7. Sunlight’s Spell
Chapter seven
Sunlight’s Spell
Eighteen days. Eighteen days trapped in Lakara and the worst of his bruises faded, but the boredom was unbearable.
Imalroc knelt beside the window overlooking Manolia’s courtyard.
He spied a familiar flash of copper hair and watched Rerdas cross the flagstones, keeping clear of the stately couples wandering the courtyard arm in arm.
He let his gaze rest on the huntmaster longer than he should, studying his easy movement and the way the sunlight caught all around him, as if drawn to his hair and his sea-glass eyes and his skin, all soft and aglow.
Rerdas had tried to apologize to him after the night with the arnica. Imalroc had said nothing. His damaged throat made talking too painful. And that was a very good excuse to plaster over the fact that he didn’t know what he wanted to say.
Rerdas had taken his silence for reproach and proceeded to leave several arm lengths of distance between them at all times since.
Maybe that was a good thing. Rerdas lit a terrifying fire in him, a roaring want that exploded into existence every time he stood too close or looked too long. Sometimes it felt like it would consume him entirely. He didn’t want to be reduced to a longing shadow trailing Rerdas’s sunlight.
It felt like an age had passed since the night with the arnica. He’d been so angry, but some of that had faded. He could talk now, if he wanted. He chose not to.
Imalroc wrenched his attention from the man taking up too much room in his head, and back to his original target below the window.
The woman strolled through the courtyard with a fawning partner. She wore a riot of garish purple and puke-green silk, but it was the hat that most drew his ire. It must have taken an entire peacock to outfit that hat with its feathers. Perhaps more than one poor bird.
He groped behind him for the silver tureen Rerdas had delivered earlier. Inside, he located a fat, sugared puff, oozing custard over his fingers. Perfect. The woman let out a brassy laugh. Imalroc eased himself up above the window ledge, took aim, and let the cream puff fly.
There was a splat. The woman’s hand plunged into the mess of dripping feathers wilting all over her head. She shrieked, and the man accompanying her scanned the air in alarm. Imalroc ducked beneath the windowsill.
Peacocks avenged.
After waiting for the outrage and confusion in the courtyard to die down, he peeked out the window again. Most of the couples had gone back to walking, although in a decidedly more hunted manner. Rerdas, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.
He selected another cream puff and moved to a different window, eyeing his prospects. Crimson jewels speckling a man’s peaked hat caught the early sunlight, and Imalroc cocked his arm.
“Imalroc!” Rerdas sprang into the room. “Eternals, what are you doing?”
Imalroc pitched around to face him. “Entertaining myself.” He was mostly shut inside apart from early morning and late at night, when the other patrons had flopped into their beds. It wasn’t as if he could spend every daylight hour practicing sword forms in a bedroom.
“I promised Master Manolia that there would be no more frightening the guests!”
“What’s so frightening about a custard puff?”
Rerdas groaned. “You keep throwing those things, and we’ll get into trouble.”
“What’s going on?” Etiana followed her cousin into the room. “I heard you yelling from my room.”
“Imalroc is flinging desserts at Manolia’s esteemed patrons.”
“Oooh, did you get Rillabeth Morfen? She’s wearing this hideous orange thing that must have cost her mother a fortune.”
“Etiana!” Rerdas snapped.
Imalroc grinned. He didn’t agree with Rerdas’s bloodthirsty cousin on much, but apparently, they both knew how to properly use a custard puff.
Etiana rolled her eyes. “Calm yourself, cousin. Find anything useful in the gardens?”
Imalroc dropped his next missile back into the tureen and suppressed his sigh.
There were increasing signs that the purging tonic might be counteracting the Little Dreamer.
Seeing the improvements in their aunt had put the cousins in great spirits, but it was also keeping them in Lakara for gods only knew how long.
They were running low on the sultana’s potent formula.
Rerdas pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“Nothing in the garden we can use. Pokeweed, salt, and ginger we can buy at the market without attracting attention. But the others pose a problem. Wusterroot leaves aren’t normally harvested, and we can only get firewicks from an apothecary.
Unless...” He trailed off, a crease appearing between his brows.
Imalroc had an unwise impulse to smooth his hand across the huntmaster’s forehead.
“Unless what?” Etiana demanded.
“If you would go to the market, I could go out of the city and search in the forest. They’re not uncommon here.”
“Excellent,” Etiana said. “Take Imalroc with you.”
Rerdas paled. “I’m not sure that’s a good—”
Imalroc scrambled to his feet, crashing over Rerdas’s protest. “It is. It’s a good idea.” He had to get out of this room, and the forest sounded a sight better than the few excursions he’d gone on within Lakara. Too many people.
Etiana frowned. “I can’t bring him to the market. He attracts too much attention. And he can’t stay here unattended.”
“Think how many things would go out the window,” Imalroc said helpfully. Etiana and Rerdas both gave him eerily identical, narrow-eyed looks.
A muscle worked in the corner of Rerdas’s jaw. “He’s injured. It’ll be somewhat of a hike.”
Imalroc bridled. “I’m right here, talk to me,” he snapped. “And I was injured, but I’m fine. I can walk.”
Since the fight, he had gone through five tins of bromelene, nine of arnica, and countless other tonics and tinctures.
The salves had done their work well. His skin still bore faded yellow bruising, but the swelling had disappeared, and he could balance on his injured leg without a spark of pain.
And earthbound gods knew how badly he needed to get out of Manolia.
“Alright,” Rerdas muttered, vaguely in his direction but not quite looking at him. “I’ll need some time to prepare a few supplies. Then we’ll go.”
Rerdas ran off to get whatever it was he needed, and Imalroc squished his feet into a new pair of boots.
The comfortably worn leather of his old ones had not survived Navona’s watery battlebox.
At least the Draalish sword had fared better.
Imalroc slung it over his back and let his cloak fall to hide the long blade.
He practically squirmed to be out in the fresh air by the time Rerdas left Etiana with promises that they would return by nightfall.
He kept to Rerdas’s heels as they stepped through Manolia’s entrance, glad of the huntmaster’s rushed pace.
He was eager to get beyond the dense city, where he attracted an excessive amount of interest since his battle with Vativa.
In Kirinoll, no one would dare stand within slashing range of him, but in Lakara none of the idiots knew better.
Strangers halted them more than once, asking Rerdas if they could poke Imalroc’s sword arm, or purchase a lock of his hair. It set his teeth on edge.
But it was sunny, if a little cold, and Rerdas walked quickly enough that they left the city behind. Soon enough, he was free of curious passersby, out of sight of any grand estate or imprisoning inn, surrounded only by trees and thorny undergrowth.
The occasional cart or hansom rumbled past, but even those disappeared when Rerdas turned off the main road and onto a series of increasingly narrow and root-riven paths.
Safely out of sight from anyone who could see the Draalish sword, Imalroc stretched his arms and unhooked his cloak. The air nipped at him, but walking kept him warm.
Rerdas dropped back slowly, adjusting his pace until they were side by side. The huntmaster glanced over hesitantly, his hands clenched around the straps of the pack he carried. “Maybe we should… take this opportunity. To talk.”
“About what?” Imalroc pushed a whippy branch out of the way and batted it again when it sprang back at him.
“I know you felt—” Rerdas frowned and started again.
“I meant, it seemed that you felt angry with me. For my behavior with the arnica. I never should have—What I mean is, I’m sorry, again, and I just thought…
you never had a chance to say much about it.
I wanted you to know I’d hear you out, if there is anything you need to say. ”
“I didn’t answer you then because I couldn’t really talk, Rerdas. Remember? Bruised throat? Almost dead because of a battlebox with a bloody stupid theme night?”
“I know,” Rerdas said quietly. “I’m sorry. And I took advantage after.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Imalroc growled, “don’t talk about me like I’m some wobbly little flower trembling in your hand.
I can take you, huntmaster. I stopped it when I wanted it to stop.
” Even though part of him hadn’t wanted to stop at all.
He had wanted, quite badly, to sprawl on the couch with Rerdas underneath him and forget the rest of the world for a while.
“Right. I know that too,” Rerdas said.
It sounded like there was something else beneath the silence that followed, and Imalroc didn’t miss the furtive glance Rerdas shot him. “What?” he challenged. “Whatever it is, say it.”
“Well, it’s just, I did think—I think I understand why you stopped it. But then—” He swallowed. “Why did you start it?”
Now there was a question he’d rather not answer.
It had plagued him. On the couch, they’d been talking, and Rerdas had been pitying him.
He was not to be pitied, and he wanted to remind himself and Rerdas that he could take control of things between them whenever he liked.
He just… would prefer not to enjoy the way the huntmaster responded so much.
The problem was that when Rerdas looked at him, the huntmaster’s face made it perfectly clear he’d do anything Imalroc wanted.