Page 150 of To Touch A Silent Fury

We both froze, then broke apart. Lang turned to stare at the door as a voice replied to the guards. It was the Wragg.

Lang grabbed my hand. “Run.”

I shook my head, the bar across the door already sliding. “There’s no time. He’ll hear me.”

He looked at me with pure anguish as the doors began to open. “Tani—”

I shoved him away from me, taking two steps away myself and forcing some distance between us as Banrillen’s face appeared in the open doorway. Surprise dawned upon his irritated expression, and then a well-honed anger carved a smile into his cheek.

The Wragg stepped inside, his body replacing the breadth of a door. “Look who’s here. Did you lose your beads, my beloved?”

I thought I was already as tense as I could be, but his tone froze every muscle in my body.

Lang was no longer staring at me. His mask had come back, painting his face with its unreadable wash of nothing as he stood with his arms folded. “Ban. Did you injure my man?”

Banrillen rolled his shoulders. “Me? Injure a knight of the kingdom? A defender of Droundhaven? My brother’s closest and only friend?”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Do you accuse me of it?” Banrillen replied, his voice like an axe in Gossamir. The doors closed behind him as his face changed from white to red.

Lang tried his best to look bored, and failed, his cheeks still warm and fingers quivering. “If he dies, I will put it on your head.”

Banrillen sneered. “You would betray your family so swiftly?”

Lang gestured to me, as calmly as he could. “This woman is on the eve of becoming family, and you have betrayed her.”

He took a hulking step forwards and sniffed in my direction, his gaze sickeningly dangerous. “Have I now?”

“You had no right to take her dragon.”

“Right?” he repeated, his incredulity so thick it hung in the air like a bad smell. “Right? How dare you speak to me ofright.”

Lang only rolled his eyes as I pressed myself into the corner of the room as their standoff became its own arena. “Brother—”

“No,” Banrillen interrupted. “You almost had me fooled. What was it you called her? Nothing but a commoner with scraps on her back?” His red face shifted into something close to purple as he watched his brother with fratricidal eyes. “Now, because I have claimed her, you want her.”

The insults he placed in his brother’s mouth did not fall, for I knew them to be entirely false.

Lang tutted, leaning against the wall with affected disinterest. He had yet to look at me since his brother had stepped into the room, and I was glad of it. “Taking her dragon was unnecessary.”

Banrillen advanced, his dull brown eyes full of hate. Lang straightened, taking a step towards me.

“You lie. You always lie.” I shuddered as the Wragg saw through his brother’s deceit as easily as I had. “You have always been nothing more than a thief, brother. My dragon, my title. And now you seek to take my wife, too. You cannot have everything. You cannot have her.”

Banrillen set his mouth, his rigid expression as poisonous as his aunt’s. The elder brother turned to me, and as he did, Lang stepped into his path, reaching his arm back towards me.

“Oh.” Banrillen raised an eyebrow, but there was no surprise left on his face. “Unless you already have? Have you spoiled her, brother? Have you ruined her, or did she want it? Did she fall into your arms like a common whore?”

Lang breathed in and out, and when he replied his voice was well-controlled. And yet, I could hear where it strained at the edges, feel the wrath straining the corners of every word. “This has nothing to do with her. This is between you and me.”

“True enough,” Banrillen said. He took a calculated step backwards and raised his hands, looking only at his brother.

Lang’s hand tensed. “Go.”

I knew he addressed me.

I looked between them. The panel lay open to my side, but I didn’t know if it was an exit as well as an entrance, and I didn’t want to be stuck in a dark tunnel with no way out. The door stood in front of me, but it required stepping past the Wragg.