“Alone.” Jax’s dark eyes looked at Erion pointedly.
“Jax, I cannot think of one thing that you could have to tell me that you cannot tell your brother in arms.” Baldair was ever eager to nip any possibilities of rifts between his men. If they didn’t see each other as family, they wouldn’t fight alongside each other giving it all they had.
Jax leaned forward and rested his palm on Baldair’s shoulder. He leaned in close, nearly cheek to cheek. After a long pause, he spoke, “Does the name Serien Leral, mean anything to you?”
Baldair struggled to make sense of the question. “Serien Leral?” he repeated back to Jax. “Why do you know that name?”
“She’s here.”
“Has my father arrived?” Baldair looked around quickly like he was still a boy, caught with his hand in the sweets tin. His father wouldn’t say anything for Baldair’s lack of pomp upon arrival, but there was always that quiet disapproval reserved only for him.
“Not yet,” Erion soothed his concerns, but not his confusion.
“Then how is Serien Leral here?” The illogical stared Baldair in the face, but he still couldn’t make sense of it. “I need to see her. Take me to her.”
Jax nodded and led the way to the camp palace. Baldair could hardly believe the makeshift structure was still standing. He remembered when they all took bets on how long it had before the main hall collapsed in on itself. Apparently, they had all lost.
Erion broke away in the main hall, letting Jax and Baldair continue alone. Baldair vowed to sort things out with Erion once he knew exactly what was going on. Jax opened the door to Aldrik’s room.
And, sure enough, there she was.
Baldair would recognize that mess of hair anywhere, even if it was still partly darkened by dye. Vhalla Yarl groaned softly, rousing from sleep.
“Well, I can’t recall the last time I caught a woman in my brother’s bed.” Baldair’s relief escaped in the form of laughter. He was genuinely happy to see the woman. What had once been a strange creature that he could poke at for amusement and Aldrik’s annoyance, had evolved right before his eyes.
“Baldair,” Vhalla’s voice was as thin as air itself and she stared at him as though he were a specter.
“I hardly expected to find you here,” he chuckled. “I imagine it’s quite the story.”
Baldair expected there to be some whirlwind tale of how her and Aldrik were finally standing against the Emperor to defend their love. It was foolish of them, but it wasn’t as though Baldair had ever really understood the inner mechanisms of his brother’s mind. Vhalla’s face fell and threatened to pull his along with it into the darkness of her eyes.
“You didn’t tell him?” she asked Jax sharply.
“The second I told him you were here he asked to come see you,” Jax explained.
Pure terror filled her eyes as she looked at Baldair once more.
“What?” Baldair looked between his two companions, perfectly ready for one of them to talk sense.
“I tried to save him.” Her voice cracked, but she quickly recovered in a way Baldair didn’t think she could’ve done had it been just a few months earlier. “I tried, and I failed.”
“Mother, woman, you’re scaring me.” Baldair sat on the edge of the bed and it creaked in protest at his weight. He took her hands in his. Baldair knew the power of touch. It grounded people, it reminded them they were not alone, it prompted trust. Whenever he could, Baldair touched people to forge those bonds. “What are you talking about?”
“Aldrik’s dying.”
TIM
No matter how careful, there was always something left behind. An indent of grass, a scrap of parchment forgotten, a broken tree limb, or shrubs stomped by horses. There was no way for an army of any size to move through the jungle without leaving a trace in some way.
Tim glanced over her shoulder at the clearing behind them as they finally made their way forward. It seemed like it had been years since they had last moved. Years steeped in death and tension and paranoia and enough uncertainty to make her head hurt before she even first laid eyes on the hazy twilight of dawn that filtered through the jungle trees to the ground below.
It was certainly apparent where they had made their camp, now that the tents were removed. The shrubs the army had used to camouflage their temporary homes were cast aside, left to rot like bodies on the mossy jungle floor. If it weren’t for the cape around her shoulders she would’ve been up on the roosts that were now fodder for the jungle, or the enemy, to reclaim.