image [https://i.imgur.com/9JnFmXw.jpg]

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Fig said goodnight to the hungry pirates as they tucked into their food, then she took a much needed shower. Finally, she made her way down to the hotel's Ardor restaurant, wearing a set of fresh clothes that smelt of the dried lavender bundles the Lodge's staff put into all of their drawers to keep pests away.

The Floating Chest would be fine upstairs for the night. She had the control ring on a chain under her shirt, and she didn’t know if even a siege engine would be capable of lifting that stone lid without the ring present. This evening was hers to enjoy. She could finally relax after the ordeal with the stolen goods, and her debt to Mirabelle, and the Ragon’ta, and Slimy Lez, and Rick, and Dorian, and the naval battle, and all those dead Dynasty soldiers… Dawn’s light! A lot had happened in a very short space of time.

She could try to forget it all, for tonight.

The waiters showed her to a small table tucked away in a raised section at the back of the restaurant, from which she actually had a fairly good view out over the sea of wealthy patrons, chatting and eating their dinner as a series of live acts took turns to entertain them on a nearby stage.

The food was frankly outstanding; fresh caught lake trout braised in salted lemon butter until perfectly tender, then served with honeyed greens and a flair of chilli oil drizzled over the dish. It took her back to days when her family had been able to hire a team of private chefs to make meals on request, though even those had rarely matched the quality here. Rafiel Pritina’s cooking lived up to the hype. Fig ate with vigour, trying not to groan with satisfaction as she quelled the gnawing hunger that had been building inside her for the last few hours.

She had a glass of wine with dinner, then a second while she watched the musicians and performers take to the stage for their after dinner show.

Then she decided to have a third glass and told the waiters to leave the bottle at her table, because she was in Loverlock, and when would she have another chance to treat herself like this. Everything was going on the room’s tab anyway, which Mirabelle would pay.

Fig eventually rose from her table and walked to the drinking lounge that annexed the restaurant, taking up a stool at the bar and ordering herself a cocktail. She was a little wobbly. When was the last time she’d been drunk? Two months ago? Three? Her alcohol tolerance was completely gone, that was for certain.

Fig hadn’t seen Rick or Dorian since they respectively left the suite, and drinking alone suddenly struck her as a very sad thing to be doing in Loverlock, at the Lovers’ Festival no less.

She looked around at the various chatting couples, and groups of laughing friends.

All alone, Fig, and who’s to blame?

‘Don’t you fucking start with me!’ she hissed, causing the woman beside her at the bar to flinch away and quickly leave her chair.

Getting drunk and swearing to yourself in a public place, very classy.

A glass of water appeared in front of her.

She glanced up and saw the barman giving her a stern look.

‘Getting pretty late, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yeah, yeah. I get the fucking hint,’ she said, and downed the water as she got off her stool.

There was still a little wine in her bottle. She took it with her and slowly walked out of the restaurant.

It was later than she’d thought, almost midnight, but this close to the Lovers’ Festival the parties wouldn’t stop until the early hours of the morning.

Groups of people passed her in the hotel corridors, laughing, chatting, running off to whatever scandalous activity they’d chosen for the night. There would be plenty to see and experience in town, but the thought of walking out into those crowds was a little overwhelming.

Fig walked around the hotel for a while, looking for somewhere private to sit and finish her wine. She didn’t want to go back to the suite just yet.

Eventually she found a terrace at the end of a corridor on the third floor that overlooked the glass dome of the casino below.

The glow from every glimmering ether-crystal light in Loverlock created a radiant haze that gleamed out across the water of Lake Allura. Vestar, the bright moon, joined the lightshow, sending down beams of soft moonlight which set the mirrored lake surface aglow in the calm midnight air.

The terrace she'd found was wide and empty, with just a few rows of sun loungers and tables set out for people to sit enjoy Vandrin’s morning glow when the sun eventually rose in the east, six or seven hours from now.

But at this time of night, nobody was there to disturb her.

Fig sat on one of the sun loungers and sipped the last few gulps of wine from her bottle.

She looked at the empty bottle with disappointment.

It hadn’t helped her to forget, not one bit.

Her right arm ached. It never really stopped hurting now. The healers told her that might happen after they fixed her shattered bones. Ethereal trauma memory, they called it. They said it might fade over time, or it might not.

She stretched it out as she watched shooting stars streak across the sky.

Her mind kept going back to the way she’d spoken to Dorian that morning. She’d sworn at him before, called him an idiot to his face, and criticised his decisions, but those jabs always seemed to roll off his grandiose shell.

Something about the way she’d spoken to him today had cut through and seemed to subdue him in a way she hadn’t thought possible. Now it had happened, she felt like she’d gone too far.

The way Dorian's face fell when she told him that she hated him, and how quiet he’d gotten right before he left the room, she was glad Rick hadn’t seen that.

Yeah, because your mistakes are fine as long as you hide from them, right Fig?

‘Fuck off.’

Fig.

‘I said, fuck off!’ she growled.

‘Fig?’ a voice said behind her.

She froze. She knew that voice.

Fig sat up and turned on the sun lounger.

‘Lissie…’ she whispered.

Her older sister, Telissa Sable stood in the doorway of the hotel terrace.

Telissa wore a beautiful flowing ball-gown, and her hair was expertly pinned up in decorative clips. She looked every bit the Heartland lady, radiant and graceful. The only thing that broke the image was her trembling lip, and the dark cast of her eyes as she looked out at Fig.

Fig staggered to her feet, unable to hide her drunken lack of coordination.

‘Lissie,’ Fig took a nervous step forward. Her heart was pounding. She hadn’t seen Telissa in five years, what in world should she say?

In the end it didn't matter, because Lissie broke the silence by rushing into her with a hug that almost took Fig off her feet.

‘You idiot,’ Lissie said, and Fig realised her sister was crying, heaving sobs into Fig’s shoulder, ‘I thought it was you. I had to check. My friends said they’d seen you in the restaurant and I couldn’t let it go without knowing for sure.’

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Fig wrapped her arms around her sister in a daze.

‘What are you doing here, Lissie?’ Fig asked, ‘You never come to Loverlock for the summer.’

‘You’d know if you ever tried to contact me! Five years and you never sent a single letter!’ Lissie said, breaking the hug to poke Fig hard in the chest, ‘I didn’t know how to reach you. I had to find out everything you were doing from papers and rumours. Oh, the other ladies loved telling me all kinds of stories about you; fighting, killing and drinking your way across the Outerlands. You’ve been everywhere, but you never sent a message to me even once.’

‘I didn’t think you wanted me to! Oww!’ Fig said, backing away from the sharp jab of Lissie’s manicured nails.

‘Of course I did!’ Lissie shouted, ‘You’re my sister you complete idiot!’

‘Stop poking me!’ Fig grabbed Lissie’s wrists and they struggled against each other until Lissie started crying again and sat down on one of the sun loungers.

‘You left me alone in that house, with them... I had no-one to talk to,’ Lissie said.

‘Father banished me. I had to leave. Lissie, I was disowned, if you didn't notice.’ Fig said.

‘So what! Just because you had to leave home didn't mean you had to disappear to the Outerlands with barely a word goodbye, or cut off all contact for five years. Do you have any idea how selfish that was?’

‘But… I ruined your engagement,’ Fig said.

‘Yes,’ Lissie sniffed and raised her chin to look at Fig with hard eyes, ‘Fuck you for that, by the way, but did you really think that losing my sister next was what I needed in that moment?’

Fig sank down onto the sun lounger beside Lissie.

‘You know I was going through stuff as well, right? I didn’t particularly want to leave.’

‘It was meant to be the two of us,’ Lissie said, ‘against everything, looking after mum and dad, keeping the family together, securing the future, and then you ruined it.’

‘I was…’ Fig started, but couldn’t continue. She’d almost started making excuses, telling Lissie the same sob story she’d told their father when he confronted her about the duel, the day he’d disowned her.

She didn't want to make excuses any more, she'd made the decisions she made, for better or worse. It was time to stop running and own up to them.

‘I know, ’ she said instead, ‘I fucked everything up. I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry won't change anything now,’ Lissie said.

'Yeah,' Fig said, 'You're right.'

They sat in silence for a while. Lissie wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress, and finally leant into Fig's side for warmth.

Cold air descending from the nearby mountains had turned the night quite chilly. The sisters curled up on the sun lounger, the same way they used to curl up in the alcoves of their family gardens when they were children. They'd carry cushions out from their mother's lounge room and pile them on the grass so they could sprawl together, while they talked and made up stories about strange and wonderful fates that awaited them. They'd been so sure that only good things would happen.

It had been a long time since Fig felt that safe.

‘You smell like stale wine,’ Lissie said.

Fig nodded, ‘I’m pretty drunk right now, unfortunately.’

‘I figured, from how you were talking to yourself like a psychopath.’

‘...Yeah,’ Fig said.

Lissie turned and looked at Fig in the ambient light of the town below.

‘You’re so tanned,’ she said, ‘And there are little scars all over your face. Fig, you look old!’

Fig couldn't deny it. Telissa had always been taller than Fig, a year older, more sophisticated, more worldly, more mature. But right now, she looked almost girlish, trussed up in her ball-gown, while Fig must have seemed… Well, anything but girlish.

‘You can blame it on good clean living,’ Fig said, ‘What are you doing in Loverlock, Lissie? The family didn’t have money for trips like this the last time I was home.’

‘They still don’t, not really but here I am,’ Lissie said, ‘I’m courting again, perhaps my last chance to save the family finances after what happened five years ago.’

‘Who’s the lucky guy?’ Fig asked.

‘Artur Samlass,’ Lissie said.

‘I don’t recognise the family name.’

‘They aren’t nobility,’ Lissie said, ‘Father gave up on that. We’re too low in everyone’s estimation by this point. Artur’s new money. His mother owns one of the biggest crystal mining operations in the Unbound Mountains. Lots of capital, but they only made it big in the last ten years so most of the Alfir won’t deal with them directly and there are existing client families jostling for dominance in the trade. We can give them the established selling connections they need to beat their competition, and they can give us the money we need to pay our debts.’

‘It seems like you have it all figured out,’ Fig said.

Lissie sighed, ‘Sorry. I’ve been rehearsing this like a business pitch the whole way here. I’m meant to meet Artur and his mother at the Festival tomorrow night, and if we hit it off, and they don’t think we’re scamming them, things might get set in motion.’

‘That’s more of an explanation than Father ever gave me about what you two were planning with the Jacszil heir,’ Fig said, ‘I didn’t even know you were engaged until the whole thing got broken off.’

‘That’s because it was going to be announced at the victors’ ball that night,’ Lissie said, and it would have been if you hadn’t made such a scene.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’ Fig asked, waving her hands in frustration, ‘If I’d known what was going on it might have changed things. I might not have entered the tournament.’

‘Why enter in the first place!?’ Lissie shouted, standing, ‘You were never going to win!’

‘Because I wanted to try!’ Fig shouted.

She realised she was also standing, and the words started flowing faster than she could stop them, ‘What was I supposed to do? All anyone in the family was telling me was how fucked everything was, and how the other nobles were going to come in and take our house and lands away because of Father’s debts, and I saw a chance to win the prize pot and the Hummingbird, which might have made a difference, so I went for it.’

‘That’s so stupid–’

‘I don’t want to hear it!’ Fig shouted, ‘I know it was stupid. I was a child! I already got a lecture from Father, and Mother, and all the fucking courtiers and tournament officials who came to leer at me after I lost. I don’t need it from you, so just fuck off!’

Fig stalked away halfway across the terrace before she wheeled and turned, stalking back towards Lissie with an accusing finger outstretched.

She seethed with bottled up anger she hadn’t even known she was carrying around, finally letting it loose after five years, ‘You told me we were in it together, and that’s what I believed. You were my older sister, my best friend. I looked up to you. I relied on you. We were supposed to be honest and tell each-other everything, but you’re the one who broke that, not me! Those last couple of years you completely stopped talking to me. You treated me like I knew nothing, like I was too young to understand, as if we weren’t both living the same life! You kept secrets. We never did that, we promised we wouldn’t but you did. You started hiding things. Father kept taking you to his study for extra lectures, and when you came back to our room I could tell that you’d been crying, but you never admitted it!’

Fig got right up in her sister’s face, as Lissie leant away and wiped fresh tears from her eyes.

‘You shut me out.’ Fig cried, ‘I wanted to help you, but you wouldn’t let me. You made me feel so alone, Lissie. So yes, I found something that was my own. My secret. I learnt to fight and I was good at it, and it made me feel good for the first time in years, and… I’m sorry that it went wrong… I just… I didn’t know what to do… Fuck!’

Fig wheeled around and kicked over a nearby table. Bright pain instantly erupted in her toes, causing her to double over groaning. The slippers she wore to dinner were less sturdy than her usual boots and certainly not suited to assaulting furniture.

While she nursed her bruised toes, she heard Lissie walking to the terrace door.

‘Lissie, wait,’ Fig rose limping and saw her sister pause in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lissie mumbled, visibly holding back sobs, then she entered the hotel and took a flight of stairs downward out of sight.

‘Damn it!’ Fig considered taking another swipe at the fallen table, but all the energy for aggression went out of her a moment later, only to be replaced by bone deep fatigue.

She was exhausted, drunk, limping, and her voice ached from shouting.

Somebody was probably going to arrive soon to see what all the commotion was about, and she really didn’t feel like explaining herself.

Just go to bed, Fig. Lissie will still be in town. You can figure it out in the morning.

‘That’s the only sensible thing you’ve said all night,’ Fig grumbled, and limped to the elevator at the far end of the third floor hallway.

The doors opened, and Fig slumped inside, leaning on the elevator’s waist height railing for support.

A new band of little Brudes was playing a gentle trumpet arrangement on the way up to the fifteenth floor.

The music was surprisingly soothing, and Fig found herself nodding along to it, even as her eyes grew heavy and she had to fight the urge to fall asleep on her feet.

‘The Gary Gumption Band, I presume,’ Fig’s drunk mind supplied a tidbit of half remembered information from earlier in the day.

‘That’s right, touring elevator music from Garrel to the Gravalt Free States and everywhere in between since 416AFW,’ one of the Brudes said proudly, tipping a hat with the initials GG embroidered on the brim.

‘Thanks for the performance,’ she muttered and clumsily tipped them a couple of gold suns as the elevator reached the top of the hotel.

Her last memories of the night came in flashes, fumbling with the room key, staggering past Dorian who was asleep on the chaise-longue, half crawling up the stairs to her room. When she finally made it to her bed and crawled under the covers, it took seconds for her to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Her hangover the following morning was monumental.

[End of Chapter 21]