“The hell with waking up,” Petur slurred, rolling so he could reach Deyvid and wrap an arm around him. “It’s too early for that. We don’t have to be awake for another two hours.”
“Sy wants a story, though.”
Sy blushed, but Petur was looking up at him now, curiosity on his face. “What story?”
“How we met, with me saving your ass.”
Petur glowered at their smirking lover. “Oh, horseshit. That isnotwhat happened. Not even close.”
“That’s how I remember it.”
“You remember wrong. Sy, don’t listen to a word from his lying mouth.”
Sy grinned. He knew an opening when he heard one. “How did you meet, then?”
Petur stared at the two of them for a long moment, then rolled his eyes. “Oh, fine, but if we’re telling this story, I’m ordering breakfast. I’ll need a full stomach to relive some of those moments.”
“Such dramatics,” Deyvid drawled as Petur stood up and headed for the washroom. “You’d think I wasn’t one of the loves of your life.”
“Back then, you were more of a pain in my ass.”
Now it was Deyvid’s turn to roll his eyes. “It wasn’tthatbad,” he assured Sy, turning his head to kiss Sy’s chest. “Well, fine, at first it was pretty bad, but we moved past it, obviously.”
“What happened first?”
Deyvid grinned brightly. “It started with the Forest of Linnet and a—”
“I’ll tell him!” Petur called out. “Not a word from you yet. I’ll tell him the beginning; you’ll just say it all wrong. It started likethis.”
Chapter one
Petur
It was midafternoon by the time Petur and his squad rode into the main square of Veshay, one of the villages perched at the southern edge of the Forest of Linnet. He checked the flag flying from the pole by the central fountain to make sure the town acknowledged the Riyalian crown. This far from the capital, borders became a bit more permeable, and no matter how eager Petur had been to get out of Delomar and stretch his legs—and wings—his sister had warned him against giving aid to a town pledged to Mersaighe.
“We don’t need to make them any bolder when it comes to raiding our merchants and setting traps for our patrols,” she’d said as they sat and drank together the night before he left, almost two weeks ago. “For a country that’s marginally allied with us, their mages spend an unseemly amount of time making our lives difficult.”
“It’s because you’re too good to them,” Petur had replied, deeper into his cups than his sister. A bit of wine sloshed over the edge of his solid silver goblet as he lifted it in a salute. “Queen Tania the Benevolent.” She chuckled and raised her owncup in response. “I still think we could teach them a lesson that would diminish their boldness if you’d just let me take a hundred of our elite troops down there to hunt the worst of the troublemakers.”
Tania frowned. “You know I can’t condone that. It would be a massacre, and we can’t afford to lose any more face to the rulers of Mersaighe.”
“We can handle a few mages,” Petur snapped.
“It’s not just afewmages, though,” she snapped right back. “The last report from your own spies indicated that they think there are upward of twenty mages making trouble for us along the border. Whether it’s an independent band of mercenaries or not, that’s too much magic for us to take on without magic of our own, and I’m not on good enough terms with Queen Melisse yet to ask for aid without being expected to pay more for it than I care to.”
“So what’s the point of sending a group of us down at all?” Petur said before taking a deep drink. It wasn’t that he was unhappy to go, but to be a bandage for the problem instead of thoroughly stemming the flow of blood irritated him.
“Your presence will show our people that we’re taking their troubles seriously without having to commit the kind of numbers that could be interpreted as a military challenge,” Tania told him. “Stay long enough to raise spirits and make some flashy kills, and by the time you return, I might have a deal negotiated with the Bekkons.”
“Bekkons.” Petur snorted. “Useless outside of their magic.” Bekkon was a fifth the size of Riyale and lacked the same military infrastructure. Their land was peaceful by dint of being remote, and the only thing they really had to be proud of was their proficiency with magic. Even then, they didn’t make battle mages of the same renown as Mersaighe did, but—
Tania laughed. “Petur, you’re so cruel! And not entirely correct either. Bekkon has recently instituted a new program to protect their northern border from incursions by the Harrier clans. They’ve created a griffin-riding unit.”
“Griffin riders?” Despite himself, he was reluctantly impressed. “I didn’t think the beasts could be domesticated to that extent.”
“Neither did I. Perhaps I’ll be able to get the details out of Melisse eventually.”
“Or I could send a spy.”
