Chapter 9 Too Much and Not Enough
Too Much and Not Enough
Brioni
“Perfect.” Brioni grinned at her reflection. Or rather, at her breasts. She might not be able to count on the drayk or on the weather or on herself, but she trusted in at least two things to cooperate that day, and they were doing her wonders.
And it all mattered because she’d been invited.
No more games, no more “accidental” appearances: Ragnar told her to come back.
Even if he had hitched the invite to the drayk’s wellbeing, it still existed.
She checked with Kat first that her assistance wasn’t needed, but the woman shook her head from way up on the ladder in the mail room—she was almost always happy to be alone, and there wasn’t much work to be done anyway.
Then Brioni visited the kitchen to fill up her satchel, said goodbye to Alamar with roundabout words so she didn’t have to say exactly where she was going, and skipped out the door.
The moonlight was bright, and the air smelled like that wine Hilde had let her sample on her rounds, sweet and heady like summer in a bottle.
Heck’s streets were busy, but Brioni didn’t even bother looking out for Drolmoth—if he saw her, she knew the threat of losing his most precious bits to a veilhound would keep him away.
The only minor hiccup was the orange demon flagging her down with another letter for the abandoned cottage and the ghost of whoever lay inside.
She took it but hesitated, apologetically explaining that it was her day off despite that he was clearly having a day off too, out of his scholar’s robes and skulking in the alleys.
“It might be even better if it’s delivered tomorrow,” he’d mused, and then grinned. “Yes, keep it for an extra day, and we’ll see how that goes.”
Brioni didn’t give that oddness a second thought—he was odd enough so what was another weird sentence amongst so many weirder ones—and she stuffed the letter into the bottom of her bag.
She only slowed when she reached the path into the trees.
She’d been invited, this she knew, she kept repeating it to herself all morning, but Ragnar didn’t seem like the type to bother being friendly and extending an invite.
In a way, that was exactly why she liked him—at least, it was why she continued to like him after she got a good look at him.
He cared so little about what others thought that it was frankly a relief, even if when he articulated his own thoughts they sort of hurt her feelings.
If he didn’t care, then maybe she didn’t have to care either.
Maybe when they were together, she could just be however she pleased instead of making sure everyone around her was happy.
His invitation then…Was it earnest? What if he didn’t really want her to come back? What if he just gave in because she’d been so annoying?
The morning’s excitement balled itself up and rolled off the edge of her heart to drop into the anxious depths of her belly.
The green lantern winked between the branches ahead, a critter rustled the nearby ferns, and Brioni groaned quietly in the back of her throat.
She could still turn around. She could head to the apothecary to see what Aofe was cooking up, or she could ask after Rosalind’s latest project, or even check in on Ember and any crimes she might be thinking of committing.
There was always risking another trip to the barracks and…
and what? Asking Kaly to train her? As if she would last a minute in a ring with anyone.
She could just go back to the post and bother Kat while she sorted letters, but that’s exactly what she would be doing: bothering her. Bothering Kaly, Rosie…all of them.
But none of them would be as honest with her as Ragnar. And that was exactly what she needed.
Brioni huffed, gripping the strap of her satchel with a renewed spirit as she strode toward the barn. I guess I’ll only know if I’m as annoying as possible.
***
“How did you become the beastkeeper?” Brioni had lost track of how many questions she’d asked since arriving, and though she’d stowed all the answers deep in her mind for safekeeping, her well of inquiries was bottomless.
Ragnar wasn’t very good at answering, even with all the practice she was giving him. “I have a way with wild things.”
Brioni hopped up on the door of the stall he was inside, fitting her feet between two of the planks and riding the wooden gate as it swung shut on him. “Oh, it wasn’t, like, your dad’s job that you inherited?”
Pitchfork in hand, the demon looked up from the hay he was turning over. He’d pointed to a second tool when she arrived, and Brioni very politely turned down the offer to help him clean out stalls. “My father’s job?” He scoffed and shook his head like the idea was ridiculous.
She shrugged, resting her forearms on the top of the gate.
They were nearly the same height then, and she leaned even closer as she tipped her head in thought.
“Well, where I come from, that’s what a lot of people do—they teach their children to take over their businesses. The kids they trust anyway.”
“I imagine your father was some sort of trickster then?”
Brioni chuckled because that wasn’t far off. “I don’t know if others would call him ‘tricky’—that seems too nice a word—but he did a lot of bad things. Is it magic?”
Ragnar stopped mid turn over.
“When you talk to the animals? Do you do it with magic? There was a sorcerer in Ankerick who could command rats and his brother worked with mice. You’d think they were the same, but boy did they ever get offended if you mixed them up.”
“You heard Drolmoth,” he said, continuing to fluff the new straw. “I don’t have any magic.”
She watched his face change, darkness falling into its lines as he grimaced at the ground. “Well, me neither.”
Ragnar turned over the last corner of the stall and looked up at her.
Brioni grinned.
The corner of his mouth twitched, but he stalked to the stall’s door with a purpose and pushed it open with her still atop it.
She scrambled to hold on as it swung, then laughed so loudly it made Moar and the atteapir both yip in response.
From the rafters, the teal drayk ruffled her feathers and squawked down at them all.
And maybe Brioni heard Ragnar snort out a laugh somewhere in the ruckus.
“It looks so good in here,” she chirped, hopping down. “Can we go out in the woods now?”
Ragnar hung the pitchfork on the wall beside the other tools and loops of rope neatly lined up together. “I would never take you out into the Dreadmoor.”
She groaned. “Not there. I just want to go for a walk in the Veilwood.”
“Can you?”
“Oh, well, I guess not”—she clasped her hands to hide the broken cuff, not that any other demon seemed to notice—“but you can take me as far as I can go, can’t you?”
Ragnar blew out a long breath and stretched arms above his head while he thought. Surely he had no idea what he was doing to her when he puffed out his chest and arched his back, the muscles of his arms going tense as his tail flicked.
She blinked lazily while she imagined him peeling off his sweaty tunic, and then his black eyes met hers. “What?”
“I said, I will take you to where I feel it’s safe for you to go, but only because I have things to do there.”
Brioni bit down on her lip to contain her delighted squeal, then let it go anyway because she remembered she was on a mission to annoy.
A mission she wasn’t entirely sure was working.
Or it was working, just not the way she expected, because Ragnar didn’t seem bothered by her at all save for the occasional weird demon eye roll or click of his tongue.
Ragnar collected a few buckets and led her past the fire pit.
Another small shed-like building sat right at the edge of the wood, its door open and more tools within.
They followed a trail that had been tread many times, the moonlight bright enough to illuminate the way, and soon Brioni recognized a species of tree from her trips to the cottage.
“Are these dead?” she asked, pointing to the strange, spiraling one without any leaves.
Ragnar shook his head and explained how they had unique roots, showing her the mushrooms dotting the forest that were connected to the trees underground.
She marveled at the white-spotted fungi then hurried to a sprawling fern ahead. “These leaves are as big as my head!”
Ragnar almost chuckled—another almost, but she was getting closer. “They can grow much bigger.”
A breaking branch made her whip around, and she spied something looming in the darkness that made her stomach lurch. “What is that?” she hissed, grabbing his arm and huddling close.
The demon only casually glanced in the direction of the shadow. “Hiriivi doe and two of her fawns.”
Brioni peeked out from behind him as the one big shadow shifted into three. “Oh, they’re like deer,” she whispered, and then she noted the fangs on the doe. “Uh, well, kind of like deer.”
“They’re harmless, though I’m surprised they haven’t fled considering how loud one of us is being.”
Brioni gasped in mock shock and slapped the solid arm she was using for protection. His brow cocked at the place she’d barely hit, but she still scooted away from him and put on her third cutest smile—mission notwithstanding, she wasn’t trying to be that annoying.
“You act as though you were born in the wild, and yet everything is so brand new to you,” he observed as they continued down the path.
“Well, it is all new. Ankerick is nothing like this.” She gazed up through the crisscrossing branches to the moon, full and bright and not all that different than the one she’d stared at so many nights all alone in her room growing up.
“Actually, I guess it could be. I wasn’t allowed to leave the estate. ”
Ragnar’s tail flicked into a shrub, and purple petals scattered. “You weren’t permitted to go outdoors?”