Chapter 43: Drafted Squirt
Squirt suddenly sighed, breaking the moment between her and the lord as she took a seat. “… when do we leave, then?”
Lord Prince Ranin answered, “No more than five days.”
Squirt studied him before bluntly saying, “I can be ready in an hour.”
Lord Everwinter answered firmly, “No, Athereon. His Guard must see you in your element. See you giving commands. We started that work today, but we will finish it in two.”
Squirt pulled the egg back into her chest, cradling it before she muttered, “As you wish.”
He then turned to Lord Prince Ranin. “I don’t believe five days is necessary. Three should be plenty. Leave the day after the collections.”
His friend let out a sigh of relief. “… I’d appreciate that. Now what was this about wings?”
Squirt tensed, but Lord Everwinter spoke for her yet again. “The Scholar Siabith Moorn, you remember her?”
His eyes hardened. “How could I forget? She tried to gods damn charm me.”
Squirt muttered, “Lucky.”
The lord prince gave her a confused look before Lord Everwinter said quietly, “That she tried and did not succeed.”
“Right… what does she have to do with pixie wings, though?”
Fury lit up in Squirt’s chest. She could have just shown the damn things. They didn’t need the damn backstory.
Still, she had to admit that his lordship was at least delicate with the way he explained. “She had bound Athereon to her will and came here to try and take her back to the Capital with her.”
Squirt snorted.
The lord was tense in his seat now, his eyes suspicious as he repeated, “And what does this have to do with wings?”
Squirt scowled. Fuck this. Her voice cracked like a whip through the room. “The Sia-bitch trapped me by life-debt for the high crime of reading a book in the University as a gods damn greenling, and decided I was her fucking fated pet. Not mate, pet. Then she used me to channel her magic to do the enchantments she couldn’t, and when I finally got the guts to try and run, she did this.”
Without allowing herself the time for shame to hold her back, Squirt opened her wings and turned her back to the other two, hiding the sudden appearance of tears. Her lord put his hand on her head as he shielded her from lashing auras bursting with fury, and she found herself leaning into the palm.
When the sounds fell back down to normal levels, in a bare whisper, she said, “For the record, this isn’t the cruelest thing you could ask of me.”
Lord Everwinter didn’t respond right away, taking the time to consider the statement first. When he spoke, he was back to his thoughtful tone. “No. But it is the cruelest I would.”
“Happy now?” she muttered bitterly.
His expression fell, his shoulders somewhat slumped as he murmured, “Never in my life have I enjoyed cruelty, Athereon.”
She thought of the desecrated corpse that was the Sia-bitch, her lips tugging up into a wry smirk. “I have.”
Like he’d read her thoughts, he simply said, “That’s different.”
Dryly, she asked, “Is it?”
“I admit to enjoying that one.”
Squirt pulled back from the palm she’d been leaning against to stare at his completely unapologetic face, tucking her wings back away. “… you don’t enjoy cruelty until you do, and when you do, that’s different and doesn’t count?”
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“It doesn’t count because she was attempting to hurt my family. Retribution and revenge, not cruelty for the sake of itself.”
***
Neither of them noticed the way Ranin inhaled, his eyes flickering between them rapidly.
“You and your damn shifter nonsense,” muttered the huntress. Then she turned and aimed a challenging glare at Ranin, who almost didn’t school his features in time. “And for the record, I can’t fly. I can kind of float. I normally only bring them out when I need to for enchanting since that’s pretty much the only thing they’re good for.”
Lord Everwinter smirked. “You brought them out for other reasons.”
To Ranin’s delight, the pixie blushed, only fueling his delusions of the whirlwind romance between the two.
The huntress snapped, “That’s different. You know pixies, it’s not our fault, they just, you know…” her voice fell to a shy whisper, “… they pop out when we get… excited.”
Ranin was over the moon and interpreting this entire exchange very differently than the two completely oblivious on the other side of the coffee table.
***
Lord Everwinter chuckled and said, “I meant during the surge.”
Squirt glared at him. “Yeah, about that, next time don’t fucking throw lightning at a gods damn basilisk. They’re spring beasts. It doesn’t do enough damage.”
Thoroughly chastised once again, he dropped his head. “I’m—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
He grinned at her.
She huffed.
Lord Prince Ranin finally burst out, “What happened to the basilisk?”
They both blinked at him before she said dully, “It’s a giant feystone. Duh.”
Frustration palpable in the man’s eyes, he said, “How?”
Squirt said bluntly, “I stabbed it.”
This did nothing to ease his burning curiosity, and Lord Everwinter chuckled out, “I’ll have Tobias tell you later. He is better at retelling the story.”
She hunched her shoulders and muttered, “Better at embellishing, you mean.”
“Hm. I think the donuts have finished defrosting now. Have you tried this one? It’s made with chocolate filling.”
She glared down at the treat he pointed out as if the very existence of it offended her.
“You can take it with you to the library, if you wish.”
Her eyes still locked on the treat, she muttered, “Don’t need me anymore?”
“We will, Athereon, but it’s my job to deal with the details here. If you trust me, you can disappear for now. Or you can bring the books here and read them in the room. Or listen from the library.”
She scowled, then swiped the donut, trotted over to pull the statue, and disappeared down the secret passageway, muttering about overgrown mutts.
Squirt happily lost herself to a book on magic circle theory. She was almost finished memorizing its contents when Tobias’s voice cut through her bubble.
“—leaving? You’re just going to let her go with… with… this? Like hell she’s leaving without me!”
Some quieter voices.
“Fuck that! They don’t need me to run them! I’m not letting her go and—no, don’t give me that—fuck your friendship, that’s my sister!”
Squirt couldn’t help the soft smile on her face in response.
Then the incredulous, two octave higher screech of, “You can’t be serious! You’re sending him?” Followed by, “Them?”
Curiosity officially piqued, Squirt closed the book and trotted back towards the office.
Tobias was there, standing over his lordship, his boyish face bright red with fury. Lady Kenna sat on the opposite couch, lounging apart from a highly amused Lord Prince Ranin, looking no less angry even if her tells were more like the sharp edge of the blade at her hip than the explosive fury of Tobias.
Cradling the egg out of habit, she asked, “Who is being sent?”
Everyone’s eyes snapped to her with such sudden intensity, she flinched.
Tobias growled, his voice thick with the sound as he managed to say, “He’s sending Qzi and Zhadin with you.”
She waited for the stunning declaration and realized that was it. “Oh. If that’s all…” She turned on her heel.
“You want them instead of me?” he asked desperately.
She turned back to him with a furrow to her brow, her eyes flickering to assess Lord Everwinter before returning to Tobias. “… he’s trying to give me options for bodyguards that can keep up with me in the forest, will scare off most interlopers, and have whatever weird obsession it is with me that means they’ll work harder to keep me safe. He’s making you stay behind because you bring unity to the hunters and can stand in for me. I don’t see the problem.”
Tobias faltered before saying, “… I’m not trying to yuck your yum here—”
She snapped, “I never said it’s my yum.”
“—but, I mean… what if they kidnap you?”
She had no idea where he got these kinds of ideas. Slowly shaking her head, she said, “Then I stab them, obviously.”
He faltered again, a pained expression on his face as he visibly crumpled and said, “… if… if you’re okay with it, then…”
She snorted. “Like I’d trust any of these other idiots to keep the hunters in line. Besides, you know the redcap would probably just stalk me if I left without him, anyway.”
Lord Everwinter sipped his tea, casually keeping to himself that the shadowfell Zhadin would as well. If she hadn’t noticed, he wouldn’t tell her.
Lord Prince Ranin, meanwhile, slowly shook his head. “A redcap, huh?”
Squirt, unwilling to explain, shook her head and said, “I’m going back to reading,” before trotting from the room.