, small swept-down horns, black feathers lying sleek along her shoulders and forearms. Pieces of what she had once been, before magic and marriage and Hell had made something else of her.
Nerissa could look at her for hours these days.
It still happened sometimes, though – that strange, sick little jolt of remembering the years when she’d tried to picture her mother’s face in the dark and couldn’t quite get it right, the memories slipping through her fingers like sand.
Her mother crossed the hall and hugged Nerissa first.
“Hi, baby.”
“Hi, Mom.”
She drew back just enough to look at her. “You’re thin.”
“I was just here last week.”
“You look thinner than you did then.”
“I’m exactly the same,” Nerissa complained.
Her mother squeezed her again before letting go.
Then she turned to Shiori.
Nerissa watched Shiori’s shoulders creep upward.
“Hi,” her mother said.
“Hello.”
“I’m glad you came.”
Shiori nodded too quickly. “I brought wine.”
Nerissa’s mother blinked. “Oh.”
Nerissa bit her cheek.
Her mother took the bottle from Shiori and carefully set it on the table next to them. “Aradia will drink it.”
Nerissa spread her hands. “See?”
Shiori looked betrayed.
Then Nerissa’s mother lifted her arms slightly and stopped there.
“Are you a hug person?”
Shiori stared at her.
“Sometimes.”
“What about today?”
A second passed.
“Yeah. Today is okay.”
The hug was brief. Shiori’s hands hovered awkwardly at first, then rested lightly against her back.
“Food’s almost ready,” Nerissa’s mother said when she drew back after a moment and headed back toward the kitchen. “Your father’s outside pretending the grill needs three hours of supervision.”
“It does,” a deep voice called through the open back door.
Nerissa’s mother lowered her voice, turning to the girls conspiratorially. “It does not.”
Nerissa glanced at Shiori.
Shiori was trying not to smile.
“Welcome home,” Nerissa muttered.
Her father soon came inside carrying a platter big enough to feed Advent twice over.
A demon lord. Once a military commander.
Currently wearing an apron with a cartoon hellhound on it.
He put the platter down and looked at Nerissa.
“Rissa.”
“Dad.”
He kissed her forehead.
Nerissa endured it with as much dignity as she could manage.
Then he noticed Shiori.
She looked up.
And up.
“Oh.”
Nerissa laughed.
Shiori frowned at her. “You said he was tall.”
“I mean, he is.”
“You could’ve been clearer how tall.”
Her father looked between them. “I’m standing right here.”
Shiori blinked. “Sorry.”
He looked down at her. “You’re Shiori.”
“Yes. That’s me.”
He offered his hand. Shiori shook it.
“Thanks for bringing her back.”
Her hand stopped in his.
Nerissa looked at her father.
He looked briefly as though he wanted to shove the words back into his mouth. Then cleared his throat.
“And the others,” he added.
Shiori lowered her eyes to their joined hands.
“It wasn’t just me.”
Nerissa developed a sudden, desperate wish for something in the kitchen to catch fire.
Her father released Shiori’s hand.
“You like steak?” he asked instead.
Shiori blinked. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
He turned away and immediately started arguing with Malphis about the tongs.
Shiori watched him go.
Aradia came through the back door a few minutes later.
Little silver chains had been looped around her horns since the last time Nerissa saw her.
Or maybe longer.
She couldn’t remember.
“Hi, Rissa.”
“Hi.”
Aradia hugged Nerissa sideways on the way past, then spotted Shiori.
“So that’s her.”
Nerissa put down her fork.
“Can everyone stop saying things like that?”
Aradia pulled out a chair. “Like what?”
“Like she’s some animal I found outside.”
Shiori looked at her plate. “I technically found you.”
Nerissa turned toward her. “You know what I mean.”
Aradia sat down. “I’ve been hearing your name for months.”
Shiori looked at Nerissa.
Nerissa became very interested in the ceiling.
“Oh, relax,” Aradia said. “She talks about all of her prison mates.”
“Thanks,” Nerissa muttered.
Aradia grinned. “She talks about you the most.”
“Aradia.”
Shiori’s cheeks pinked.
Aradia looked delighted with herself.
Dinner didn’t exactly calm down after that.
Malpha’s eldest wanted Shiori to make an ink sword. Malphis wanted to know if she could make a second Nerissa, which led Malpha to tell him not to give the children (or Aradia) ideas. Their father asked for the sauce and nobody was listening to him. Their mother asked Shiori whether she liked the potatoes, then put another spoonful on her plate before she could answer.
By the time Malpha’s youngest asked, “Are you Auntie Rissa’s girlfriend?” Nerissa had stopped keeping track of where the children were.
Her fork slipped against the plate.
Malpha closed her eyes. “Sorry.”
The child looked up at his mother. “For what?”
“Nothing,” Malpha said quickly.
Beside Nerissa, Shiori became deeply interested in her food.
Everyone else at the table suddenly discovered their own.
Nerissa cleared her throat.
“We’re…”
Nothing followed.
She looked at Shiori.
Shiori looked back.
The boy waited.
“Sort of,” Shiori eventually said.
Nerissa swallowed. “Sort of?”
Shiori shrugged. “Did you have a better answer?”
Nerissa opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“No.”
Malphis made a noise into his drink.
The boy nodded.
“Okay.”
Then he turned and asked his father for bread, already moving on.
Under the table, Shiori bumped her knee against Nerissa’s.
Nerissa didn’t move hers away.
Nobody asked Shiori about the Cell.
Nerissa had made sure of that.
Her family knew what they needed to know. She hadn’t wanted to answer those questions when she first came home. She wasn’t going to sit there while Shiori got asked to tell the worst parts of her life between dinner and dessert.
So her mother asked if Bijou still hated mushrooms.
Malpha wanted to know whether Mococo’s ankle had healed.
Aradia asked if Fuwawa had finished the book she’d borrowed.
Her father, halfway through cutting something on his plate, looked over at Shiori.
“Roof still leak over the north room?”
Shiori blinked. “It does.”
He pointed his knife vaguely toward Nerissa. “I told Rissa I’d come to fix that.”
Nerissa frowned. “No, you didn’t.”
Her father looked at her. “I did.”
“When?”
“Last time you were here.”
Nerissa went uncharacteristically quiet.
“Oh.”
Her father nodded. “Exactly.”
Shiori hid a smile in her glass.
After dinner, everyone started moving at once.
Shiori got up with the rest of them and reached for her plate.
“You can sit,” Nerissa said.
Shiori picked it up anyway. “So can you.”
“I live here.”
Malphis passed behind them with a stack of dishes balanced against one arm.
“Debatable.”
Nerissa turned. “Excuse me?”
“You live with those other girls.”
“This is still my house.”
He nodded toward the plates in Shiori’s hands. “Then help.”
“Fuck you.”
“Language,” their mother called from the kitchen.
Nerissa immediately pointed after him. “Malphis said it first.”
He twisted around so fast one of the plates slipped. “I did not!”
“You thought it.”
Their mother appeared in the doorway before he could answer, took one look at Shiori and added two more plates to the stack in her arms.
“Kitchen, please.”
Shiori looked down.
Then at Nerissa.
Then went.
Nerissa watched her disappear through the doorway.
Malpha was already at the sink, sleeves pushed up, halo dimmed to a soft ring while she rinsed plates under the tap.
Shiori held up the plates. “Where do these go?”
“Put them on the counter.”
After Shiori put them down Malpha nudged a towel toward her with one elbow.
“Dry?”
For a while they worked without saying much.
Water ran. Ceramic clicked softly against the counter.
Then Malpha’s middle child tore through the kitchen wearing one of Shiori’s ink creatures on her head like a hat.
Shiori stopped mid-dry.
“How did you do that?”
The child shrieked and disappeared around the corner.
Malpha laughed.
“She likes you.”
Shiori looked after her. “I made one frog-dragon.”
“Apparently that was enough.”
Shiori went back to the plate in her hands.
Another one came from the sink.
Then another.
Then Malpha said, “Nerissa told us you kept trying.”
Shiori’s hands slowed.
Malpha kept her eyes on the dish she was rinsing.
“She said every time a route failed, you found another one.”
Shiori folded the towel around the edge of the plate.
“It wasn’t–”
“I know.”
The tap ran a little longer.
Malpha set the plate aside and finally glanced over.
“Still.”
Shiori looked at her.
Malpha gave a small shrug.
“Thank you.”
Shiori looked back down at the dish in her hands.
After a second, she started drying again.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Of course.”
At some point in the evening, Malpha’s children had more ore less claimed Shiori.
There wasn’t really another way to describe it.
Nerissa found her on the living room floor, one child tucked against her side and another stretched out on their stomach in front of her. The youngest sat between her knees, trying with great concentration to coax a thin ribbon of ink up the curtains.
Shiori caught it before it could get too far.
“Stop.”
The ink stopped dead.
The boy looked up at her. “Why?”
“Because your grandmother will kill me.”
“That’s true,” Nerissa called from the sofa.
Shiori glanced over. “You could help.”
“I’m helping.”
“You’re lying down and watching me.”
“I’m recovering.”
Shiori raised an eyebrow. “From what?”
Nerissa lifted one hand and gestured vaguely at the room. “All of this.”
Malphis was upside down in an armchair, his legs hanging over one side. Aradia had claimed most of the other sofa and was picking idly through a bowl of something Nerissa hadn’t bothered identifying.
“Because every time I come over, you’re here.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
Nerissa reached for the nearest cushion.
Aradia got there first and threw it at her.
Nerissa caught it against her chest.
“See?” she said to Shiori. “Hostile environment.”
Shiori gave her a deeply unimpressed look.
Then the youngest child climbed into her lap.
Shiori stiffened.
He settled himself against her as if there had never been any question about it and tipped his head back.
“Story.”
Shiori looked down at him. “I don’t know children’s stories.”
“You know all stories.”
“That isn’t how that works.”
“Story.”
Shiori looked desperately toward Nerissa.
Nerissa tucked the cushion behind her head. “Good luck.”
“You’re useless.”
“Mhm.”
Shiori sighed and adjusted the child before he could slide off her knee.
“Alright. There was a king–”
One of the girls interrupted immediately.
“Was he evil?”
“He was a king.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
Nerissa smiled into the cushion.
The story involved a king who had hidden his name across seven different books so that nobody could use it against him. Nerissa recognized pieces of it here and there, though Shiori had changed enough that she couldn’t remember where she’d heard the original.
There had almost certainly been more executions in the original.
The children kept interrupting.
Why seven books? Why not eight? Could the king fly? Did he have horns? Was there a dragon?
“There is now,” Shiori said after the fourth demand.
A little ink dragon climbed onto the back of her hand.
The first child fell asleep somewhere around the fifth chapter.
The second made it almost to the seventh.
By then the room had gone quieter. Malphis had given up pretending he wasn’t tired and was slumped sideways in his chair. Aradia had stopped talking. Shiori’s voice had softened without Nerissa noticing when it happened, the story continuing even after there was nobody left awake enough to interrupt her.
The youngest lasted until the end.
Barely.
His head sank against Shiori’s chest before she finished the final sentence.
Shiori looked down.
He was completely asleep.
She shifted one arm beneath him so he wouldn’t slide.
A few minutes later Malpha came into the room.
She stopped when she saw them.
“Oh.”
Shiori looked up at her.
Malpha nodded toward the child in her arms. “Want me to take him?”
Shiori glanced down again.
The other two were asleep beside her too, one curled against her hip, the eldest’s head resting against her thigh.
“It’s fine.”
“You sure?”
Shiori adjusted the little boy when he stirred.
“Yeah. They’re asleep.”
Malpha watched her for a moment, then nodded.
“Okay.”
She left them there.
Shiori rested her hand against the boy’s back.
His small wing was caught awkwardly beneath him. She eased it free, careful of the feathers, and settled it over her arm instead.
When she looked across the room a little later, Nerissa was already watching her, something unreadable in her expression.
Nerissa immediately tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling.
They slipped outside once the children had finally been carried upstairs.
Only as far as the back steps.
The stone had cooled enough to sit on comfortably. Emberflies drifted through the garden, blinking orange between the thornbushes, and somewhere farther out in the dark something gave a low, warbling cry.
For a while they listened to the rest of the house through the open windows.
Malphis and their father were arguing again. Malpha was trying to get one of the children back into bed. Aradia laughed, loud enough that Nerissa could pick her out over the rest.
Nerissa ran her thumb along a crack in the step.
“Sometimes I still don’t know who they’re talking about.”
Shiori glanced over.
Nerissa kept her eyes on the garden.
“They’ll mention somebody like I’m supposed to know them. Or Malpha tells a story about the kids when they were babies and everyone else remembers it.”
She pulled one knee up.
“I met her husband after they’d already been married longer than I’d been alive before the Cell.”
Shiori winced. “That’s a horrible way to put it.”
“I did the math once.”
“Why?”
Nerissa sighed. “Felt like ruining my own evening, apparently.”
“Fair.”
That got a small laugh out of her.
“Malpha’s kids knew who I was before I knew them,” she said. “From stories, I guess.”
Shiori waited.
“And Malphis…” Nerissa paused, trying to find the shape of it. “He has people I’ve never met. Jobs I don’t remember. He had an entire adolescence.”
“With terrible hair, apparently.”
Nerissa laughed.
“Oh, god. Yeah. It was awful.”
“Aradia showed me pictures.”
Nerissa smiled.
Shiori leaned back on her hands.
After a moment she said, “Malpha’s youngest asked you to cut his food.”
Nerissa glanced over. “What?”
“At dinner.”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t ask anyone else.”
Nerissa shrugged. “Kids are weird.”
Shiori nudged the side of Nerissa’s shoe with her own.
Nerissa rested her shoulder against hers.
They stayed like that for a while.
Then Shiori said, “Your mother knows what tea I drink.”
Nerissa blinked. “She does?”
“She asked if I still drink the black one with orange.”
“Oh.”
“You told her.”
“Probably.”
Shiori’s attention drifted back toward the open kitchen window.
“Malphis knew not to hug me.”
“Yeah.”
“And Malpha knew about the escape routes.”
Nerissa picked at the stone.
“Sorry.”
Shiori frowned. “For what?”
“I don’t know.”
Shiori pulled a loose thread from her sleeve.
The voices inside drifted on.
After a while she said, “It’s weird.”
Nerissa looked over. “What is?”
Shiori made a small gesture toward the house.
“This.”
Nerissa waited.
Shiori rubbed the thread between her fingers.
“Your family remembers things about me.”
“Yeah.”
“And your niece climbed on me.”
“Nephew.”
Shiori went still.
Then, “Fuck.”
Nerissa burst out laughing.
“I thought I had them!”
“You were doing so well.”
Nerissa was still laughing when Shiori shoved her shoulder.
Nerissa was still laughing when she put her hand down between them on the step.
A second later Shiori’s fingers brushed hers.
Neither of them moved away.
Then Shiori turned her hand and laced their fingers together.
From the kitchen window, Malphis shouted, “Are you two making out?”
Nerissa jerked upright, much more flustered than Shiori had ever seen her.
“No!”
There was a beat.
“Okay!”
Shiori bit back a smirk.
Nerissa covered her face with the other.
“I hate him.”
Shiori squeezed her fingers. “Mm.”
“Shut up.”
Nerissa’s mother made up the guest room for Shiori.
Shiori carried her bag inside, set it on the chair, and stood there for a moment looking around.
Nerissa lingered in the doorway.
“You don’t have to sleep in here.”
Shiori looked over.
The words sounded worse than they had in Nerissa’s head.
“I mean,” Nerissa added, “if you don’t want to.”
“Where else would I sleep?”
“My room.”
One of Shiori’s eyebrows went up.
Nerissa looked somewhere over her shoulder.
“We sleep together all the time.”
“We do.”
Nerissa made a helpless little gesture. “So…”
Shiori waited. “So?”
Nerissa’s wings gave an irritated little twitch behind her. “Oh, shut up.”
Shiori’s mouth twitched.
Nerissa sighed and finally looked at her.
“Do you want to?”
Shiori picked her bag back up.
“Yeah.”
The answer came so easily that Nerissa felt heat climb into her face anyway.
“Okay.”
Shiori crossed the room. As she passed, her fingers caught briefly around Nerissa’s wrist, then slipped lower until Nerissa turned her hand and laced their fingers together.
She led her down the hall.
Her bedroom was at the far end.
The door looked just as she remembered.
The door still had the same scratches near the bottom where Malphis had once tried to pry it open with something stolen from their father’s workshop. The handle had been replaced, but the dent beside it was still there. It had stickers strewn across in very thought out places.
Nerissa pushed it open.
Shiori stopped just behind her.
The room had changed less than the rest of the house.
Her mother had cleaned it. Obviously. The bedding was newer, and someone had replaced the cracked pane in the window.
Almost everything else had been left alone.
Books crowded the shelves, some shoved sideways across the tops where Nerissa had run out of room. Old sheet music filled a box beneath the desk. A black feather charm hung above the window, sun-bleached almost grey. The edge of the dresser was still covered in small knife marks where Nerissa had apparently once thought knives were a reasonable way to cure boredom.
Shiori walked in slowly.
“So, this was your room.”
Nerissa shut the door behind them.
“Yeah.”
“You said it was bigger.”
“I mean, I was smaller back then, too.”
“That would explain it.”
Nerissa rolled her eyes.
Shiori smiled and wandered farther in.
Nerissa sat on the edge of the bed and watched her.
Shiori’s fingers trailed over the spine of a book, the feather charm by the window, the edge of the desk.
Outside, the glow from the garden threw thin red lines across the window.
Eventually she came back and sat beside Nerissa.
The mattress dipped beneath her weight.
Their shoulders nearly touched.
For a while neither of them said anything.
It was strange having Shiori here.
She’d slept here before the Cell. Hidden under the blankets when her mother called her for breakfast. Stayed up reading until her eyes hurt. Argued with Aradia through the wall. Let Malphis climb into bed after nightmares and threatened him the next morning if he told anyone.
A whole life that had once felt so ordinary she’d barely noticed living it.
Beside her, Shiori ran one finger along the seam of the bedspread.
“I imagined Malphis shorter.”
Nerissa turned her head.
“What?”
“From the way you talked about him.”
“Oh.”
“I knew he was younger. I just wasn’t prepared for…” Shiori gestured vaguely. “That.”
Nerissa snorted. “What?”
“He’s nearly your father’s height!”
“I know.”
“That must be weird.”
“Yeah.”
Shiori nodded.
Nerissa looked down at their hands resting between them.
“You know, when I used to tell you about them…”
Shiori waited.
Nerissa rubbed her thumb over one of Shiori’s rings.
“I thought half of it was gone.”
Shiori’s expression changed, just slightly.
Nerissa kept looking at their hands.
“I couldn’t remember Mom’s face.”
“Yeah… I know.”
Shiori turned her hand beneath Nerissa’s.
Their palms settled together.
After a few seconds she said, “They’re a lot like what you told me.”
Nerissa glanced over.
Shiori gave a small shrug.
“Different, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Nerissa leaned sideways until her shoulder rested against Shiori’s.
Shiori shifted, making room without thinking about it.
Later, getting into bed somehow made it worse.
They settled awkwardly at first, because apparently sleeping beside each other almost every night meant nothing once it happened under the same roof as Nerissa’s parents.
Nerissa lay stiffly on her back.
Shiori lay beside her.
There was almost a foot of space between them.
Nerissa stared at the ceiling.
Shiori stared at the ceiling.
A minute passed.
Maybe two.
“This is stupid,” Nerissa whispered.
“Very.”
“You’re all the way over there.”
“I’m respecting your childhood.”
Nerissa turned onto her side.
Shiori did the same.
Their noses were almost touching.
“Hi,” Shiori whispered.
Nerissa smiled despite herself.
“Hi.”
“You’re so weird.”
“You brought me here.”
“I’m reconsidering.”
“No, you’re not.”
Nerissa reached across the gap beneath the blanket.
Shiori’s hand was already moving.
Their fingers met somewhere in the middle and tangled together.
For another few seconds, they stayed like that.
Then Nerissa tugged.
Shiori slid closer without argument.
Shiori woke sometime in the middle of the night.
For a few seconds, she didn’t know where she was.
The ceiling was unfamiliar. Something scratched softly across the roof outside. Old warding magic hummed beneath the floorboards, so different from the magic of the Cell that her half-awake mind couldn’t make sense of it.
Then Nerissa shifted beside her.
Shiori turned her head.
Nerissa was asleep on her stomach, face turned toward her. One wing had fallen open sometime during the night, the tips of the feathers resting across Shiori’s hip.
The room was dark except for the faint red glow slipping through the window.
Shiori looked past Nerissa at the shelves.
She knew this room.
Not really.
But she knew Malphis had thrown pebbles at that window when Nerissa refused to let him in. She knew which sister had been sensible and which one Nerissa remembered first by the sound of her voice coming through the wall. She knew Nerissa had hidden books beneath the mattress and sheet music behind the dresser.
She knew the little carved bird on the shelf had a broken wing because a boy who was now taller than both of them had dropped it when he was seven hundred and then cried harder than Nerissa had.
For years, all of it had existed only in Nerissa’s voice.
Stories whispered in the dark when there was nothing else to do. Names Shiori had learned without faces. A house Nerissa had described room by room even as she forgot what some of it looked like.
Now Shiori was lying in the middle of it.
Nerissa made a small sound in her sleep.
Her wing shifted over Shiori’s hip.
Then she moved closer without waking, forehead brushing Shiori’s shoulder as if she had done it a thousand times in this bed.
Shiori stayed still for a moment.
Then she pulled the blanket a little higher over Nerissa’s back and closed her eyes again.
The next morning, halfway through breakfast, Nerissa’s father came in from outside and set something small beside Shiori’s plate.
She looked down.
A black metal token.
The Ravencroft raven crest was stamped into one side, a simple ward mark into the other.
She picked it up between two fingers.
“What’s this?”
Nerissa’s father had already turned toward the coffee.
She turned the token over in her hand.
“Gate.”
Shiori looked at him. “For the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He glanced at her then, brows drawing together slightly.
“So you can come in without her.”
Shiori looked down at the token again.
The metal was still faintly cold from outside.
Then she closed her fingers around it and slipped it into her pocket.
Leaving took nearly an hour.
It always did, Nerissa warned her.
Her mother packed food for all of Advent despite Nerissa insisting repeatedly that they had food at home. Malphis appeared twice with things Nerissa had apparently forgotten, neither of which she remembered owning. Her father checked the weather, then checked it again as if the sky might have changed its mind in the last five minutes.
By the time they finally made it through the gate, Nerissa was carrying two extra bags and muttering under her breath.
Shiori waited until they were halfway down the road before reaching into her pocket.
The little black token sat against her palm.
Nerissa’s steps slowed.
“What’s that?”
“Your father gave it to me.”
Nerissa stopped.
Shiori held it out.
Nerissa took the token and turned it over.
Then she looked back toward the house.
“He gave you a gate token?”
“Apparently.”
“He took six hundred years to give Malpha’s husband one.”
Shiori took it back from her.
“Maybe he likes me more.”
Nerissa made an offended noise and bumped her shoulder hard enough into Shiori’s to knock her half a step sideways.
“Don’t get cocky.”
Shiori caught her hand before she could pull away.
Nerissa rolled her eyes, but laced their fingers together anyway.