Chapter 2
Solyrian’s rays beat down upon his Demon brethren, their sweating bodies hard at work. The light was blinding, harshly gilding them as they moved—too fast, too slow, swirling and spinning in disjointed motions that made no sense anymore.
He was meant to be moving with them, helping to build the ceremonial platform, but he couldn’t think. Couldn’t feel his lips or limbs.
“Brand!”
Whoever was calling his name would have to wait until the ringing in his ears quieted and his heart stopped hammering against his lungs, stealing his breath.
Weeping Sisters, he hated it when this happened.
He made his trembling hand reach for a waterskin, drinking deep. He found no anchor within the cool liquid, but perhaps it would be in the swipe of an arm across his brow, or the peace he feigned when he tilted his head up to the sunstar.
Hopefully, the desperate attempts to ground himself looked like nothing more than a much-needed rest to those around him.
No one could know that a random thought had barged in uninvited, seizing control, his churning mind completely at odds with the smooth actions of his body.
That a vice was slowly tightening itself around his chest, or that the flush crawling across his skin had nothing to do with the summer season.
That he would give anything to sink into the ground and stay there until he was settled again.
“Brand!”
His eyes snapped open to Hedda standing in front of him. Hair like red wine was twisted up into a haphazard knot, her ivory horns rising from the mess. Worry was etched in the deep grooves between her furrowed brows, but not for him. She was too obviously irritated.
Good. Something to focus on besides his own shite—provided he could stop feeling as though he were drowning.
Brand clawed his way through the haze, barely able to form his question. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Aldiat,” she said, cheeks puffing out. “He completely fucked his fighting arm during morning drills and is refusing to have it looked at. Baldrir is the only one that can ever get through to the stubborn bastard, but he isn’t here.”
“Right. Um…”
Baldrir… Baldrir… He’d sent Baldrir to—
“Thodelebor,” Brand answered finally, the rusted cogs in his mind reluctantly turning. “Bal left for Thodelebor yesterday afternoon with messages for the Chieftains, as well as my uncle and brother.”
Stars above, when had his tunic started sticking that way, clinging to his neck and trying to suffocate him? He hooked a finger into the collar, wanting nothing more than to rip the garment off.
Faldir popped up beside Hedda, irritation evident across his nearly identical features. “We don’t give a flying fuck where Bal is. Aldiat is meant to be mated in a few hours, his hand is barely attached to his body, and the damned fool has decided to try and heal himself with hard drink.”
Brand’s lips quirked up, not quite a smile but enough to seem normal. “Faldir. Cheerful as ever, I see.”
Hedda’s twin raised an unamused brow. The motion pulled at the puckered scar running down his cheek and into the corner of his lips, a shocking slash of pink in his otherwise deeply tanned skin.
“If it were time to be bloody cheerful, I wouldn’t be doing it here in the sweltering heat with you lot. ”
No, he certainly wouldn’t. Faldir saved his best moods for others, during the few hours he was off duty.
With a sigh, Brand mindlessly dragged a palm back and forth along one of his horns and closed his eyes. “Find one of the Sorcerit due to bring the latest batch of flowers and pay whatever they ask in return for healing him.”
“Um…” Hedda cleared her throat and waited until Brand pried his lids open to look at her. “That delivery happened hours ago.”
Sometimes this middle space was the worst part of his attacks. He wasn’t as lost but his senses were dim until they suddenly weren’t, and it took Brand far too long to realize what Hedda had said.
He blinked once, twice. “Hours?”
“It’s mid-afternoon, Your Highness,” Faldir grumbled.
“Mind yourself, little brother,” Hedda hissed, elbowing Faldir.
Brand swallowed and cast a glance beyond the siblings.
At first, it was the expected visual noise—muffled sounds that didn’t quite match up with their sources, the washed out imagery slowly coming into focus amidst the pulsing halo that ringed his sight—but Brand urged himself to center. To see the little things.
A lone tuft of sea grass making its home between two flags of marbled stone. A hand sliding slowly into another’s. A single crow pecking at a plate of discarded food. A dark curl of hair caught by the light.
Seized by the familiarity of it all, Brand drew in a deep breath, and fell back into himself. All at once, laughter and chatter exploded into existence, the rhythm of labor a steady beat beneath.
The Main Square of the Horned City was a hive of activity, Straelani Demons moving in every direction as they readied not only for the coming Occurrence, but the mating ritual later that evening.
Some carried posts while others fetched piles of folded cloth for the canopies.
Cut beams were being stacked into piles near those who needed them, a salty breeze carrying sawdust into the air.
Arms worked and hammers flew as nails were pounded into bench seats and tabletops, platforms and displays.
Blooms of every color lay waiting in steel troughs, enchanted by a Nachthellian Sorcerit to keep fresh and beautiful for the next couple of months.
Children scurried this way and that, playing games as they helped.
One handed an end of cedar garland up to her father where he was perched on a ladder, his mate holding the other end further down.
Together, both males commanded the stone to grip the decoration, the swath of green hanging perfectly over the window of their bakery.
Two Demons in their rage dodged her as she cheered for her fathers, their colossal forms rising above the crowd and straining beneath a pallet of raw lumber.
Sienna markings stained their darkened skin, Solyrian’s light pulsing from them with every step they took, their faces twisted into mirror grimaces.
They crossed the busy square and released their burden beside the obsidian Solyr Stone with triumphant grins, shaking the ground as they brushed off their hands and clapped one another on the back.
He was home. He was safe.
And, judging by the shadows stretching down from the towering evergreens and tightly packed buildings, it was most definitely later than he’d thought.
“I must’ve gotten distracted with the festival preparations,” Brand said flippantly, bending to swipe his leather tool belt from a stool. He slung the mass over his shoulder, Hedda instantly beside him as he made for the high road. “Which means I’ve missed my lunch.”
“Oy, hang lunch,” Faldir called after them. “Aldiat is swimming at the bottom of a bottle. If Frida finds out, she’ll ream the lot of us. You know how she is.”
Brand rolled his neck as he walked, praying to the Sisters that—just this once—the knot at the base of his skull would melt away and he could skip his usual headache. “Hedda?”
“Yes, Highness?”
“Tell Faldir that there will be no reaming because he’s going to find one of those Sorcerit before they leave, and pay them handsomely for their precious extra time.”
Hedda threw her brother a savage grin as they rounded a tight bend in the cobbled road. “You heard him, Third Commander.”
“Brand’s the one who sent Bal away when he already had a job to do,” Faldir grumbled as he caught up. “Maybe he should have to deal with the bloody Nachthellians.”
That had been a minor oversight on his part.
“Our Imperial Son has his own job to do,” Hedda said. “Speaking of which, have you sorted your part of the nonsense yet?”
Leave it to Hedda to reduce the most monumental moment in any creature’s existence into nonsense.
To be so blessed by the Sisters as to find his fated other…
It was one of the few things Brand wanted out of life that might be possible in his circumstances.
Then again, he wasn’t sure another creature deserved to be tied to a shoddy mess like him for the rest of forever, regardless of how much he desired it.
Faldir grunted, something akin to a laugh. “He’s got to hold a bowl of paste and smile, and he’s done it dozens of times. What’s there to sort?”
Brand could practically feel Hedda’s gaze boring into him.
“Perhaps,” she replied slowly. “Still, it doesn’t hurt to check.”
Damn it. Maybe some of her worry was for him.
“It will be fine,” Brand said with a heavy sigh. “I have it well in hand.”
The wave of dread that came with stepping into the shadow of a wayward branch above—its darkness falling over them like a bad omen and sending a shiver down his spine—was merely another symptom of his traitorous fucking condition.
Everything would be fine.
Brand hit the landing of his tower chamber and pressed his head to the door, waiting for the panel to recognize him. From its surface, branches sprang to life and brushed once over his shoulder before it swung wide and he stumbled in, his thighs still burning from the long climb.
He tossed his tool belt on the overstuffed chair by the fireplace and made for the washroom, ignoring the bed as he passed it. If he didn’t, he’d never get clean.
Pushing through another door, he called to a smattering of stones in the wall and urged them to glow. The pure sunlight that bathed them during the day poured into the room, glinting off of the gold mirrors and warming the space, hitting his skin as he ripped the dusty clothes from his body.
Another call to his power and a wide, rectangular hole opened in the wall above the massive tub in the floor, hot water gushing forth. With a sigh, he trudged down the steps and sat on the ledge beneath the steaming fall, the tension leaving him with every speck of dirt that was swept away.