Chapter 14 #2
"You don't move like someone who's fine."
His eyes meet mine, guarded now, the openness from moments ago shuttered away. "It's nothing."
I shrug. "If you want my help, you know where to find me."
He nods, and we let the silence stretch between us. It should feel awkward. It doesn't. It feels like something settling into place, quiet and unexpected.
"You still haven't told me about the artifact," I say. "The one you need my help finding."
"Right." He leans back. "Have you heard of god scepters?"
The question hits me like cold water. The image the Flame showed me flashes through my mind: the scepter floating in darkness, light pouring down on it like a blessing or a curse.
Is that what he's searching for? Has he already torn apart Jordi's quarters looking for it? Searched my room while I was gone?
My panic must show on my face, because he laughs. The sound is dark and smoky, curling through the room like incense.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think you used Mortiana's scepter to make your bargain."
My eyes narrow. "How do you know I didn't?"
His lips curl into something slow and cunning. "Because we can't both have it."
"You have it?" My mind races. If he has Mortiana's scepter, whose did Jordi find? Lugal's? But Lugal isn't one of the four. He's a consort, a god by marriage only. As far as I know, he doesn't have a scepter of his own.
"Care to explain that reaction?"
"Not particularly."
The sconces flicker. "Tell me."
Compulsion threads through the words, wrapping around my throat like fingers. My teeth clench. "Can you not use that on me?"
He exhales sharply, closing his eyes. "I didn't mean to."
"Do you not have control of your gifts?"
When his eyes open, there's something strange flickering in them. Something that looks almost like fear. He blinks, and it's gone.
"It's complicated."
"You're not going to explain?"
"I'd rather discuss the scepter."
I study him for a long moment, then relent. "The Flame showed me something. My brother, reaching for a scepter in a cave. Light pouring down on it like it was the only thing in the world that mattered."
"What did the scepter look like?"
"I don't know. The vision wasn't clear." I shake my head. "I assumed it was Mortiana's."
He frowns and looks away, something troubled crossing his face.
"If you already have Mortiana's scepter, why do you need another?"
"I need Sulara's to lift the curse."
"How would a scepter lift a curse?"
"By driving it into the roots of the Bratus tree."
I stare at him. "The Bratus tree. The one that was cursed."
"Yes."
A thousand questions crowd my tongue. How would we get there? How would the scepter heal anything? How is any of this supposed to work?
"Sulara's scepter has healing properties," he says before I can settle on which question to ask first.
"Healing properties." I turn the words over in my mind. The scepters are made from the bones of their gods. "Does that mean Sulara's bones can heal?"
His mouth twists into something bitter. "If they could, I would have lifted the curse centuries ago."
My brows rise. I shouldn't be surprised. He's from Vindariel. He's dedicated his entire existence to breaking this curse. Of course he would have tried everything.
I force myself to refocus. "How does it have healing properties?"
"It's made from one of Sulara's bones and the horn of a unicorn." He raises an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you thought unicorns were a myth."
I give him an unamused look. "I know they were real. I thought they'd been poached to extinction."
"They were."
The words leave a sour taste in my mouth. I'm beginning to understand why some people refuse to use their gifts at all. Why they'd rather live diminished than feed the gods.
"Sulara is supposed to be the goddess of life and healing." I frown. "How could she allow unicorns to be poached?"
"Who says she allowed it?"
"Then how does her scepter have a unicorn's horn?"
"It truly is astonishing how little you know."
"And yet you're relying on me to help you." I don't bother hiding my irritation. "Strange, isn't it?"
"You say that as if I had a choice."
"You act as if I have any choices at all." My voice rises despite my efforts to control it. "As if I asked for any of this."
He exhales slowly and looks away. "Let's agree to stop reminding each other that neither of us chose this."
“Only if you agree to stop repeating how little I know about everything.”
“I don’t mean for you to take offense. It’s just surprising considering who raised you,” he argues.
“Just finish telling me about the scepters,” I mutter.
"The Creators made the scepters as punishment for their misbehaving children.
They took a bone from each of them." His voice is flat, reciting facts he's known so long they've lost their horror.
"A bone can regrow. It hurts, but it heals.
So the Creators demanded something else as well. Something that couldn't grow back."
"Their familiars," I whisper.
He nods.
My stomach churns. Even if I weren't an animal healer, even if I hadn't spent my life caring for wounded creatures, this would horrify me. What kind of parent demands such a price from their children? What kind of god does that make them?
"Why would they do that?"
"The same reason they forced the gods to marry mortals." He shifts in his chair, and I catch another wince he tries to hide. "To ensure they never forgot how fragile life is. How easily it can be taken."
The words settle over me like a shroud.
"How did you learn about scepters in the first place?" he asks, steering the conversation away before I can dwell on it.
“Everyone knows about them. We have books with depictions and accounts of people finding them and being cursed by them.
They're a cautionary tale of sorts, which is probably why the Council allows those stories to remain unchanged.
Where is the account about the scepter being brought here? " I ask, looking at the bookshelf.
“It’s an old legend.”
I stare at him. “You’re basing all of this on a legend?”
"It's a legend, not a fairytale."
"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"
"Legends should be taken seriously." His frown deepens. "More seriously than most things."
I laugh before I can stop myself, raising my hands when he glares. "I'm sorry. You just don't strike me as the type to chase old stories across kingdoms."
His expression shifts into something I can't quite read. "Someday, legends will be the only thing that remains of any of us. The only proof we ever existed at all."
I consider that. It's not like I expect my name to be remembered anywhere. "But legends change. They get twisted over time."
"Stories change," he says quietly. "Legends don't. Legends are only written once a story is over. The way they're told might shift, but the core remains. The truth of it endures."
"I don't see the difference," I admit. "History is told through stories, and those change constantly."
“Legends are bones. They hold their shape.” He tilts his head. “Stories are living things. They grow and shift.”
“And that’s supposed to be okay? You wouldn't care if stories painted you as a coward? A villain?"
He laughs, low and humorless. "Who says they don't already?"
I go still. It hadn't occurred to me that he might exist in our histories.
That somewhere in the vault or the Noxbridge Library, there might be accounts of a man named Bain, painted as hero or monster depending on who held the pen.
Jordi told me once that Draven's name appears in books scattered across the vault and the Noxbridge Library.
Always painted as a hero, which means little in Lunaris, where the Council decides who deserves that title and history rewrites itself to agree.
It occurs to me that we're bound regardless of whether he's a hero, a coward, a villain, or all three. But something else nags at me, something softer than curiosity.
"Does it bother you? The way the stories paint you?"
"Should it?"
"I think it would bother me."
He studies my face for a long moment. "Has it occurred to you that they might be telling the truth?"
"I'm not asking if it's true." I hold his gaze. "I'm asking if it hurts."
Something flickers in his expression. He looks away, toward the bookshelf, toward the darkness beyond the window.
"It used to."
"What changed?"
"My perception." He's quiet for a moment. "History is written by whoever survives long enough to hold the pen. There’s never been a hero who hasn’t been villainized, just as there has never been a villain who hasn’t been deemed a hero. I guess I learned to live with it.” He looks at me again.
“Tomorrow’s stories shouldn’t diminish today’s actions. ”
The words settle into me, finding a home somewhere near my ribs. Jordi would appreciate this man, I think. The way he sees the world. The weight he carries without complaint. We sit in silence for a long moment, comfortable and strange all at once.
Finally, I stand. "I'm going to try to sleep."
He nods but doesn't move. I feel his gaze on my back as I cross the room, warm and steady through the bond.
"Goodnight, Menace."
His voice follows me into the darkness, wrapping around me like smoke, like a promise I'm not ready to examine. I close the door behind me and lean against it, heart beating too fast for reasons I refuse to name.