Page 150 of Brimstone

“So the graven cast no shadow,” Saeris groaned.

I nodded. “It took up a scythe and went after my father. It called him a liar and a cheat, and didn’t notice, as it chased him through the forest, that the angle of the sun had changed, and the shadow of a majestic ox was now stitched to its satyr’s hooves. It swung its scythe back and forth, trying to claim my father’s right foot. It came damn close to taking it, too, but in the end, it only managed to sever his little toe.”

Saeris frowned as she looked back toward the darkened area of the forest. I let her have her thoughts for a while. Eventually, she said, “And the love potion? It worked?”

I laughed softly. “No, Osha. My father was young and foolish at the time, and didn’t know any better, but there’s no such thing as love potions. A person cannot be coerced into truly loving another. It would rob them of their free will. My mother loved my father because of who he was. It turned out his charmwasenough in the end.”

Saeris pondered this for a long while. “Did your mother tell you that story?”

I swallowed down a mouthful of whiskey, wincing at the burn, then placed the cap back onto the hip flask and twisted it closed. “No.Archerdid. Nearly all the stories I know of my father have come from him. Come on. It’s growing early. There’s something I want to show you, Little Osha.”

The huntsman’s cottage was washed blue by the dawn. The river below burbled away, singing the same song it carried all the way from high in the mountains down to where it met the sea. Saeris turned her face toward the dawn and basked in the first rays of sunlight that summited Omnamerrin and speared down into the valley below.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed this,” she whispered. “Things have just been so crazy.”

Saeris wasn’t one for unnecessary tears. She cried when she was angry, not when she was sad. But I knew that she was sad this morning, as she opened her eyes to watch the sun peek over the mountains, and a lone tear chased down her cheek.

“You can come here and enjoy it any time you like.” I stood behind her, winding one arm around her waist, pulling her close so that her back was flush with my chest. “A dream is just a fabrication. A manifestation of whatcouldbe. In-between places, and whispers of other realms. I had a feeling the sun wouldn’t affect you here.”

Smoke poured merrily from the cottage’s chimney, but we hadn’t gone inside yet. The air was brisk and fresh, and the wide-open clear sky overhead felt like freedom. Saeris was far too short for me to rest my chin on her shoulder, so I rested itlightly on the top of her head instead, humming quietly under my breath.

“What are we going to do abou—” She began to speak, but I cut her off.

“Peace, Osha,” I whispered into her hair. “The rot. Ammontraíeth. Everlayne. Our problems aren’t going anywhere. They’ll be right where we left them, waiting for us when we wake up. For now, let’s just take a moment to breathe. We deserve it.”

I knew it was true. Unequivocally so. It was easy to say it to someone else, to look at all we had been through lately and see that a person who had dealt with even half of the issues we had would deserve a second to catch their breath. But I was just as guilty as Saeris in this regard. My own mind wouldn’t stop caroming out of control, hundreds of thoughts vying for attention, questions demanding to be answered. It took a monumental effort to convince my worries to settle.

Saeris turned away from the valley and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, looking up at me. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, her eyes paler than the sky and twice as bright. The tips of her ears were red, too. I touched my fingertip to the point of her left ear, smiling softly to myself. “I got so used to them being round,” I said. “I was appalled by the sight of them at first.”

“Wow,thanks.”

I laughed. “Sorry. I don’t mean to offend.” I tapped the tip of her sloped ear again. “I was just very . . .veryworried. Humans are difficult to keep alive in a place like this. I . . .” Even now, confessing this made my voice catch. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

Other females had looked at me adoringly in the past. I’d let them, feeling only further and further away as they tried to draw closer. When Saeris turned her blue eyes on me, I didn’t have a choice. I was laid bare before her. I was brought to my godscursed knees. “You had a funny way of showing it,” she said,smiling crookedly. “And you still let me train with a sword, even as a human.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “You mean I could havestoppedyou?”

“Technically, yes,” she said. “You could have compelled me not to touch a weapon here in Yvelia, and I wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Mm. Yes, well . . .” I kissed her lightly, barely grazing her temple with my lips. “You would never have spoken to me again. And anyway . . . I know you, Saeris Fane. Even as a fragile human, you were strong. Independent. It would have crushed your spirit if I had sheltered you from this world. Your choices had to be your own. I saw that in the end. I see it now, too. Every day. You have arightto walk the road that stretches out before you. I will not rob you of your path by insisting I carry you.”

She was quiet for a while, mulling this over. The wind kicked up, toying with her hair, blowing it around her face. A bank of clouds passed in front of the sun, leaching the valley of color, and at last, Saeris drew in a breath and sighed. “Thank you,” she said simply. “For not trying to control me.”

An odd thing to be thanked for, that. I had no idea what the men back in Zilvaren were like, but I had never been under the illusion that I needed tocontrola lover. I kept all of this to myself, though. She didn’t need to hear it. Instead, I ducked down and whispered into her ear. “You’re a wildfire, Saeris Fane. There’s no controllingyou.”

She laughed, leaning her head back so it rested on my chest. “I’ll take that as a compliment, then.”

“You should.”

“And what if there comes a day when all of this becomes too much, and Iwantto be carried? At least for a little while?”

“Then it would be my honor and a privilege to do so, Saeris.Neverdoubt that. Whenever you need me to catch you, I amhere, ready and willing. I’ll face the Blood Court for you, if you want me to. I’ll face Belikon, and Madra, and anyone or anything that wishes to do you harm.”

At that moment, the bank of thick snow clouds broke, and Saeris flinched reflexively, her vampire blood telling her that she should hide from the sun’s rays. She huffed down her nose, relaxing when she remembered that the light wouldn’t hurt her here. “You’ll have to face the sun for me, too, in that case,” she mused.

“Gladly.”

“And I will becomeyourshadow.”