Page 243 of Bitten & Burned

I held out my hand. The cane trembled, then lifted—wobbling, awkward, but rising all the same. It floated across the room and dropped into my palm with more weight than grace.

A breath shuddered out of me. My leg still ached, but something inside me hummed, alive.

“I would have gotten it for you,” Quil murmured, a smile in his voice. “No need to show off.”

It was a lovely rosewood, carved into a vine and topped with a wide flower that was easy to get my fingers around as I walked. As much as I hadn’t wanted to get a cane, I had to admit, it helped immensely on days like today.

The bond hummed just there, a comfortable, low pitch that didn’t interrupt me from completing tasks, but comforted me when I needed something constant.

That’s what they were, my boys: constant.

They’d all proven to me that they were there for me in so many ways.

Dmitri, with his grounding presence, calmed me when I cried or when the feelings were too much for me to handle. I recalled how he’d spent time with me, helping me calm myself in those first tumultuous days of the bond after Vael had… after everything had happened.

“Careful, sweetheart.” Quil’s hand appeared at my lower back as I stepped over a cushion someone had left on the floor earlier.

Quil. Who had literally saved my life, carrying me away from my bad decisions and letting me lose myself in that cave of his. I would never be able to smell cave moss without thinking of him.

“Anton said he made you panno-chocolate or whatever,” Quil said softly. “If you want me to go get some for you?”

I smiled at Quil’s obvious and purposeful butchering of Anton’s language. When I looked into his eyes now, all I saw was warmth.

Warmth that had been there all along. I just didn’t know how to see it before.

“I’ll go now,” I said softly.

“He’s going to get mad I let you walk all that way.”

“The cane is so Icanwalk, Quil.”

“Iknow that, but you try explaining it to the Drama-Lord.”

“Drama-Lord?” I asked, laughing.

“If you don’t think that suits him, you’re lying.”

I shrugged. “You’re not wrong. But I’m going to get my ‘panno chocolates’ myself.”

Quil smirked. “I’ll come with you so he has someone to take it out on. I’ll just steal stray chocolate once he gets going.”

As we moved slowly down the hall, we passed by Vael’s chamber, the door wide open as we walked by.

“Rowena!” he called from his desk inside. “I had this manuscript sent to me, and I feel like your eyes would be better than mine…” He came out to stand alongside us as I stopped walking to look over the cover of the manuscript.

“This is the old Nordania script you were talking about, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought at first, but…” He pointed to one of the symbols, and I gasped. “It’s Elder Norlese!”

He grinned widely as if he’d just given me a gift, and, by all rights, he had.

“This is a complete manuscript, and it’s in Elder Norlese,” I murmured. “Gods, how long have we been looking for something like this?”

“You’ve been looking for it as long as I’ve known you, so…”

“Gods, I can’t wait to read it!” I grinned, and Quil reachedbetween us to pluck the manuscript from my hands and give it back to Vael.

“Snacks first, old boring ledgers after.”