She huffed. “So, it means he still cares for you, way more than he lets on.”
“Who cares for you?” Elia asked as she entered the room, snacking on something.
“Kaelric!” Mira protested. “He sent his second-in-command to fetch Brynn!”
Elia’s eyebrows shot up. “Godric is here?”
I nodded.
Mira had overheard the nights I’d cried myself to sleep in the beginning, after Kaelric left. And Elia and I had become best friends over long nights of whispered confessions. She told me about feeling like a failure as a mother on days she was too exhausted to play or when she yelled at the kids. I told her about losing Kaelric, about how his absence hollowed out places inside me I didn’t know existed.
I shook my head. “He needs me for something. He needs Valkaryn, likely. He’s protecting that.” Hedidtell me to bring her.
Elia softened and looked at Mira. “Can you take the rolls out of the oven? They smell done.”
Mira frowned, knowing she was being dismissed, but left anyway.
Elia’s hands came to rest on my shoulders. “Brynn, you’re his mate. I don’t know how, but you are. He will forgive you. He’s not built to stay mad at the one fate has chosen for him.”
My breath caught.
But she didn’t see the way he’d looked at me during the final trial —the anger, the betrayal, like I’d torn his world wide open.
Elia’s gaze flicked to the sword at my hip. “And I reckon he’s not mad at you. He’s really mad at her. For not choosing him.”
A sudden, sharp pain sliced across my chest. I staggered, hand pressed against my sternum. But it wasn’t mine; I’d felt Valkaryn’s pain, raw and deep, the grief of a mother whocouldn’t choose her own child, even if she wanted to. Her power had forced her hand.
I suddenly felt a strange tenderness toward her.
“Go to him. Help him. Forgive him,” Elia urged.
I swallowed hard and nodded.
“And don’t worry about your family. You know I will look after them.”
I did know that. Still… leaving crushed something delicate in me. Life here was good, better than good. I woke to my siblings’ laughter, saw my mother resting and smiling. Everyone was thriving. I wanted to stay and help and see Fiona’s baby be born. But Kaelric was fighting a war I knew almost nothing about. It would be selfish to stay, no matter how angry I was. He had given my family this life. If he needed me, I owed him.
I hugged Elia quickly and headed for the doorway, but the flowers I’d left on the small entry table were gone.
They were in my mother’s hands.
She stood there quietly, eyes soft with concern.
“I have to go. Kaelric needs me,” I told her.
She nodded. “The man on the porch told me.”
I swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry. I know it’s your birthday and?—”
She crashed into me, wrapping me tight in her arms. “You’re a grown woman now, Brynn. You can go where you please, but a mother’s heart will never stop worrying for her children.”
I sank into her, clutching her close. “I’ll be safe,” I promised, though I wasn’t sure I believed it.
She pulled back, eyes shiny. “You’re all grown up.” Her voice was quiet, like she was just now realizing it.
“I love you. Happy birthday.”
She reached out and booped my nose like she had a thousand times when I was little. “Love you too, Bean.”
