“Is something wrong?” Brand asked, a knot forming in his stomach. “Is it not working?”
Thad pushed by him. “Everything inthereis completely fine.”
“What, then?”
“Stars above, you can be such an arsehole. You always think you know better. Mam is dead, so it must be Lunara’s fault and she’s not to be trusted,” he said, his tone mocking.
Brand went through life entirely convinced he knew fuck all and was only fumbling, but that was beside the point. “Thaddeus?—”
His cousin spun and jabbed a finger into his chest. “You weren’t there. You have no idea what we went through, what she went through, trying to heal Mam and bring her back to us. No one cares as much as Lunara does. That’s worth something. Fuck, it’s worth everything, even if it didn’t go how we wanted it to in the end.”
“We don’t know what you went through because no one will bloody tell us,” Brand argued.
“Aye, for good reason!” Thad shouted. Then quieter, “I was forbidden from speaking about it, just like I was forbidden from going into the Evesong ever again.”
That last part was no secret. Caius was aggressively vocal in his swearing off of Nachthelliae. Any business the Wolflords had with the Elder Council was conducted in Thodelebor, or by Magnus.
“I broke a promise to my da today—one made with a symbolicoath—in order to help you. You don’t have to trust her fully, but at least give me enough credit to realize that isn’t something I would do in order to go and fetch just anyone. Now, kindly fuck off and let me be.”
Thad stomped away, leaving Brand slack-jawed for the second time.
That had been the closest that either he or Caius had ever come to revealing what’d happened last year, and it was still bloody fucking nothing.
What it diddo was ratchet up his curiosity until he couldn’t help himself.
Brand backtracked to Bal’s room and eased the door open, waiting a moment before slipping inside.
The damp scent of sweat and blood hit him, though there was nothing rank about it—more the smell of hard work than it was of putrefaction. He tiptoed into the sparse sitting area and paused again, letting his eyes adjust to the single, faintly glowing stone in the wall above the bed.
Baldrir lay supine, the Sorcerit twisted and huddled over him, but they were little more than a dark mass. The details were hazy, like the prismatic power leaching out of her was bending the air around them. Hiding them. He toyed with the idea of brightening the light, but something told him it was dimmed for a reason.
A low, shaky grunt, a wretched wealth ofagonyin the sound, and Brand jerked towards the bed, arm outstretched to?—
“I know, I know. Shhh.” Her voice stopped him dead. “You’re doing so very well, my friend. This leg is nearly done, and we’ll have a rest. You’re so strong, Baldrir. You can do it.”
So soothing in her reassurances, even as every word trembled with her own apparent exhaustion.
She was kind. He’d give her that. Even if she did end up demanding a ridiculous payment, that was more than he would have dared hope for from most Sorcerit.
A sigh of relief left her and Bal in tandem, and Brand moved to slink away. He had no interest in explaining why he was hovering there. Never mind that he had every right—it still felt like an intrusion. Like he was witnessing something he shouldn’t.
Just before his fingers brushed the doorknob, her sharp hiss of breath and pained whimper cracked across the relative silence, wrapping around his heart and wrenching it into a galloping beat.
Damn it.
Regardless of their mercenary conduct as a people, the personal price of Nachthellian power was no laughing matter. In some ways, the healers at least had good reason to charge as they did, when it was their own flesh that bore the terrible cost.
He just hoped hers would be enough to save his friend.
Lunara shifted again, the mattress creaking beneath her incoherent mumblings. There had to be something he could do—for Bal’s sake, if nothing else.
Brand’s eyes landed on the chair, well out of her easy reach. Springing for it, he pushed it closer and dragged the small table with Thad’s heavy tray up beside it. A piddling offering to the one they were putting their faith in, but it was all he had to give at the moment.
A small kindness, in return for hers.
That tightness in his chest lingered, though. Long after he finally made his escape, blessedly unnoticed. Through the corridors and his sleepless night. Over the anxious days that followed, and during silent meals spent worrying with the others.
It clung onto him and wouldn’t fucking let go.
