Chapter 19

T he evening of Dae’s thirtieth birthday was a quiet, awkward affair. Not terrible, as Calya pointed out. Not as bad as the shouting and threats and slammed doors of the last time Dae had set foot in her parents’ house. It occupied the space between progress and marginal gains.

“My studies are going well,” she offered as they ate dinner in silence.

A fire crackled in the hearth, a string of the season’s fashionable glass ornaments twinkling in the window as they caught the light. Small bowls of red beans were tucked near the entryways in observance of winter solstice traditions in the Radiant Isles. Incense sticks burned in the miniature shrine to the Empyrean Court set up on the mantle over the fire. It all made for a warm, inviting setting, one not reflected by the house’s inhabitants.

Her father grunted and changed topics, launching into a tirade about in-fighting amongst the various divisions of the Council of Standards and how it was delaying a bill he’d been working on.

Dae and Calya exchanged careful looks across the table. Her younger sister gave a tiny shrug, a contemptuous twist to her mouth. Resigned, Dae listened politely and made a few bland comments in agreement with Andrin Helm’s rant. She didn’t bring up her studies again. Nor did she engage when her father mentioned Helm Naval and some disgruntlement Raoul Avenor had mentioned, which got Calya riled up. Dae wondered why she’d bothered to come back at all. Perhaps Eunny had been right to stay in the Valley, incurring familial disappointment by letter. It wasn’t much of a gamble; neither of their parents would have come to chastise their children in person. She hadn’t even been back a full day, yet staying under the same roof as her parents when they would be in full holiday social mode for the rest of the week put a sourness in her stomach.

The meal disintegrated into a snappish argument between Calya and Andrin that didn’t resolve so much as break off in a jagged, taught silence. Andrin departed for his office while Calya went up to her room to sulk.

Dae watched her mother sip her wine. She didn’t speak, leaving it to Dae to murmur thanks as the housekeeper cleared away the dishes and left them with a fresh pot of tea.

“Do they fight like this often?” Dae finally asked.

Mina Helm sighed, fingers massaging her temples. “It’s been worse since you left. Your sister … lots of ideas, but she’s too headstrong. Doesn’t understand pace.”

Dae ignored the barbed comment. “From what she’s told me, it sounds like she has a vision for HNE. You’re both focusing more on Papa’s work with Transpo—”

“She can’t run HNE on her own.”

“She wouldn’t be on her own,” Dae said. “The department leads have been there for most of our lives. What about the office manager? All of the workers? Maybe don’t give her the whole company now, but why are you fighting her moving up? It’s what you two always wanted.”

“We wanted it for you both. Calya needs you to balance her impulses. HNE needs your business sense.”

“It doesn’t. I don’t have any, not to run it.”

“See, you know to be humble.”

“It isn’t modesty, Mother. Just truth.”

Her mother tutted. “You were forging connections. You handled projects. With Brint and the relationship a union with the Avenors—”

“That’s never happening.”

Disappointment washed over Dae. It carried a new level of bitterness than that which she’d felt the last time she’d tried and failed to get her mother to see.

Silence reigned once more. The familiar urge to break it, to apologize and have things be all right between them, lurked beneath Dae’s surface. A part of her that had always craved her mother’s approval, and so often received it. Validation and praise could be hers if only she would pay with the life she was trying to build for herself. But the part of her that yearned for such affection was small. Smaller than the last time she’d had to sit with Mina’s disappointment.

“I know you want—” Dae started to say.

Mina interrupted, her tone businesslike. “Starker mentioned wanting to retire in the next five years,” she said, naming Helm Naval’s research lead for magic applications. “He’d like an apprentice to train up to take over when it’s time. It could be you.”

“I…” Dae was taken aback. In a sense, it was ideal. She wouldn’t be thrown in without support, would have someone to guide her. She’d already learned so much in one semester of dedicated study. Working at Helm Naval would narrow her scope a considerable amount, but she could apply herself wholeheartedly if that was her job rather than maintaining social contacts favorable to Brint.

Calya would love it. It was her grand plan, where the two of them steered the company to new heights. The Helm daughters reunited once more. Perhaps that was her mother’s aim in dangling the proposition. To have her daughters close, where she could keep an eye on their aspirations. An invisible hand to nudge them along. Dae had always been the more tractable one, and she could rein in Calya’s wilder ambitions. And if Dae was close, she knew she’d end up consulting with her parents. Maybe try to avoid it at first while tempers were still fresh, but a vein of unconditional loyalty ran in her. A desire for her mother’s approval, maybe even respect. Dae held those wants, enough for her and Calya both. Couldn’t be truly rid of them. If she came back, that thorned vine would regrow, as insidious a recurrence as the poison in Rhell. Without the Valley, her studies, her friends, the connections and love she’d found in her new life—without them she knew she would fall back into old patterns. Mother’s intentions were not nefarious—she wanted what was best for all of them. But that rigidity dismissed individual wants.

Somehow, Calya was able to withstand the constant wearing against her will. Dae could not. It had taken years, but she knew herself well enough now. Had acknowledged it, and made an escape whose success relied on distance.

“We wouldn’t press for you to reconcile with Brint,” her mother said, interpreting Dae’s silence as consideration. “As much as your father would like it, our relationship with the Avenors existed before children came along.”

The offer was tempting. Safe. An easy way to return to so much that was familiar.

Dae thought of her father’s stubborn disinterest in the last several months of her life. Even longer, if she was honest with herself; since he’d gotten into the Transportation division and moved into the world of politics. She thought of how he butted heads with Calya over a company neither he nor his wife wanted to lead any longer, only manage from afar, whether out of pride or a reflexive need for control. Maybe even a bit of sentimentality, since Helm Naval’s early successes had made everything else possible.

A part of Dae could understand that. Could believe that her parents wanted what was best for the family as a whole. Even if it meant seeing their children as something they weren’t.

“Good,” Dae said at last. “Calya’s been putting together good work with AG. She’ll continue to do so without me.”

“Ana.”

Dae hesitated, but there was only so much rebellion in her. “Do you miss it?” she asked, voice soft, a plea hidden somewhere in the words. Dae called on her magic, drawing tea from her cup and turning it into a ball of ice she danced across her knuckles. “You used to be in the workshop every day.” She returned the ice to the cup, melting it back to liquid.

Mina regarded her for a long moment, face unreadable. Dae would never have managed such a trick when she was younger, her lessons only sporadic tutoring sessions. Even with her affinity for water magic, back then, she’d always had to expend more energy and focus on minor spells. Nothing like that effortless summoning of her light.

Mina’s hand lifted, and she gazed at it for a moment, fingers twitching. She returned her hand to her side. “No, I don’t.” A small, wistful smile answered Dae’s bald disappointment. “But perhaps we want different things of our lives.”

She went to a small desk and withdrew a folded piece of paper, placing it in front of Dae.

Dae opened it, eyebrows going up as she read. “Is this…?”

“It’s what we decided was a fair amount of recompensation.”

The figure on the promissory note wasn’t the entirety of what Dae was owed after years of working for the company, but close enough. It meant stability and freedom. Yet, it also had a tinge of finality, as if the note was a crossroads and she could never come back. We decided. A calculation of all outcomes.

“I don’t know what to say,” Dae murmured. She tried to smile. “Thanks? It—it feels like I’m being let go from the family.”

“You’re always welcome here,” Mina said.

An unspoken but lingered in the air. Their eyes met over the table, acknowledging that which was left unsaid. But this isn’t your home anymore.

And it wasn’t. There had still been ties, nostalgic or otherwise, when she’d gone to live with Brint. But the Valley felt more like home than the house of her childhood. Strange, how that had happened. How the Valley’s claim, a thing that inspired notoriety and awe, was in truth a subtle touch. A sense of belonging whose absence she noticed only when she looked for it. Now that she noticed it, Dae felt slightly hollow, as if there was a niche carved out in her chest. Graelynd had been her home for so long, yet it lacked the unity she’d already formed back in the Valley. In both places she’d had friends, family, love—or at least the illusion of it. But at Sylveren she felt complete, and here in Central something was missing. The innate understanding that she was wanted, that she fit. Her childhood home no longer held that. Perhaps it never had, and she only noticed the lack of it because she finally knew better. Such knowledge hurt, even though she now felt freed.

Her mother bid her goodnight before leaving Dae at the table.

“Guess you don’t need us anymore, eh?” Calya said, lying on her bed as she examined the promissory note.

“Nope. I’ll be visiting completely of my own accord,” Dae teased. Her humor took on a grim edge. “It was basically a ‘We wish you well in your future endeavors.’ Like I’ve been kicked out. Which I guess is true.”

“It hasn’t felt like a home in ages,” Calya muttered. “I want to move closer to HNE but don’t want to risk pissing Andrin off more than he already is.”

Dae winced. “You’re not calling him that to his face, are you?”

“Not yet.” Calya had a mulish look about her. “They’re obsessed with familial piety since he got into the Transpo div. They don’t care about HNE anymore. Sometimes, I think Father would rather close it than let me do anything.” Calya handed the note back.

“Mama asked me to come back as Starker’s apprentice,” Dae said. “To train under him before he retires.”

Calya sat up. “What did you say?”

The hope in her sister’s voice hurt far more than her mother’s disappointment or her quiet rejection.

“I said no, Caly,” Dae said as gently as she could. “I used to want that, but I love what I’m doing now. It would’ve been the wrong choice.”

Calya deflated. “Yea, I figured.”

“HNE is yours. It will be,” Dae insisted when Calya gave her a despondent look. “I’ll support you however I can.”

“I know.” Calya sighed. “Some holiday. I’m surprised you didn’t get Mother’s ‘my daughters are going to die alone without leaving me grandchildren’ speech.”

“Is she trying to…?”

Calya snorted. “Tried. Past tense. Kept trying to set me up with a representative from South District’s son.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Look at it this way—I finally appreciate all you went through with Brint.”

A few uncomfortable dates didn’t sound the same as having one’s life consumed and arranged around an eventual betrothal, but Dae let Calya have her moment. “How is the business with Brint?”

Calya groaned, face contorting in disgust. “Syvrine’s saggy tits. I don’t know how he hasn’t run AG into the ground. He’s such an unreliable piece of shit.”

She went on at length, griping about how he kept putting her off to chase collaborations with people he’d met at Sylveren. Dae was torn between compassion for her sister’s struggles and a kneejerk desire to defend the school, unnecessary and irrelevant as the urge was. Brint hadn’t wasted any time finding ways to take a bit of Sylveren back to the capital.

“We had to fix the route a bit, tweak the amount of personnel, but he keeps giving me fucked up financial reports—if I can get him to send the right documents at all.” Calya glowered off into space. “The numbers have to be in line. This is the last of the joint projects I initiated, and all the rest are moving forward. Once this is squared away, Father can’t ignore that it’s promotion-worthy.”

Given their father’s recalcitrance, Dae wasn’t as sure. She smothered a yawn. “I think I’ll enjoy my last night in my bedroom before Mama turns it into a second parlor or something.”

“You’re going to head back to the Valley early?”

“I think so. Aside from you, this hasn’t been much of a homecoming.” Dae smiled to soften her words. “I’ve got some reading to catch up on. Or you could come up with me?”

“No, thanks. That place hates me. Feels like the wind is trying to push me out every second I’m there, and I swear the rain is worse just on me.” Calya shuddered.

Dae gave her a skeptical look. “I’m sure that’s not—”

“I’m not trying to guilt you. If you’re leaving, then I’m going to be here as little as possible without getting disowned.”

Calya popped up from her bed before Dae could leave and hurried to her closet. She returned with a blue velvet gift bag, holding it out to Dae. “Just remember that I’ll always be younger than you.”

Bemused, Dae undid the cinched closure. The bag contained an indigo-dyed woolen cloak, the weave tight and lined with silk.

“Caly! It’s beautiful.” Dae immediately put it on, delighted to find several pockets sewn along the interior.

“Found a great tailor-elementalist just outside the capital’s main drag,” Calya said. “It’s enchanted with top-notch wind and waterproofing spells. Since you insist on staying in the land of drear and gray.”

Dae enveloped her sister in a hug, whispering, “Thanks, brat.”

“Not to sound like our mother dearest, but you’re sure you’re fine going back? You won’t be lonely for the rest of the holidays?”

Dae assured her she’d be fine. Auntie Yerina always had a place at her table open, and she had Eunny.

And, going back early meant perhaps she’d see Ezzyn a bit before spring term started.

No, Dae told her sister. She wouldn’t be lonely at all.