Page 8 of The Lost Art of Finding Where You Belong (Lost Arts #2)

Chapter Four

A nd then, thank all the elements, there was a knock on the door proceeded by Molun and then Arvus arriving.

“Oh, no,” Molun said definitively. He marched right over to the chair and pulled Perian up. “You are definitely not sitting here all sad and alone. What are you—?”

He cut off as he saw the book, eyes widening. He snatched it from Perian and slammed it shut.

“Nope!” he announced.

“I just—” Perian started.

“Absolutely not,” Molun said firmly. “You have nothing to worry about; everything will be fine.”

Perian bit his lip. “Are you sure?”

Molun’s expression softened. “Yes, I’m sure,” he told Perian firmly, even though he couldn’t actually be certain. He held out the book. “Arvus, take that back to our room. Perian doesn’t need it anymore.”

Perian thought about objecting, but when Arvus looked at the title and grimaced, tucking it immediately under his arm, he gave up.

“You’re coming to dinner with us,” Molun told him.

“Hello, Perian, how are you?” Arvus said, lips quirking up in amusement. “Would you like to come to dinner?”

Molun was still tugging Perian towards the door, not waiting for an answer. Perian felt his lips forming a smile for the first time in what felt like too long.

It seemed a little awkward, just the three of them, though it was probably mostly in Perian’s head. Molun and Arvus were acting just like normal, but Perian was off. There was a hole where Brannal was supposed to be, and Perian felt like he was in danger of falling into it.

His inattention was obvious, apparently. Arvus reached out and squeezed Perian’s hand as he toyed with the food on his plate.

“Molun’s right. Everything’s going to be fine. Brannal is extremely well-equipped to deal with any demons they might encounter, and he has an entire team with him.”

“I know.” Perian blew out a breath. “Well, I keep telling myself that, anyway. It’s not even just that, honestly. I’m still trying to figure out how to be on my own.”

They looked at him with sympathy.

“Is it that bad?” Molun asked gently.

Perian shrugged. “I feel silly admitting it, to be honest. He has scarcely been gone a full day. And I also keep repeating this, but I really do mean it when I say I’m proud of who and what Brannal is.

We probably wouldn’t have met if he wasn’t like this, and I don’t even know if I’d be alive without him.

But I guess I got really used to being with him and enjoying the closeness.

I didn’t give a lot of thought to when we wouldn’t be together, and I haven’t had to navigate that in a relationship before, mostly because I haven’t been in a relationship before.

So I’m a bit of a mess, even though I realize people face this sort of thing every day.

I’m totally blowing it out of proportion and being ridiculous. I just feel… off.”

Molun came all the way around the table to pull Perian into a hug.

“You are not being ridiculous,” Molun told him emphatically.

“It’s totally normal to feel really connected and really intense at the beginning of a relationship.

Actually, if you’re lucky, you feel that through your whole relationship, but you also figure out how to navigate some things a little bit better, get a bit of perspective. ”

“I am severely lacking in perspective,” Perian agreed, voice muffled since he was pressed to Molun’s shoulder .

Molun finally released him and offered a kind smile. “Perspective is overrated.”

Perian huffed a laugh.

A little more practically, Arvus said, “That’s totally normal at the beginning of a relationship, too.

It takes work to meld two lives together when they used to be separate.

You can get swept up in the emotions of it, but there’s also a lot of prosaic things to figure out.

You’re taking someone else’s likes and dislikes and preferences and living arrangements, and you’re trying to meld them with your own when they might be quite different.

It takes a lot of adjustment, and some of the shine at the beginning of a relationship is probably to help us get through what would otherwise be a really annoying period. ”

Molun leaned in and stage-whispered, “I leave cups of tea and water lying around.”

Arvus looked mildly annoyed. “How many cups does one person actually need? Can you drink more than one at once? Yet they show up all around the room .”

Perian pressed his lips together and tried not to laugh at them too hard. Apparently, every couple had its issues.

Molun squeezed his arm reassuringly. “You’re still in those beginning stages. It’s totally normal to want to be together all the time, and totally normal to miss your partner when they’re not here. You shouldn’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong.”

Perian blew out a breath. He hadn’t thought about it quite like that, but there was part of him that had been thinking he must be at fault, that it was easier for everyone else, instead of just acknowledging that this was how he felt.

Quietly, he admitted, “I think I feel like I’m letting him down a bit, not being able to cope with this.”

He could only imagine how Cormal would react to the knowledge that Perian couldn’t even manage a single day of being away from Brannal.

Arvus intervened to say very firmly, “You are absolutely not doing that. Brannal will be saddened for your sake if you’re not doing great when he returns, but he will absolutely not be disappointed by any of your behavior.”

“Unless you do something truly heinous like kick kittens,” Molun added.

“Except for then,” Arvus agreed seamlessly.

Perian grinned at them. “Thank you. You two are very good friends.”

“We are the best,” Molun agreed.

It definitely felt better to be laughing with them than sitting around an empty table in Brannal’s room feeling sorry for himself .

It grew later, however, and eventually it was time for bed.

Although they renewed the invitation for Perian to stay with them—“Totally without pressure, we promise!”—he decided to head back to Brannal’s rooms. They’d made him feel somewhat better, but it still seemed to him that he should be able to manage sleeping on his own.

He got ready for bed, climbed under the covers, and drew in a deep breath, smelling the scent of Brannal that was thankfully still trapped in the bedding.

It made him feel simultaneously closer to the man and further away because this was the best Perian was going to be able to experience right now.

But it would be worse without it.

And then, just like he’d said this morning, Perian curled up in the blankets and hugged Brannal’s pillow as he tried to pretend it was the other man with him.

It didn’t work. It took a long time for Perian to fall asleep, probably in part because he was used to the two of them tumbling into bed together, having sex, and dropping off into a thoroughly sated sleep.

He could jerk off, had done that for large portions of his life, but the idea of taking himself in hand because Brannal wasn’t here was not at all appealing.

Perian eventually managed to doze a little, then woke too early, feeling like there was something missing. He knew exactly what, of course. He just had to make it through six more days.

He went to join the Warriors because training seemed better than staring at nothing and being an idiot, but it became clear quite quickly that he was dragging.

He wound up being knocked to the ground multiple times in rapid succession, smacked on a number of body parts with several practice swords and knives, and finally pulled to the side by Onadal and told to, “Watch the pretty people for a little while—you like that, don’t you? ”

Perian did like watching pretty people, and he tried to get lost in the enjoyment of muscles and displays of strength and agility. It didn’t work quite as well as usual, but it was probably still better than getting bruised because his concentration was completely shot.

There were some snide comments from a few of the Warriors, but Perian ignored them. He was neither interested in nor concerned with their opinions.

Sitting on the sidelines, he heard two members of staff talking in low voices about the chances that carnalions could infiltrate the castle.

“With Summus and Secundus gone, there’s no one who can protect us! You know how sneaky carnalions are!”

Perian pondered this. It was true that since carnalions appeared like humans, they could sneak in better than wraiths or nightmares, which looked like smoky shadows and like small, smoky horse-like creatures, according to drawings he’d seen.

(Perian had thankfully never seen them in person.) But the castle would be an extraordinarily bold target for a carnalion.

Sure, they would have less chance of being burned with Brannal and Cormal gone, but regular humans could still wield fire.

And their near-human intelligence surely made them smart enough to realize that the chance of seducing people in the castle would be vastly outweighed by the number of people who could catch them and kill them.

Fire wasn’t the only thing that could take them down. So really, what would be the point?

Thankfully, a third person—long, cylindrical beads braided into their light brown hair marking them as nonbinary—leaned in to the other two and helped allay their fears. Perian really hadn’t wanted to get pulled into a discussion that might fuel his own worries.