Chapter Seven: Fionn
Tai’s departure from my studio had the most curious effect on me. As the door closed behind her and the sound of her last words faded from the air, she seemed to leave a vast emptiness behind her; a void, where something precious ought to be.
I quickly realised that this was not new. The void had been there for seventy-five years; I’d just grown so used to pretending it wasn’t, so adept at navigating around it, that I had stopped noticing it.
Tai only needed to reappear for fifteen minutes, and that was enough to rip all my careful defences to ribbons. Her absence advertised itself by every possible method, and all my old fears came back new.
What if this was just a temporary reprieve? Her interest here was on Mearil’s account, not mine. Once that business was reso
