“I do thank you,” she said, peering at her feet. “For my gift. I quite enjoyed it.”
Kylac could not say whether she was being snide or genuine—until her big brown eyes found his, and she gave him that hint of her lopsided smile. Like that, his own bitterness became as dry sands swept in a wind, his angrier thoughts buried by a wash of guilt. Though hardly the prettiest girl he’d ever caught stealing glances in his direction, she was the only one he’d found himself glancing back at. “Chipmunk,” her crueler friends had dubbed her as a child, making mock of her puffy cheeks, heavy freckles, and slightly bucked teeth. In truth, she hadn’t fully outgrown the resemblance. But she possessed also a chipmunk’s curiosity, playfulness, and athleticism. And when she gazed at him as she was gazing now—
“Bray!” the old man barked, emerging from the depths of the seemingly abandoned house. “Is that you?”
He came sniffing onto the porch like a mole, his pink nose twitching, sightless eyes clouded and milky beneath a wrinkled brow and the stray white wisps still clinging to it. His back was stooped, his joints and limbs as gnarled and crooked as the staff to which he clung. To see him curdled Kylac’s blood. If Brie was a chipmunk, then she had done well, coming from such wretched stock, even a generation removed.
“Bring another viper home, did ya?” her grandfather snarled, and spat from the edge of his porch. “I can smell its venom.”
“It’s me, sir. Kylac.”
“Don’t you hiss at me, viper, or I’ll give your hide a tanning that’ll have you pleading for the next molting.”
Kylac readied a retort, but gulped it down when Brie put a restraining hand on his chest.
“I’m coming, Grandfather.” She looked back at Kylac, only to turn without a word and shuffle dutifully toward her home.
“Have you no notion of the hour?” the old man groused. “Or did the sun go and take a longer route than usual?”
“Apologies, Grandfather.”
“I don’t want your apologies. I want my dinner,” he said, as she shuffled past him and into the cottage. To Kylac, he hollered, “Well, go on, viper. Back to your nest. I’ve told you before, my Bray ain’t your concern.”
Bray, he called her, for nagging worse than any mule. Her name is Briallen, Kylac wanted to shout. Her friends call her Brie. Instead he said, “Today is her birthday, sir.”
“You fear I’d forgotten? That I can’t still hear her mother’s blasted wailing and her own damnable squalling from the day she was whelped?”
Within the cottage, a taper flared to life, its soft flame set to chasing shadows and no doubt sending the roaches skittering.
“Away, viper. I catch you slithering ’round my home again, I’ll have your fangs.”
Brie spoke not a word to him over the next week. Though Kylac saw her every day in the arena, mopping and hauling and scouring while he trained, she kept her head down and her eyes bent to her tasks. Ordinarily, she would discreetly observe him and the other combatants, learning what she could at a distance before joining up with him when both had completed their work. Instead, she made sure to finish up while he was still at his lessons, and rather than wait for him, hurried from the school grounds without so much as a nod or a glance.
Unusual behavior, though not without precedent. She got this way sometimes, become angry and aloof. On the heels of their disobedience in the arena, however, Kylac worried this time that he might be responsible. She’d forgiven him that night, hadn’t she? There at the end?
Regardless, he’d learned not to pry when he found her in these moods, leaving him little choice but to wait her out. If history could be trusted, it might last days, or even weeks. In most instances, he suspected these withdrawals had to do with her grandfather’s mistreatment of her. Though she’d never spoken of it, Kylac had seen the bruises, and noticed her ginger strides. He’d considered spying, to ensure her safety, but felt that would be a violation of their trust as friends. Short of that, he’d suggested she leave the old man. Her response had been that her grandfather was her only surviving family member, and she was all he had. She wasn’t going to abandon him.