But you don’t, and you can’t. Too bad, really—they might have been able to keep you safe.
He offereda shallow bow to hismistress.
Amusing for her to view herself as such, but she assumed it was respect he offered and that’s all that mattered for now.
“Have you delivered my message?” she asked, gloom swirling around her.
With raven hair spilling over her shoulders and pooling in her lap like liquid obsidian, and the endless wardrobe of deepest black, it was quite the dramatic effect.
Utterly lacking in imagination, but dramatic.
Technically, he’d deliveredamessage. Not quite the same as the one she’d tasked him with, but… semantics.
“The Demon Son should be receiving word any time now, give or take a few days.”
“Days?”
“I had to be clever in its transport to avoid any suspicion. You know how these things are.”
Hopefully histransportof choice was not un-healable. Deciding on his next steps had to wait until he knew one way or another.
“Clever?” She pinched the bridge of her nose between long, clawed fingers. “I need this done. We all need this done. As soon as fucking possible.” Her lids lifted slowly as she dropped her hand and turned crystalline eyes on him. “But you didn’t just leave a fucking note like I asked, did you?”
He gasped as if the question had truly wounded him. “Of course I did. It simply took longer than usual to find someone who could be trusted to deliver it safely.”
The lie slipped like honey over his tongue.
She was unaware of his proclivities, and he intended to keep it that way.
Her sigh was a tribute to her thinning patience. “I don’t care how you do it, or how hard it fucking is—you get Brandir aht Bordoroth to that meeting place. People are dying, and I need him in order to fix it.”
A series of clicks and muted shrieks sounded just before her massive abomination sidled up and pressed its head to hers.
If it could be called a head.Frankly, her pet was the foulest thing he’d ever seen—which was saying something.
But it did give him an idea.
“I assure you, mistress”—His smirk at that word was directed inward, as always—“it will be done as you say.”
No, it wouldn’t, but that wasn’t for her to know.
With a curse,Brand flopped onto his back, pressed trembling fingertips to closed lids, and kicked at the silken sheets tangled around his legs.
Every time he shut his damned eyes, the week’s events battered through his mind in disjointed images.
Baldrir’s mutilated body sprawled across the stone floor.
Lyriat’s roars and pacing, lost in his berserker rage as he demanded justice.
Nyriadne screaming when they’d told her, fighting with fist and teeth to see him.
Thad’s blood sloshing in a crystal goblet, the white-hot indignation in his eyes.
They still had no idea what had happened. His messengers had yet to return, the reports from their spies in the other realms hadn’t mentioned so much as a whisper of anything suspicious, and—since Mag and Thad had beenaskedto remain in Straelon—there were no answers to be found through either of them.
Lyriat’srequesthad been made under a friendly guise, but they’d all known it for the complicated demand that it was—they were to stay until it was bloody certain the Westrealm was without blame.
More of the same bureaucratic, arsing nonsense Brand had always hated.
