Chapter 6 #2
“Oy, our ears are working just fine.” Faldir sniffed, crossing his arms. “It’s you and your hubris that are the problem.”
“My hubris? I’m going to—”
Hedda snatched up Lyriat’s hand before he could use it to throttle her twin. “Please. At least until Baldrir is well again and can tell us what happened.”
“If he’s ever well again.”
Lyriat deflated at Faldir’s quiet words, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
The doors banging open once more saved them from falling too deeply into hopelessness. Brand had managed to put the Sorcerit from his mind, but seeing Thad stroll across the great hall brought her face screeching to the forefront of all thought.
Or, at least, her eyes.
He’d utterly lost himself for a moment, adrift in bottomless azure depths framed by long, sooty lashes.
His impression of the rest of her was disjointed at best—too swept up in the pandemonium of everything else to have catalogued her every feature—but that split-second gaze they’d shared, the way it had snatched the words from his mouth and made his heart turn over…
Brand needed answers, not the least of which was how the fuck Thad even knew such a creature.
“I’ve delivered Lunara’s things to her chamber,” Thad said, swiping up a cold, half-eaten sausage and shoving the remnant into his mouth.
Lunara.
Why his greater half seemed to preen at the piddling scrap of knowledge was beyond him.
“Then you can sit down and tell us everything you know about her, and why you seemed so damned certain she was capable of this task,” Brand said. “Now.”
“Aye, well.” Thad swallowed, the flush draining from his cheeks and leaving him pale. “Fuck, Da’s going to kill me.”
“Out with it, lad,” Mag said gently. “Go on.”
“She’s, uh… She’s the lass that tried to save Mam.”
Weeping, fucking shite.
“This is the least we can do. Lunara’s strength will be waning, if it hasn’t abandoned her already.”
Brand silently followed Thad down the corridor, eyeing the tray in his cousin’s hands—and the oozing slash on his arm, wrapped in a haphazard length of gauze.
The goblet perched there among an array of finger foods sent a shudder down Brand’s spine. The last thing he needed was to see more fucking blood.
Thaddeus hadn’t given them much to go on regarding the female he’d brought back. Her name was Lunara. She lived and worked alone, was relatively young—younger, even, than Araxis—and Thad swore to the Sisters that she would be discreet when all was said and done.
She also allegedly charged next to nothing for her services because she didn’t believe in money, whatever the fuck that meant.
Nachthelliae was a realm of endless night, Sorcerit reliant on the cosmos to fuel their power. It had never made sense to Brand that they would shun daylight so completely, Solyrian just another celestial rock for them to feed from as far as he could tell, but they couldn’t stand it.
Fortunately for the rest of Bordoroth, they loved showing off, looking down on everyone, and getting paid more than they hated the sunstar.
Sorcerit famously charged exorbitant fees for their help, taking full advantage of the fact that they were the only creatures outside of the Imperial Line who could use their powers beyond the borders of their realm.
The smug looks and passive aggressive superiority usually came free with service.
So, whatever was going on, Brand wasn’t buying it.
Especially since his cousin had flat-out refused to go into detail about Lunara’s individual skillset, or how she’d been the one selected to care for an Imperial Son’s mate when she wasn’t even part of the Elder Tier. Thad’s claim of having ‘no idea’ had been obvious dragonshite.
“I still can’t fathom why you have so much confidence in a nameless Sorcerit who failed in the end,” Brand finally said as they rounded the final bend and came to the first door. “Your mother died, Thaddeus. That’s not exactly a point in Lunara’s favor. How can you trust her?”
Thad growled, flashing his canines, and pinned Brand with a look that would have felled a lesser creature. “The only reason I am not punching you in your ignorant fucking face is because my hands are full. Wait here.”
Brand recoiled, rooted to the spot as Thad pushed into Bal’s sick room and went about seeing to Lunara’s needs.
Well, then. That was unexpected.
He was just moving to follow when his ears locked on to soft, lilting murmurs, and a wave of power washed over him.
Incandescent, life-giving power.
It hit Brand like a gasp of fresh air in drowning lungs. Gentle and shocking at once in its strength. She may not have been able to save his Aunt Meliora, but shite. He’d met his fair share of Sorcerit over the years, and not a single one of them had magic that felt quite like hers.
He was still standing there, trying to pinpoint the thing within that seemed to be rearranging itself, when Thad returned.
The scowl on his face was not at all promising.
“Is something wrong?” Brand asked, a knot forming in his stomach. “Is it not working?”
Thad pushed by him. “Everything in there is completely fine.”
“What, then?”
“Stars above, you can be such an arsehole. You always think you know better. Mam is dead, so it must be Lunara’s fault and she’s not to be trusted,” he said, his tone mocking.
Brand went through life entirely convinced he knew fuck all and was only fumbling, but that was beside the point. “Thaddeus—”
His cousin spun and jabbed a finger into his chest. “You weren’t there.
You have no idea what we went through, what she went through, trying to heal Mam and bring her back to us.
No one cares as much as Lunara does. That’s worth something.
Fuck, it’s worth everything, even if it didn’t go how we wanted it to in the end. ”
“We don’t know what you went through because no one will bloody tell us,” Brand argued.
“Aye, for good reason!” Thad shouted. Then quieter, “I was forbidden from speaking about it, just like I was forbidden from going into the Evesong ever again.”
That last part was no secret. Caius was aggressively vocal in his swearing off of Nachthelliae. Any business the Wolflords had with the Elder Council was conducted in Thodelebor, or by Magnus.
“I broke a promise to my da today—one made with a symbolic oath—in order to help you. You don’t have to trust her fully, but at least give me enough credit to realize that isn’t something I would do in order to go and fetch just anyone. Now, kindly fuck off and let me be.”
Thad stomped away, leaving Brand slack-jawed for the second time.
That had been the closest that either he or Caius had ever come to revealing what’d happened last year, and it was still bloody fucking nothing.
What it did do was ratchet up his curiosity until he couldn’t help himself.
Brand backtracked to Bal’s room and eased the door open, waiting a moment before slipping inside.
The damp scent of sweat and blood hit him, though there was nothing rank about it—more the smell of hard work than it was of putrefaction. He tiptoed into the sparse sitting area and paused again, letting his eyes adjust to the single, faintly glowing stone in the wall above the bed.
Baldrir lay supine, the Sorcerit twisted and huddled over him, but they were little more than a dark mass.
The details were hazy, like the prismatic power leaching out of her was bending the air around them.
Hiding them. He toyed with the idea of brightening the light, but something told him it was dimmed for a reason.
A low, shaky grunt, a wretched wealth of agony in the sound, and Brand jerked towards the bed, arm outstretched to—
“I know, I know. Shhh.” Her voice stopped him dead. “You’re doing so very well, my friend. This leg is nearly done, and we’ll have a rest. You’re so strong, Baldrir. You can do it.”
So soothing in her reassurances, even as every word trembled with her own apparent exhaustion.
She was kind. He’d give her that. Even if she did end up demanding a ridiculous payment, that was more than he would have dared hope for from most Sorcerit.
A sigh of relief left her and Bal in tandem, and Brand moved to slink away. He had no interest in explaining why he was hovering there. Never mind that he had every right—it still felt like an intrusion. Like he was witnessing something he shouldn’t.
Just before his fingers brushed the doorknob, her sharp hiss of breath and pained whimper cracked across the relative silence, wrapping around his heart and wrenching it into a galloping beat.
Damn it.
Regardless of their mercenary conduct as a people, the personal price of Nachthellian power was no laughing matter. In some ways, the healers at least had good reason to charge as they did, when it was their own flesh that bore the terrible cost.
He just hoped hers would be enough to save his friend.
Lunara shifted again, the mattress creaking beneath her incoherent mumblings. There had to be something he could do—for Bal’s sake, if nothing else.
Brand’s eyes landed on the chair, well out of her easy reach. Springing for it, he pushed it closer and dragged the small table with Thad’s heavy tray up beside it. A piddling offering to the one they were putting their faith in, but it was all he had to give at the moment.
A small kindness, in return for hers.
That tightness in his chest lingered, though. Long after he finally made his escape, blessedly unnoticed. Through the corridors and his sleepless night. Over the anxious days that followed, and during silent meals spent worrying with the others.
It clung onto him and wouldn’t fucking let go.