Page 102 of To Touch A Silent Fury

I shook my head. “Only that I cannot imagine one of them accepting the hand of a cacof. I am certain she hates us.”

My father narrowed his eyes. “You believe she will betray us?”

“No,” I replied quickly. Maybe too quickly. Patience, I cautioned myself. I did not want to give away the guilt and unplaceable warmth I felt for the moon girl. “Not as such. But I do not believe her loyalty will be bought with a marriage.”

He dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “Women are easily swayed by finery and security, you will see.”

At this, Chaethor rumbled with laughter.

I only nodded, my face stony. “As you say.”

My father dismissed us, making some excuse about the flowers hurting his eyes, though even someone with no Sight could see the sheen of sweat attached to his skin, and his neck bobbing with thirst. He had always hated Tanmer, but recently his aversion felt laced with fear, as if the sun would desiccate him like a ghoul from an old tale.

Septillis followed him out, bowing to us with perfect form.

He was good. Better than I had given him credit for. But when Tanidwen discovered that her path was to marry some banner lord she’d never met, I imagine even he would struggle to hide from her ire.

Banrillen didn’t follow them, continuing to pull the petals from a new plant with uncharacteristic focus.

Reluctantly, I approached him. “You are thinking, Ban. And you know that isn’t good for you.”’

“Fuck off, brother.”

That was more like it. “Happily.”

I turned away from him, hoping to get some respite before enduring the upcoming horror show of timid women.

But Banrillen’s voice cut apart that hope like dragonteeth onto flesh. “Father’s creepy helper was onto something.”

I turned back. “About what?”

His expression reminded me of my father’s scorn. He had learnt the squint well. “The girl, idiot.”

“Oh, that. I don’t think he was,” I said. “She is a stupid thing from the Soundlands, nothing more.”

A slow smile crept over his mouth. The same smile he had worn when I discovered his dead squire two spans ago. “And now you try to dissuade me. Interesting. Do you want her for yourself?”

I laughed, then. A genuine laugh for my part, at the idea of Tanidwen ever agreeing to marry me. “She is beneath both of us, brother.”

Banrillen was not deterred, clenching his ham-fist around a pale pink petal. “And yet, if you were to take her as your wife, you would control her, too. Her dragon would be yours. Both the red and the blue at your disposal. The Crown Prince with two dragons.”

I smiled again, this time at the thought that Tani would be controlled by a construct so pedestrian as marriage. “I have one dragon, an adult who is finally useful. I have no interest in training a child, nor teaching a barbarian wife our ways. She barely knows a spoon from a ladle.”

Banrillen threw the mushed-up petal onto the floor. “He promised me a dragon. You stole one from me once, I will not let you do it again.”

I only raised an eyebrow, letting him have his tantrum. His stubborn miscalculations had hurt him often enough, but this was maybe too close to the bone. He would claim her if hethought it could have the faintest chance of spiting me. “Leave the girl alone, Ban.”

“It is none of your business what I do with her. She isbeneathyou,” he spat.

“If you wish to marry a commoner with nothing but a welp and the scraps on her back to recommend her, be my guest.” I pulled at a sleeve, straightening it with affected disengagement. “I thought you better than that.”

Banrillen curled a lip, closing the distance to me. He lifted his thick finger at my chest. “No, you thinkyouare better than that. Don’t inflict your nature on me, brother.”

I levelled him with a stare. There was a warning in my eyes, one I rarely used. “You cannot control something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Banrillen spat on the floor, the spittle clinging to his beard. He glared at me with a ferocity rivalling the noon sun’s glare. He could have me on the floor within seconds if he chose to start a fist fight. He was huge, and enough of it was muscle to overpower me without a blade.

But we were outside, and so wasshe. He would not risk it, not when Chaethor was nearby.