Chapter 14 #2
How could she ever go back to Nachthelliae, to a cottage bathed in shadow and only her own thoughts for company? She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it. Wasn’t sure she could accept not being able to see such a sight with regularity.
Accept payment from Lyriat the second this adventure is over, and you won’t have to.
Sisters, it was tempting. She’d thought to only call on the debt if the Council started to close in, but now—
“And how do you find it, my lady?” Brand repeated his earlier words, pressed close enough that she could feel his breath stirring against her ear.
She had no idea when he’d gotten so near, had been too entranced. “Quite stirring,” she whispered. “Obviously.”
Brand stepped away and the ground shuddered. She spun to find him with his hand extended, stone cracking and warping at his command. It rose up, viscous, shifting like liquid until it finally formed a long bench in the settling dust.
He brushed off the top and gestured for her to sit, claiming the other half for himself.
“I haven’t been up here in a very long time,” he said, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together between them. “I’d forgotten the majesty of it.”
The final rays of day set his hair alight as he looked out over the view, the normally subdued auburn turning to fire and making his horns stand out more starkly.
Blessed moons, the view wasn’t the only majestic thing there.
Lunara cleared her throat, heart hammering. “I think I’d be tempted to come up every single day, if this were my home.”
Brand tilted his head to look at her. “There are views to rival this one in the Evesong. Some, I would say, that are far better.”
“None that I can think of.” Starkeep didn’t count anymore. “Though I don’t get around very much, as we’ve already established.”
He hummed a low sound that did funny things to her. “Why is that? We’re close in age, according to Thad. I would have assumed you’d been everywhere by now.”
His look was penetrating. So much was conveyed in that stare that he wasn’t saying out loud.
Careful.
She had no wish to lie, but she barely knew him. Lyriat was a king and had given her no choice. While Brand was, in many ways, much more than a king, his question left room for her to decide how to respond.
To let her keep her secrets.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to do so.” True enough. “I prefer to keep to myself and live a simple life.”
“Hmm. I envy the prospect.” He sighed, a wistful sound that she felt to her bones. “Tell me, what do you do with your ‘simple life?’”
He sounded genuinely curious, which surprised her.
“It’s not at all exciting, I assure you.”
“It is to someone who wishes for it. Unless you’d rather I bore you with realm matters and the papers piled up on my very official desk?
The price of grain from Thodelebor has gone up, especially.
And don’t get me started on the hoops I have to jump through to procure a particular cloth from the Kohamaians without bankrupting the Montrealm. They—”
“Alright, alright!” she interrupted, laughing. “I surrender. Spare me from talk of money.”
“As I said—dreadfully boring.”
“Well…” It took her a minute to decide what was safe. What would keep him from any prodding inquiries that dug too deep and too close to the truth. “I live in a cottage I built on the edge of the Northern Forest— Why are you looking at me like that?”
His brows had punched up his forehead. “You’ve just said you built yourself an entire home.”
Stars and arses. Mucked it up with the very first sentence.
“Yes, well. Um. It wasn’t hard.”
That’s the exact opposite of what you should have said.
Now his eyes had narrowed, mouth quirked. “I know many a Sorcerit who would wholeheartedly disagree with you.”
You can either lie, or change the subject. There’s no other choice.
“It’s not what you’re thinking.”
Ugh.
“And what is it I’m thinking?”
His smile wasn’t fair. It made her want to do something brainless like tell him everything.
“That I conjured it up out of nowhere, covered in mystical light, and magically didn’t kill myself doing it.”
He scoffed. “I was more wondering how you managed it alone.”
“Oh. I guess I do everything alone, so same as I manage anything else.”
“You don’t get lonely?”
She couldn’t bring herself to answer that. Last week she would’ve chuckled and said absolutely not! Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“What’s your favorite color?”
You were supposed to change the subject three sentences ago. And where are you even going with this?
“Blue,” he answered quickly. “Like the sea on a clear day.”
She didn’t miss the fact that he was staring intently into her eyes as he said it, and tried to ignore the prickling heat creeping up her neck.
The rest of the idea finally came to her when she fixed her gaze on a cluster of trees nearby, their limbs swaying as they clung to the mountainside. The Demons did seem to appreciate their wood.
Oh, no.
“If I’m going to make something, I need part of it to be available.”
And an excess of moonlight! There has to be another approach to this.
She lifted her hands and a glowing orb formed between her palms, threads of magic writhing together. A block began to take shape in the center as particles manifested, drawn from one of the trees and into her hands.
The rest was taken from within.
“I can only manage very small things this way,” she gasped.
You mean when you’re almost entirely depleted and have no business doing it?
Lunara closed her trembling fingers around the finished piece before presenting it to Brand.
“My favorite color is green,” she said, looking out over the city again and trying to find her breath. “Dark, like the shadows in the forest.”
Wide-eyed, he took the chunk of swirling blue and evergreen wood and turned it in his hands while she tried not to topple over.
“Creating new things like that takes the price from somewhere deep. Hurts, in ways different than I’m used to.”
Even now, her stomach turned, angry and cramping. Begging.
Halfwit. The cost could have been almost nothing. But sure, throw him off the scent by destroying yourself.
Most Nachthellians drew power from cosmic light, but it dissipated over a short time.
She, however, could draw in more than what simply brushed over her skin and was absorbed. She could move it, shape it, store it.
The blankets she wove were trivial in the scheme of things—child’s play—but her mother had thought that Moonweaver sounded lovely, even if the name didn’t fully encompass the scope of her gift.
Lunara’s true and unique ability—the one that set her apart from most Sorcerit and would have the Elder Council foaming at the mouth to get their hands on her—was the fact that she had a bottomless repository within her.
A well, deep as the sea in front of her, that could be filled to the brim and tapped into whenever she wished.
Unless she left it nearly empty and kept it that way.
Kept herself safe.
The truth was that Lunara probably could have conjured up an entire cottage for herself, if she’d fed heavily on a blood gift and had filled that well even a quarter of the way.
Brand didn’t need to know that.
“This is incredible,” he whispered.
Her voice was little more than a rasp. “It’s a piece of wood that’s too small for anything.”
“Yes, but you’ve changed its colors, and it’s glowing. I… Thank you. Truly.”
“Yes, well, perhaps you can use it as a weight for your very boring paperwork.”
His look was unnerving. Maybe because it was filled with awe over so trivial a thing, and she was a bleeding liar.
“How did you build your cottage then, if not like this?”
The words just tumbled out. “I stole it. Sort of.”
There’s no hope for you, is there?
Brand’s mouth fell open.
It was almost enough to make her forget that her insides were convinced she’d swallowed a handful of razorblades.
“When I arrived at the place I now live, it was a dilapidated hovel in the woods.”
Maybe unkind, when it had been free and secret and safe, but it wasn’t far from the truth.
Biting her lip, she reached her hand out and into the ether. This was easy to show him because there wasn’t a Sorcerit in all of the Evesong that couldn’t manipulate its strange hidden places to some degree.
And it cost almost nothing.
“A few weeks in, I heard rumors of a nasty injury in a nearby village. The male in question turned out to be a right arsehole.”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember where she’d set that book down. Sometimes going through instead of just accessing a pocket within took a little longer.
“Unfortunately for him, I’d overheard a conversation with his equally disgusting companions, bragging about how they’d cleared a copse of luminescent trees in order to sell the lumber to other realms in secret. Highly illegal, as I’m sure you know.”
In her mind, she saw herself walking through her cottage, glancing at every crowded surface. Into her bedroom and—
Ah! There, on the dresser.
“So, I took it.”
Light flashed as she pulled back, the book in her palm.
“It was slightly complicated because I had to grab each piece of hewn wood and drag them through individually, which took ages, but it was worth it to keep it in Nachthelliae. As the laws require.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was all about adhering to realm law.” Brand chuckled as he slipped the presented tome out of her fingers. “And you built your home with that?”
“I didn’t technically build anything in the end. For the next year, my price for healing was construction. I merely provided direction on what I would like and gave them the materials to do so.”
And then made them forget they’d ever been there.
“Remarkable.”
There was a sparkle in his look, an approval, that washed over her. She welcomed the swell of pride that came with telling a true story and garnering such a reaction from him.
Do not go and get any ideas. You still have to go back to that home after this, with no one the wiser.