Page 45 of The Lost Art of Revealing Hidden Truths (The Lost Arts #3)

Chapter Twenty

P erian opened his eyes. They felt gritty, like he’d laid down on a beach and then rubbed his face in the sand—which was a terrible idea, why would he do that? He blinked and tried to make the world come into focus, but it swam alarmingly a few times before it started to resolve itself.

He was… in a dungeon?

He tried to track back through his memories. Cormal. Venoran. The fire. He’d tried to save himself, and he’d had to—

Oh.

Carnalion.

A dungeon.

He wondered if he was lucky he’d woken at all.

He managed to push himself upright, and that was when he realized he was on a pallet that had been mounded with blankets.

They fell off when he sat up, and he found that he was wearing a shirt and sleeping trousers, different from what he’d been wearing before.

He wasn’t restrained at the moment, and there were bandages around his wrists.

His head still hurt a little, but it was a distant throb, like it had gotten better, or like he’d been given a tonic. Everything still smelled a little smoky, but he was pretty sure he must have been cleaned at least a bit.

And he’d woken because people were fighting.

“How dare you have him thrown in the dungeon!”

His heart leaped. It was Brannal!

“You aren’t thinking straight!”

Cormal. Ugh.

The angry redhead continued, sounding angrier than ever. “You haven’t been thinking straight for months! He’s been using you! You’re lucky I didn’t run him through with my sword!”

“Not if you value your life!” Brannal snarled.

Perian had never heard Brannal sound quite like that before, and his heart did a funny jump in his chest.

“Listen to yourself!” Cormal was yelling. “It’s a carnalion, and it’s seduced you! It’s tricking you, and you’re letting it!”

It . Ouch. Perian wasn’t even a “he” anymore?

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Brannal yelled back.

“Oh, don’t even get me started!” Cormal snapped. “You’re being a blind fool, and you’re putting everyone in danger! It’s dangerous , Brannal! It kills people! And you could be next!”

“Perian would never hurt me.”

“What, because you’ve made sure that he has lots of people to feed from?

Spreading the danger, letting it get its claws into more of us?

” Cormal was really yelling now, like he was genuinely incensed.

“Fire and water, we’re Mage Warriors , Brannal.

You’re Summus . We find carnalions and we kill them to protect people ! ”

Perian wasn’t sure that he could forgive him for what he’d done, but he… maybe understood a little bit, when he thought about what carnalions could do.

“I don’t mean any of you any harm,” Perian called, voice a rusty croak.

There was sudden silence, and then Brannal appeared, with Cormal trailing behind him. Brannal’s face was tight with anger and worry.

“Perian! Cormal had you dragged to the dungeon while I was getting the fire under control. This isn’t what I intended. ”

Perian blew out a breath, tried to summon a smile. “It’s better than the alternative. Did you find me, then?”

Brannal nodded, eyes shadowed. “The flames had nearly reached you.”

Perian nodded, remembering that all-encompassing wall of heat, impossible to get away from, the smoke flooding the room. He coughed reflexively.

“There’s water,” Brannal said, gesturing.

Perian saw it now, and he reached for the flagon and poured the water into the cup set beside it. His hands were shaking, and he had to use both of them to get the cup to his mouth. He managed to swallow a few mouthfuls, coating his throat, making it a little bit easier to breathe.

“You’re not going to let me out, are you,” Perian said.

It wasn’t really a question. Brannal was looking at him from the other side of bars. He’d rescued Perian, but this was… definitely not a reunion.

Brannal’s face was pained. “Cormal has told everyone that you’re a carnalion.”

“I see.”

He was pleased by how evenly his voice came out. There wasn’t really anything to be said to that, was there?

Because they were Mage Warriors, just like Cormal had been yelling, and there was one thing that Mage Warriors did with demons.

“I’ll speak to the Queen,” Brannal told him.

Perian nodded, because what else could he do?

He could only imagine how the Queen was going to react.

A carnalion, who had been spending time with her daughter?

He could probably count his remaining days on one hand.

Maybe it would have been kinder if Brannal had just left the fire to finish its work.

Brannal whirled on Cormal.

“If anything happens to him while I’m gone, you will pay for it!”

Cormal’s face was tight with anger, but he gave a stilted nod.

Brannal hurried off, and Cormal glared at Perian, but thankfully, he didn’t actually say anything. He stepped back, as far from Perian as he could get, crossed his arms, and continued to scowl.

Perian was locked in a dungeon, and Cormal didn’t desire him. What would be the point in even trying? He cuddled deeper into his blankets, closing his eyes because the darkness behind his eyelids was at least a little bit better than the alternative.

Cormal had told everyone he was a carnalion, and not only was life as Perian knew it over, it was possible that his life was over, period.

He also couldn’t get warm, and he was afraid that he knew why that was now, and why no blanket in the world would help.

He pulled them closer around him anyway, tried to curl up in them, tried to tell himself that it was fine.

It was definitely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt not fine .

It took a long time before he fell asleep.

He woke, once again, to the sound of yelling.

But this time, it was Renny.

“I want to see him! I don’t care! I hate you! Get out of my way! I’m the Princess!”

“It’s dangerous! You can’t go near it!” Cormal argued.

“Get out of my way! I’ll have you locked in the dungeon!”

There was the sound of a pained grunt, and then little feet running, and Perian opened his eyes to find that Renny was standing in front of him, gripping the bars and staring at him with a tear-streaked face.

“Perian!” she cried. “Oh, Perian, I’m so sorry. I’ll make mother let you out, I promise I will!”

“It’s all right, Renny,” Perian told her. “I’m all right.”

She scoffed at him, and yeah, all right, that hadn’t been his best effort.

Cormal was suddenly standing with Renny, trying to pull her away with one hand, a fireball in the other.

“Leave her alone!” Cormal yelled.

“You’re the one hurting her,” Perian shot back.

Renny was trying to twist out of his grasp, which meant he had to hold onto her hard to try to keep her from getting free.

“Let me go!” she was screeching at the top of her lungs.

Perian stood up, wobbling a little but managing to stay on his feet .

“Let her go, Cormal. You’re hurting her!”

“Don’t threaten me!” Cormal snapped, and threw the fireball.

Even as Perian stumbled back, water splattered through the air and doused the fire.

A crisp, furious voice yelled, “Stop this immediately !”

“Mother!” Renny yelped. “Cormal is hurting Perian!”

“The carnalion is threatening us!”

“Shut up!” Wind whipped furiously through the room, and everyone finally subsided. Perian had never heard Brannal roar that loudly before.

The Queen said, “Thank you,” as though that was an everyday occurrence.

“Larenia, step away from the cell immediately.”

Renny wrenched her arm out of Cormal’s grasp, crossed her arms in the most obstinate look that Perian had ever seen, and leaned back against the bars of his prison. With an effort, he suppressed a smile.

Cormal reached for her again, but the Queen stopped him this time with a sharp, “Cormal!”

“It could hurt her!”

Perian gritted his teeth.

“My name is Perian,” he said stiffly. “And I would never hurt Renny.”

The Queen’s gaze was cold as it settled on him. “I believe you are overfamiliar with my daughter.”

Perian suppressed a shiver at the ice in that voice. Cormal had found an ally, it seemed.

But Renny didn’t move, glaring at everyone. “Perian would never hurt me. I don’t care what any of you say! If you want to put him in the dungeon, then I want to be in there with him!”

Perian felt tears sting his eyes, because that was so ridiculous, so genuine and… the only person who had expressed such a sentiment.

The Queen’s face softened slightly as she looked at her daughter. “He isn’t safe, Larenia.”

“Of course, he’s safe!” Renny snapped back. “He would never hurt me!”

“Not ever,” Perian agreed, not that anyone seemed to care what he had to say.

The Queen’s eyes snapped back to his. “Did you not kill a man yesterday?”

Perian swallowed, didn’t look at Brannal, and tried to keep his face blank.

“Did I do everything in my power to escape my kidnappers, including a man who tried to assault me and who was supposed to be safely imprisoned?” he said a little bit roughly but firmly. “I did.”

“The penalty for that is clear.”

The penalty for protecting yourself? But no, of course not. The penalty for being a carnalion. He didn’t even have to have killed anyone to be killed on sight, and the fact that he had killed someone, that everyone knew about it—

“He was a terrible man!” Renny said, stamping her foot. “He did awful things! Why was he able to get anywhere near Perian?”

“We were unaware of his whereabouts,” the Queen said.

“But you did know he escaped?” Perian couldn’t help but ask, reading between the lines.

He glanced fleetingly at Brannal, but his face was a mask, and Perian had to look away.

“We were aware, yes.”

And no one had mentioned it to him, like it wouldn’t have been something he would like to know. It wouldn’t actually have changed the situation that he found himself in, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have wanted to know such a thing! How could Brannal not have said anything?

But there was a lot that Brannal hadn’t said, wasn’t there?