Chapter 111 - 112
"You two are such fools," snapped Johan, frowning as he looked down on Daniel’s boys. "After what happened this morning, did you seriously just try to harm them? What do you think your father would do if he found out about this?" He shook his head, contempt on his face. "To risk your inheritances for petty and unsightly intentions, if this becomes known then you two will become the disgraces of the family."
"Our inheritances?" Calum ran over to his brother and helped him to his feet with an uncomfortable expression. "Father wouldn’t be pleased, but surely you don’t think...?"
"We were just playing a game," breathed Edmun, who was only now catching his breath. "Calling us disgraces is going too far, Johan. You would think we were that useless aunt of ours, how you always talk down to us."
"Yes, yes. We were just playing a game, there’s no need for you to butt in."
While the brothers began to throw out excuses and deflections, Alistar calmly approached the three while discreetly reasserting the water that he’d just dismissed, which he gathered a pace or so beneath the brothers’ feet.
"I’m sorry you had to deal with..." Johan trailed off, noticing the water. "Don’t be hasty, Alistar. Be patie—"
Alistar strode by him, grabbed Calum by the collar of his tunic and yanked him inwards, meeting him halfway with a well-timed punch that broke his nose with an audible crack. It happened too quickly for the other boy to avoid it, despite the fact that he’d tried to pull away. Edmun didn’t hesitate to leap toward him with a bloodthirsty growl, but he tripped over himself as his feet were abruptly cemented in place by a sudden surge of water that completely encased them from the ankles down before instantaneously hardening into ice. Edmun fell face first into Alistar’s right knee, a crunching sound coming from one of the boy’s pale cheeks.
As the brothers lay there, stunned in both the figurative and literal senses, Alistar looked down at Edmun with a gaze that contained a lifetime of hurt and hatred, feeling as if he were staring at the red-haired guards from Crystellum themselves. Seeing this, the older boy went completely still as if he were a little doe that had just come face to face with a hungry wolf.
"I’ve done everything possible to win you over, but you two seem determined to make an enemy of me. Since that’s the case, then let me tell you this." Two icicles formed at the tips of his fingers, a process that came easily to him after his practice from the night before. "As far as I’m concerned, you’re both terribly weak, so do yourselves a favour and stop pestering me and the girls. You’d do well to remember that if you ever lay your dirty hands on them or anyone else that I care about again, then I’ll risk everything to make you pay for it. Everything. Do you understand me?"