Farrah flashed an amused grin at him, using magic to stop the water droplets before they could splash her. “Serill is currently undefeated, so maybe we should try making bets that the Prince of Severina will lose.”
Serill leaned his head back against the tree. “I’m going to bet if we don’t hurry up with these washes, we’re going to run into a morning patrol.”
Farrah flicked those beads of water she’d suspended into Serill’s face. “There, you’re clean.”
Cason and Elias snorted.
The prince only wiped his face… and flipped an obscene gesture at her.
Her gape was half surprise, half delight. “Feisty.” She jerked her chin over her shoulder. “Brela’s filling her water but she’s done at the pump. Go ahead.”
Cason scooped up his clean clothes and followed the path down the hill, Serill just a few steps behind. Weeds and bushes had grown over the trail in the years of abandonment, but he could easily imagine the beauty that had once been the garden. Pruned trees that climbed toward the blue skies, grasses of wildflowers and skittering life, a fountain that perhaps once held a stone statue of a celvusa.
If the castle in Aelstow could feature a kygras fountain, he was sure the fountains in Valisea would feature the shadow-kind’s most famous creature.
He turned around a thorny bush and froze, Serill smacking into him with a grunt.
Either Farrah had intended for Cason to come down here alone or had really believed Brela would be filling her water by the time they arrived. She might have been done using the water pump, but she was still wringing out her dirty shirt from the previous day.Hisshirt, that she’d stolen back in Severina. She was also currently not wearing one.
Small, wet strands of hair were plastered against her bare back, the ends dripping onto her navy blue pants. Baggier than her usual choice of skintight leggings, but slightly more appropriate for her cover of being in Serill’s personal guard.
Brela’s lack of shame about being half-naked somehow wasn’t a surprise to Cason, but rather the state of gray-black bruises that still marred her back. A perfect, U-shaped outline of a jaw of teeth, some of which had blended together and turned into angry splotches.
Cason had seen the one still swollen over the hollow of her throat. The rest werehorrifying.
“It’s not like either of you haven’t seen the scars on my back before,” she called over her shoulder. She shook out her wet shirt and slung it over a rock, her back still facing them.
Serill audibly swallowed. “Farrah said—“
“Farrah made a bet with Elias that she could get you both down here before I’d put clothes on,” Brela replied, still taking her time as she wrung out her hair.
“Was the other bet to scare the shit out of us with those bruises?” Cason asked, brow raised.
Brela made an effort to look over her shoulder, as if she could twist enough to see the bruises on her back, and then glanced down her uncovered front. “Oh.”
Just a casualoh, as if she hadn’t almost been eaten by a mythical beast.
She shrugged as she picked up her dry shirt, and Cason ignored the amused look Serill gave him at the gesture. “What exactly did that celvusa do to you?”
Brela paused with her arms halfway through the silvery sleeves. “There’s a reason Ryia was rumored to keep the celvusa close. Interrogation by shade bite. Digging through my memories, which makes it impossible to lie or hide.” She slid the shirt over her head and grabbed her corset belt as she turned, tapping her collarbone. “It wanted to know how this piece of the Veil wall ended up in my skin. Whatever it learned, it got away before I could force the answer out of it.”
She stared down at her hand—the bruise on her wrist that was darker than the others—as if she could still see that tendril of power that she’d tried to grab. “It knows that if it comes near me again, it’ll be a fight to the death.” A feral smile tilted her lips. “And it will not walk away next time.”
Oh, that smile did things to Cason. Confident and unafraid, and just a little bit wicked. Brela seemed to recognize his look, or the heat, because her teeth dragged over her lower lip as she stared at him.
“Good gods, you two,” Serill gagged, looking between them.
“Not my fault that Cason has to be so gods-damned tempting with that fire and lightning and handsome face.” Brela laughed as she strapped on the last of her knives, Night Carver sliding into a hidden sheath along her back as she continued to stare at Cason. “I’d tell you to find some other place to be, Serill, but I made a bet with Farrah and Elias that we’d be out of here before the sun broke the horizon, and I need to break my losing streak.”
The prince groaned.
And maybe it was because he’d been thinking about his failures with Era, or maybe it was how casually Brela had mentioned two of his gods-blessed magics without a shred of jealousy, but when she tried to walk past him, he snagged the collar of her shirt and yanked her into his kiss.
She gasped slightly, and then it was unleashed. Soft and rough, tongue and teeth, and a stray hand that gripped at his upper back and tugged him closer. It was clear the shaking of restraint came from both of them.
He nipped her lower lip and whispered in her ear. “You’ll win this bet. Because if you’d told Serill to get lost, I wouldn’t have been done with you until the sun rosetomorrowmorning.”
Brela’s breathy whimper as he strolled past her almost made him consider telling Serill to find a different place to wash himself.
