“No,” his cousin answered quietly, a shadow flitting across his features. “I know only the basics. Mam hadn’t gotten around to the rest before she…Before.”
“We need a healer then.” Brand turned to Lyriat. “Please tell me an inordinate number of Sorcerit have already shown up from the Evesong to witness our Occurrence.”
Lyriat’s jaw ticked. “None,” he said. “The few who came to do the flowers left as soon as they were done fixing Aldiat. You know how they are.”
Brand cursed under his breath. “Baldrir doesn’t have time for us to make a formal request. He needs help now.”
He tried to recall anything that would help—a favor owed, a rumor heard, a connection to exploit. Finding Araxis would take too long, his youngest brother more myth than substance most days.
“I know someone who’d come without question,” Thad said, interrupting his thoughts. “A friend.”
Lyriat stopped his pacing and leveled Thaddeus with a chilling look. “They possess the skill to heal injuries such as this?”
Thad didn’t hesitate. “I swear it.”
“The price?”
That time, his cousin did pause, and his voice was hushed when he finally said, “Far less than you’d expect.”
With a curt nod, the Demon King waved a dismissive hand. “Go.”
“Aye,” Mag said, gripping Thad’s shoulder. “Fast as you can.”
Thaddeus stood, determination in every line of his body as he rifled through his pocket and withdrew a length of thread. “It won’t take long, so be ready.” With that, he tossed the coiled bundle and followed it, disappearing through the oily, rippling surface of the portal.
Movement forced Brand to look up, just in time to see Hedda and Faldir drawing up beside Lyriat with weapons drawn, their faces twisted in mirrored looks of outrage.
“What the fuck? Is that…” his Second whispered. Then louder, “Bal!”
Her axe clattered to the floor as she dropped without thought and crawled through the pooling blood to her kin. She pressed her forehead to Baldrir’s, crooning nonsense, twining a lank lock of his hair around her fingers.
The sight ripped into him. Whoever had done this would pay.
“Faldir,” he said, the rage rising, “bring me our five fastest.”
“Consider it done.”
His Third was already shouting orders before he’d left the great hall.
Lunara’s handsmoved of their own accord, the motion mindless. The moonlight she’d grabbed glittered in the air before her as the beams concentrated into threads, which then spun themselves into yarn. She tugged more of the glowing length towards herself, the opposite end floating up and waiting to be made into more when she was ready.
Not that she was really paying much attention to that.
No, her head was elsewhere as her hook bobbed.
She narrowed her eyes at the opposite wall of her cottage. At the countless books piled haphazardly on dusty shelves. At the trinkets shoved between them, bits and bobs from places she’d never been.
She looked lower, at the blankets and pillows and doilies strewn about the furniture—some her own creations, but most of them not—no rhyme or reason to their colorful mayhem. At the mismatched tables with stacks of pictures drawn by tiny hands. At the vase of eternal flowers that had been sitting there so longthey would’ve died thousands of times in any other realm by now.
Payment for her services, every last thing, though she could hardly remember the faces of those who’d given them. Only fair, since none of them remembered her.
Even so, the people she’d healed seemed to know exactly what she liked, even if they didn’t really know her at all.
It’s better that way, and you know it.
Yes, she did. And she had no need for money anyway, which was why she didn’t accept it.
It didn’t change the dismal fact that she only had herself to talk to most days—or that she actually answered. That maybe said more about her than anything.
