Chapter 15
Brand watched the door close behind Lunara and nearly collapsed right there in the corridor.
Weeping fuck. The things she’d said.
He wasn’t ignorant. He knew there were others like him. Creatures that suffered from whatever his affliction was.
Lunara was the first, though, to look at him and see the morass of shite and strangled breaths and say, ‘Me, too. I feel it, too.’
To be understood so fully was… Shite, he didn’t even know.
He was still floating on the high of it, like he’d smoked some of Vann’s rolled herbs. Couldn’t stop smiling. Just grinning from ear-to-ear for so long that his cheeks hurt. Burning Solyrian, the way she’d made him laugh.
There was still something off about her, though. Something she was keeping close. He could see it in her eyes when they widened after she said something nonsensical. And she had far too much obvious power to be living alone in the Evesong’s wilds.
In a cottage she hadn’t quite built for herself.
“I’m not sure what the barmy look on your face is for, Your Highness, but we’ve got two fucking problems.”
Brand couldn’t even bring himself to be annoyed at Hedda’s tetchy interruption. He fell in beside her, tempted to sway to the hammering beat of their leather boots on stone. “Go on.”
“Lyriat has just informed me that the Sorcerit whose room you were stalking around is coming with us to the Westrealm.” She held up a crumpled piece of parchment.
“That’s correct. I don’t see the issue.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, a few feet before the doors into the main hall. “Is it the luminous beauty and wide eyes that have everyone acting like they’re living inside their own arseholes, or is there something I don’t know about?”
“Uh…”
“I get it. She’s pretty. She also hasn’t been within ten yards of a standard pub brawl. How am I the only one who can see she’ll be more trouble than she’s worth in Thodelebor?”
The only words Brand cared about were luminous beauty and wide eyes. Understatements. At this point, Lunara could ask him to take her to every realm for a month each, and he probably wouldn’t think it was more trouble than it was worth.
“That was only one problem, Second.”
“Well, if you all insist on her going, then someone needs to train her.”
Brand eyed the guards nearby, their faces a perfect picture of disinterest.
“Why?”
“Because going to Glynmor is a mistake. It’s not a coincidence they’ve asked for your help just as the rest of this shite is happening. We’re going to take a female who can’t even raise her voice?”
All of the lightness left him, the weight of reality settling on his shoulders.
“I never truly thought it was a coincidence,” he said quietly. “Though, I may have tried to hope.”
His frivolous worry over whether Lunara would like a sunset had allowed him to ignore the riddled message for a few hours. The deeply personal nature of it.
“We shouldn’t go.”
“We will absolutely go,” he said, pushing into the main hall. “This is exactly the point of my existence and position. If not me, or my brothers, then who? Fortunately, we’ll have a marginally trained Sorcerit on our side by the time we do.”
He crossed the empty space, his mind on the kitchens at the far end. On food, then sleep and forgetting. And… maybe another thing. If Lunara liked giving gifts, perhaps she’d like receiving them in return.
“How, exactly, do you plan to accomplish that in a matter of days, Brand?”
Lyriat emerged from his secret passage behind the thrones, the stone melting back into place as he stepped away from the opening.
Hedda pinched the bridge of her nose with a long-suffering sigh. “Where are your bloody guards?”
Lyriat at least had the decency to look guilty. “Probably scrambling in a panic somewhere near my quarters while they try to figure out how to tell you they’ve lost me. I figured the passageways were safe enough.”
“Except you’re not in the passageways, are you? You’re right fucking here, out in the open!”
“No one outside of the family knows they exist. What danger is there? Since I haven’t been able to take a damned piss in nearly a week without someone looking over my shoulder, I needed a moment to myself. Ergo…”
Hedda looked between him and Lyriat, mouth gaping. “Am I the last one left in Straelon with a fucking brain? I swear.”
Lyriat waved that away. “I could take on the lot of you with a hand tied behind my back and still come out the victor. I’m fine. Besides, it’s rather late for you two to still be awake. Is something the matter?”
“I was just informing Hedda of the delay in our journey, and how she will now be spending the extra days training Lunara before we go.”
“What?” she shrieked.
Lyriat chuckled. “A fine choice. How long?”
Brand took a moment to consider all of the possibilities. Too long, and the wait would unravel his already fraying nerves. Too short, and there was no point in it. “A week?”
“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be going at all. I’m happy for you to postpone as long as you want.”
Hedda pressed two fingers into each temple. “You want me to turn her into a warrior in seven days?”
“No.” Brand paced as Lyriat flopped into his throne, watching them. “I want you to make sure she can defend herself within seven days. I want you to be certain she can hold her own as a last resort.”
“That would probably take years,” she grumbled.
“It’ll take a week, because that’s how much time you have.” Mind made up, Brand strode away, heading not for the kitchens, but somewhere else entirely.
“Where are you going?” Lyriat called after him.
“To send another message.”
It didn’t matter that Vann had yet to answer the first, more important missive. After the debacle over the damned fabric the Demons relied on, his brother owed him.
“To whom?”
“An arsehole with a talent for cloth.”
And Brand knew exactly what to ask for. He could feel it.
Lunara kept her breaths slow and silent, hiding in the shade of an evergreen on the edge of the practice grounds. It was early enough that Solyrian hadn’t yet cleared the mountaintops to burn away the dewdrops still clinging to the grass and needled branches above her.
There were a couple of days before they were meant to leave for Thodelebor, and she was restless. On edge.
Her time spent with Brand on the mountain had only made it worse. How was she meant to close her eyes when all she saw on the other side of her lids was him telling her she had her own light in that gravelly voice of his? It had been bone-melting. Sigh-worthy. Wondrous.
And so close to the truth that she’d nearly been sick right then and there.
She’d grown tired of lying awake in bed, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, and had thought a walk would help.
She hadn’t planned on spying.
Lunara gripped the trunk and peered around it, bark digging into her fingertips as she watched Hedda and Faldir train.
The twins were a blur, moving with such synchronization that it was impossible for her to decide which of them would win if the fight were real. They had no weapons—only their fists and flesh, their teeth and horns.
It was Hedda, though, that had all of her attention.
Lunara had been days away from beginning her training before... before.
Alone in her cottage, with no one else for miles, it was a lack that she’d lamented for the last fifty-two years.
How much safer would she have felt if she’d been able to use something other than power to defend herself? How much of her disquiet would have been relieved with knowing she could guard her space, her peace, without revealing herself?
She and Hedda were nearly of a size. Lunara was slightly wider, while the Demon was a tad taller, but there weren’t so many differences that she couldn’t picture herself in the same place, using her body in that way.
In fact, it seemed to occasionally be to Hedda’s benefit. Where her brother was brute strength with devastating results, she was fast. Wily. Clever in the placement of her limbs. She used parts of herself that he didn’t bother with. She danced around him, landing three blows for every one of his.
Watching her made Lunara wish she was someone else, even more than before. Identities aside, she wanted Hedda’s skill, her confidence, for herself.
If only you could bottle it up and take it like a tonic. Oh wait! You can.
Stars above, was it actually possible to feel an inner self rolling their eyes?
Yes, Lunara maybe could have done that. Many Sorcerit had that particular gift. But it had always felt wrong to her, somehow. Artificial, instead of genuine. She didn’t want fake fortitude and ability. She wanted the real thing.
Because the rest of your life isn’t just one, gigantic sham.
Sometimes, Lunara sincerely wished she could reach inside and smack herself.
The second the sigh left her lips, she slapped a hand over her mouth, praying that the twins hadn’t heard her. One beat, two…
They carried on as if she didn’t exist.
Thank the Sisters.
As the morning wore on, more and more Demons joined them—all shapes and sizes, every age.
Lunara gaped when Nyri practically skipped onto the field with a sword over her shoulder, dragging Baldrir along. The warrior was steady on his feet, sure, and it warmed her to see them together.
Hope the risk was worth it. At least two people know who you really are now, as a result. The Council will hear of it any day.
Damn it all, it was. It was. No matter what she sometimes tried to make herself believe.
She stilled when she saw Magnus and Thaddeus roughhousing their entire way to the field, grins a mile wide.
The sight of Brand made her stop breathing altogether.
He’d braided his hair over one shoulder, and beads of sweat had stuck some of the errant strands to his face, his jaw—like he’d already been exerting himself elsewhere.
His wrapped tunic was gaping and damp, wide sleeves rolled up to reveal most of his considerable arms. The trousers he wore only reached his calves and his feet were… bare.