Chapter 24
Matched Mischievousness
Brioni
It might have been morning. In fact, Brioni was sure that someone somewhere in Heck was definitely waking up and doing morning-type things. So even though it was too early for Balran to have arrived for her next shift, it wasn’t at all a problem for Brioni to hop out of bed, get dressed, and go.
“Ragnar doesn’t just get to give me a blightspawn heart and disappear,” she told Moar pointedly as they went to the door together. “Even if he did give it to me a couple days ago—that doesn’t count because I didn’t know.”
She hustled through the infirmary—quietly and with precision to avoid any other healers, which might have made it look like she was sneaking, but Brioni assured herself that she was not—and then slipped silently out into Heck, through its streets, and right to the edge of the woods.
“Oh, Ragnar!” she called as she skipped down the path to the barn. “I know what you did, and it’s time to fess up!”
She grinned shamelessly to herself as Moar trotted at her side through the barn’s big opening. A quick skim of the space told her Ragnar wasn’t there—he was much too big to hide—but also that he was apparently late to rise. What was early for much of Heck was right on time for its beastkeeper.
Perfect—now she’d be able to surprise him.
She hurried up the stairs perhaps a little too loudly, but she was too excited to notice, and then eased open the door to the loft with the silence of someone who hadn’t just thundered up an entire story.
The loft, however, was strikingly dark. Though no smoke lingered, the candles were all out, the only light coming in through the windows above the bed.
It didn’t smell of any breakfast made or of that soap Ragnar always used either.
Moar nosed his way into the loft, sniffed the air, and whimpered.
“Uh oh.”
Brioni didn’t bother calling Ragnar’s name as she flew back down the stairs.
The signs were all there—or rather, not—and her mind whipped itself up into twice the usual frenzy.
She flung open the cabinet beneath his worktable, but one of the oliderites sat naked, its shroud missing just as she suspected.
Feeders hadn’t been filled, pens hadn’t been opened, straw hadn’t even been disturbed, but most telling of all was the hollowness that opened up in Brioni’s chest.
She sprinted to the nearest stall and threw it open.
The veilhounds inside rose to attention, but she moved on to the next and the next, flinging open doors and waking hounds until she made it to the end of the barn.
Creatures filled the middle way when Brioni spun to address them, eyes glowing and spines straight.
“Ragnar’s in trouble.” It burned her throat to say, but she raised her voice so they would all hear. “I need you. All of you. We have to find him.”
Whether veilhounds understood the language Brioni spoke was questionable, but the hours she’d spent running fingers through their fur and over their bones, the nicknames she’d bestowed, and every boop given to every bony snout had to account for something.
Moar led the charge, racing through the wood with almost two dozen veilhounds tearing behind him.
Brioni bolted over logs and under branches in the middle of the pack, protective shadows darting on either side of her.
She only had two legs compared to their four, but determination pushed her onward.
It wasn’t so long ago she had similarly fled through the woods, but this time she ran toward something, not away from it.
Oh, of course Ragnar had gone and done something brash and stupid.
At least there, the two were matched because Brioni was doing something stupid in return.
He told her he was getting rid of the rune, but he’d been so vague that he could have meant anything!
That was one of her tricks, and oh, boy, was he going to pay for that later.
She would have bet the finest vellum that he’d actually gone to the Scholar's Hall and gotten himself into trouble. All to protect her.
And now she was going to get herself into trouble too. For her soulbond.
Clouds blotted out the rising moon, but the last of the stars still shimmered through the trees above.
Warm air filled Brioni’s lungs with every footfall, and the branches didn’t tear at her arms or skirt.
In fact, it was like the Veilwood opened up just for her, the way familiar, even from this direction.
She wasn’t leading them, but the hounds were headed right where she expected.
Glossy demondrake leaves caught the starshine, and Brioni knew they were getting close.
Her heart didn’t stutter like it did all those other times, not with anticipatory fear anyway.
This time it pounded in her ears as she pushed onward, faster still with ferocious beasts all around her.
Then it was there, the stone front, the thatched roof, the green door.
The pack skidded to a stop, encircling the cottage.
There was a stillness in the Veilwood, one Brioni had experienced before, but then she had been afraid.
This time, she was incensed, quieting her gulping breaths as she examined the surrounding wood and the cottage’s front.
The veilhounds were each alert, massive paws digging at the earth as their purple eyes glowed narrowly from the darkness.
Moar went right up to the door and sat, snout pointed up, tail unwagging.
Ragnar was inside—he had to be—and so she had to find a way in.
The door handle, of course, did not work, but it felt good to swear as she tugged on it anyway. Scowling at the facade, she took stock of her options: two windows on either side, the shutters latched, and a chimney. Well, that certainly wasn’t happening.
Brioni rounded the house and the two largest veilhounds followed, their paws silent but snarls growing.
She felt each canine huff deep in her own chest with every blocked entrance she discovered.
The back and one side of the cottage were absolutely covered in vines.
She spied one corner of a shuttered window and the frame of a door, but it didn’t matter—the creeping plants were thick and refused to budge.
The final side had more shutters that she couldn’t even pry her fingers beneath to begin to rip off, but there was a third window near the eaves, perfectly round, glass exposed.
She pushed up onto her toes and reached for its ledge, but even stretched to her full height, it was more than an arm’s length away.
A hard nose nudged the small of her back. The largest of the veilhounds stood with purple eyes swirling up at her for a command. She tipped her head, ran a hand along his neck to his spine, then grinned. “Yes,” she said. “I would like a boost. Thank you.”
But before she climbed onto the animal’s back, she dug into her bag for a scrap of parchment.
She had no quill or ink, so she folded it into a drayk, said a quiet apology, then tore the papercraft down its middle.
The pieces dangled, attached by only a thin shred, the best she could do to ask for help without words.
Then she called Moar over. “Get help,” she commanded. “Bring someone back here.”
The dog opened his mouth to receive the paper, but she pulled it back.
“Actually, bring multiple someones,” she corrected.
Moar clamped down on the papercraft.
She didn’t let go. “Make that multiple big someones.”
The dog grunted, and Brioni finally gave him the makeshift plea.
Maybe Moar understood, and maybe he would find someone in town willing to listen, and maybe they would even understand the wordless request, but as she watched Moar run off through the forest, she knew he would at least be out of harm’s way.
It was only a small struggle to climb up on a veilhound’s back.
A slightly larger struggle was balancing on its shoulders as it propped its paws on the cottage wall.
The largest was perhaps when Brioni slid back down to the forest floor and had to start all over again, but two more veilhounds worked to steady her, and she finally found herself parallel with the window.
She took off her satchel and wrapped the strap around her hand, admiring the floral design of the colored glass she was about to break.
Somehow the delicate work had survived the elements without any care, but the frame around the edge had rotted just beside the inner latch.
She wiggled a finger into the soft wood until a chunk fell away, and she was able to swing the window open unharmed.
If that wasn’t a sign of good luck, Brioni didn’t know what was.
Abandoning her satchel, she gripped the rounded edge of the window and thrust her head inside. The cottage was pitch dark save for the minuscule light that came in behind her head. The space felt cramped and vast all at once, not even a pale purple lantern to light it up.
Not a problem, Bri, she thought as she willed her eyes to adjust. You’ve still got all your other senses.
She took a deep breath of stale, musty air.
Okay, count that one out.
She hoisted herself onto the edge, head stuck through, shoulders fitting in, and breasts…
well, thankfully they were squishy. Brioni’s feet left the veilhound below and she rested her stomach on the rounded sill.
She balanced in a wobbly way, hands beneath her as she squinted into the darkness of the cottage below.
If someone or something were lying in wait, she wouldn’t know, but she was in the worst possible position for an attack, so when nothing bit off her head, she assumed the best.
“Ragnar?” she whispered.
There was no answer.
But there was also no movement, no feeling of unseen eyes watching her. So she wiggled forward.
The whole thing would have been a whole lot easier if there were anything to actually wiggle against, but Brioni had to flail into the nothingness behind and in front of her until the widest part of her hips came up against the sill.
She reached for a handhold below, dangling with her upper half pulling her downward, a precarious position she might not have minded under completely different circumstances.
She knew she could fit, mostly because she had to, it was only that space was being uncooperative, so she gave one last kick, connected with the stained glass she had been so lucky to reserve, and heard it shatter as she went careening forward.
A counter met her outstretched hands, thank the gods, and Brioni tumbled over herself until she landed solidly on the floor. She plastered her back against the cabinets, breathing heavy behind her hand as the echo of all the broken glass died away.
“Sorry,” she whispered, a little to the window but mostly to the veilhounds whimpering outside.
At least the clouds had cleared, and the rising moon cast a pale stream across the cottage’s innards.
It was just one room, but the space was mostly empty, a small relief and enough to let her stand and creep across the chamber.
A short sofa was turned on its side against the front door and a table and chairs were broken down and crammed into the fireplace—good thing she hadn’t chosen that entry.
The windows were all boarded over too. Clearly no one lived here, and that no one wanted to keep everybody else out.
She peeked behind the upturned sofa, but the letters she’d delivered under the door were not stacked up.
So someone had been there, but how? Certainly the window she’d used wasn’t a means of entry for a demon, even if they had somehow been able to unlatch it from the outside without destroying the sill.
Brioni flexed her fingers as she spun in place.
Everything was sealed up tight, and she was alone, yet the veilhounds had led her to the cottage and they didn’t even know it existed.
Unless they had come upon it on their wild runs as a pack, but still—she had asked them to find Ragnar, and they’d come here.
She turned for the door once more at the sound of claws digging in on the other side.
She pushed the sofa, and it scraped against the old floor, inching away.
“I’m in here,” she grunted through the wall as she moved the hulking piece of furniture, but it caught on a loose board and refused to budge further.
Limbs tired and chest heaving, Brioni collapsed against the wall and listened to the scrabbling outside. If only she were stronger or bigger or had some kind of magic, she…
Magic.
Brioni straightened. Solid stone. The cottage’s back wall was solid stone.
Her gaze darted to every corner, but there were no windows or doors.
Just stones stacked on stones. That wasn’t right, though, was it?
The back had been covered in vines, but she’d spied the corner of a window and a door through the thick foliage.
Tricky demons.
She paced across the cottage, too short a distance for the building she’d circled outside.
There was something else here, something hidden, something someone didn’t want seen.
Running hands over the wall, Brioni carefully walked its length, feeling the roughness of every stone and the dip between each, tiny crevices and sharp edges, but it wasn’t entirely right.
The texture didn’t always match with what her fingers touched, which was impossible. Unless it was an illusion.
Brioni halted, seeing stone under her hands but feeling wood. A door. There was grain, a frame, a knob, all cloaked in magic but unmistakably there. She blindly grabbed on, and the handle turned.