Page 30 of The Lost Art of Revealing Hidden Truths (The Lost Arts #3)

Chapter Thirteen

H e turned. Nisal was standing there.

“Where did you come from?” Perian wanted to know.

They smiled at him as his question was echoed by all of the others, especially the very wet Arvus.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” they said, sounding very satisfied.

“It’s one of the most effective ways to attack,” Brannal said, making them whirl again as he stepped out of the forest. “Wait for a distraction.”

Perian clapped a hand to his chest. “Yeah, maybe it is better that I was just sitting here with a book. You’re all really good at that. Wow.” He looked back at Nisal. “Where did you come from?”

They pointed at the water.

Perian blinked at them, looked out to the water, and then looked back at Nisal.

“Uh, aren’t you kind of dry for that?”

“I wrapped myself in air,” they said.

“You can do that?” Perian asked, surprised.

They nodded. “It’s not easy.”

“No, it’s not,” Molun and Brannal said at the same time, both sounding impressed.

Nisal shrugged. “I waited until I saw Arvus sneaking up and then floated across the water when I knew you wouldn’t be watching, just those few feet, so I would be coming from a direction you weren’t looking for. And here I am.”

“Impressive,” Brannal said, and the others were nodding in agreement.

Nisal smiled, looking very pleased.

They sat down afterwards, and Brannal had them break down what they’d done and what they could have done differently.

It had been the most playful type of training Perian had ever seen, but it had still been training, and he liked that Brannal didn’t just leave it at one person being the winner and the rest of them losing and that was the end of it.

There was always something to be learned.

“Nisal, would you do it again?” Brannal asked.

“Not with this group,” Nisal answered promptly.

“It works for surprise effect, and I judged it was worth trying; there wasn’t much to lose except the possibility of getting wet.

But I was actually very open to attack out there had this been any sort of real battle.

Had they looked up and seen me, I would have been done for, and I chose to get into an element that isn’t mine.

I could maybe have dived under the water and swum to safety, but I couldn’t have counted on it. ”

“Messed with the water again to get waves?” Perian suggested.

They nodded. “But they’d have to be pretty powerful to keep me totally out of sight of people on dry land. It’s different when you’re all in the water and the waves are jostling people around and keeping them unsteady. When they’re just affecting me, it puts me at a disadvantage.”

Perian nodded. That made a lot of sense. He’d never really thought about defensible positions between water and land before.

“One more training exercise?” Brannal asked.

They all groaned theatrically loudly, but they couldn’t actually hide how energized they were. Perian was sure they were enjoying themselves.

“We’ll have one more for tomorrow, then,” Brannal allowed. He clarified: “In the morning, before Molun can come up with an excuse and we suddenly need to leave. It’ll be a group effort.”

“Does that mean I get to participate?” Perian asked .

Brannal looked at him. “I actually had a special task for you, but based on the way you’re looking at me right now, I think the correct answer is ‘yes, absolutely one in which you get to participate, Perian, why would you think otherwise?’”

Everyone laughed.

Perian grinned up at him. “Great answer.”

Brannal leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his lips before saying, “I need to show you something in the woods.”

Perian felt his eyebrows rise up his forehead as everyone else hooted with laughter. But he definitely wasn’t going to question this. He popped to his feet.

“Bye, everyone, see you later. I’ve to go into the woods now to see something .”

As if there hadn’t been enough innuendo already.

Brannal rose more slowly, and they disappeared into the woods together as Molun called ribald things after them.

Perian was practically buzzing with excitement.

Brannal pulled him in way further than he expected, but then he realized that they both had different comfort levels with this sort of thing, and it would make perfect sense for the head of the Mage Warriors to want to be further away from his friends and colleagues.

And then Perian learned why Brannal actually wanted him to come into the woods.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Perian said, stunned. “You want us to plant these ribbons?”

Brannal nodded. “Originally, I was going to have you do both of them, but since you want to participate, I thought you could plant the one for your team, and I could plant the one for my team, because now I’m going to need to be on a team, too, so that it’s even.

Then we’ll each know where our team’s flag is but not where the other one’s is, so it’ll be fair for both groups to hunt for them tomorrow. ”

“You made everyone think we were going to have sex in here so that instead, we can get ready for tomorrow’s training exercise? You lured me in here under false pretenses?”

Looking slightly less certain, Brannal nodded.

Perian burst into laughter. “That is the best thing ever! You’re so sneaky.”

Brannal looked extremely relieved.

Perian pointed a finger at him. “But you better be planning for lots of sex later! I expect you to make up for this.”

Brannal didn’t even roll his eyes, just nodded. “I solemnly swear that we’ll have lots of sex after this. ”

Perian grinned at him and took the length of light orange-pink material. Brannal had one in light yellow.

“All right, what are the parameters?” Perian wanted to know. “Clearly, you could blow yours up into a tree or bury it ten feet underground, and I can’t do anything like that.”

Brannal smiled at him. “It needs to be tied around a tree truck at approximately eye level. One knot to keep it tied in place, with the ends free to move in the wind. No accidentally sending it up to the top of a tree, and I promise I won’t set it on fire when your back is turned.”

“You better not,” Perian said with mock sternness, “or you’ll be in big trouble.”

Huffing an amused breath, Brannal said, “We’ll both need to head off in opposite directions, but you can move around in the direction of your choice once we’ve gotten far enough away not to see one another.”

“Are we counting to one hundred again?”

He nodded. “Yes. Let’s walk to the count of one hundred in a more or less straight line, and once we’ve reached that, we can move freely.

We each have five minutes to plant our ribbon, and then we’ll head back to the camp so that neither of us gets outrageously far, either.

We want this to be within the realm of possibility. ”

“Sounds good,” Perian agreed.

“And you can get back to the camp?” Brannal asked without judgment.

Perian looked up and made sure he could see where the late afternoon sunlight was coming from.

“Yes, I should be fine. If all else fails, I’ll walk away from my ribbon and then yell for help, all right?”

Brannal leaned in and kissed him. “You’re amazing, and I love you.”

Perian deepened the kiss, because he had been lured here under false pretenses, after all, and a little bit of payback was fair.

Brannal finally pulled away, and he looked nice and ruffled, his lips red and puffy and his eyes dark with lust.

“You don’t play fair,” he muttered, voice low.

Perian beamed at him. He absolutely didn’t. He turned resolutely around and raised his ribbon.

“Count to one hundred?”

He heard Brannal huff a breath, listened to the sound of him rearranging himself in his trousers, which made Perian grin, and then more sounds which he thought meant he was turning around.

“One,” Brannal said.

“Two.”

“Three.”

By twenty, they were far enough apart that they couldn’t really hear one another, and Perian switched to quiet muttering as he made his way through the trees, keeping to a more or less straight path.

When he hit one hundred, he stopped for a minute and tried to figure out what the smartest thing to do was.

He could head back to camp now and tie it on a tree there in the hopes the opposing team would quickly overshoot it tomorrow.

But if it was too close to camp, then there was a higher chance that it would be spotted at the beginning, and he decided that would be worse. He set out in the opposite direction.

He didn’t think his team would blame him if he messed this up; he was going to do his best, but it wasn’t like this was a skill he’d honed.

He wondered if Brannal had done exactly what he’d done, or if Brannal had assumed this was what Perian was doing and so he was doing something more clever…

He decided not to overthink it. Even if his ribbon got found quickly, he’d learn something about what to do better for the future.

Perian stuck with his original plan, breaking into a jog and veering further to the left because he needed to make some sort of decision.

Eventually, he just picked a tree that he could actually get his arms and the ribbon around.

He knotted the ribbon securely and stared at it for a minute to make sure it was tight enough.

And then Perian jogged in the opposite direction for a couple of minutes before he started to head back to the camp, not wanting to come from exactly the direction where he’d left his ribbon when he might run into Brannal.

Sure enough, Brannal was waiting for him in the trees not far from their camp.

“You’re late,” he said.

“Your legs are longer,” Perian told him.

(Maybe by a couple of inches. It was a specious argument, and Perian knew it. )

Before Brannal could do more than open his mouth to point out that leg length shouldn’t affect time, Perian leaned in and kissed him, and Brannal seemed amenable to being distracted, hauling Perian up against him and kissing him back hungrily.