“Traitor from my own blood,” Dax grumbled, narrowing his eyes at the portal. “Where are you? I’m seeing mountains and no waves.”
“I left the island right after I sent the crate,” she said. “It got too sunny.”
“Too sunny?” He shook his head. “And you didn’t think to mention that?”
“I’m mentioning it now.”
“Dara.” He sighed. “Some lunatic is after all of us. I need to know where you are at all times.”
“I’m safe.” She shrugged. “Hidden. A bit hungry.”
Dax rolled his eyes. “Should’ve taken some of the cheese in the basement–”
“Ate it my first week there.”
“Then the jams–”
“Those too. Masked the burnt taste off the bread I baked.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t travel with supplies. Uncle Maksim always stressed how important that is.”
“No, that’s a direct result of me not learning how to cook,” she said simply. “He visited while I was there.”
“How is he?” I asked suddenly. He still hadn’t reached out to me–then again, the thought of sending even a carrier pigeon in Blood Brotherhood territory would have probably curdled Uncle Maksim’s blood.
“He pretended to like the bread.” The first hint of a smile pulled at her lips. “And made us a big salad.”
How perfectly normal. Like they weren’t in hiding because our Clan was crumbling.
“Left early about a week ago. Didn’t mention where he was off to,” she went on.
“Did you ask? You know, you could be tracking him as well,” Dax said. “He raised you, too.”
“Yeah, but you're his favorite,” she said without a hint of bitterness. Everything was fact for Dara and facts were only to be analyzed, not internalized, no matter how harsh.
He sighed and turned to me for support. “Can you believe this?”
“I am studying these stones and very much not getting involved in your twin bickering,” I said.
A lesson I’d heard the hard way. These two squabbled every other week for the most ridiculous things, and then came to me to vent. Then they always made up the very next day, after wasting hours upon hours of my time and already shaky patience. They just wanted someone to listen, and love them as I did, they needed to learn to listen to each other.
“These are really great, Dara.” I placed the stone back next to its siblings, which I had to enchant with my own spells to activate the runes. “Thanks for your help.”
“Sure, any time. Why are we helping the Blood Brotherhood again?”
“If you’d bother to talk to us more often, you’d be more in the loop.” Dax crossed his arms in front of him.
Dara rolled her eyes. Like sister, like brother. “I’m very much aware of the political and social implications of our unexpected truce with our former enemies, especially given all of our arranged marriages, but I struggle to understand it on a human level.”
“You don’t have to bring out the big words to make a point.”
She turned to me. “My brother keeps calling them Brotherhood bastards, so there is no love lost there and I doubt there will ever be.”
I kept quiet about Evie and the Dragon–and anyone else who might have sprung to mind, like the man who haunted my dreams.
“Is it simply a tactical decision or can we actually depend on them, is what I’m asking,” Dara said.
“In so, so,somany words,” Dax grumbled.
