Page 125 of Brutal Birthright

Something tight sat like a wedge in the back of his throat.

“You have gifts, no?” She leant back on her hands and studied him closely.

“Death isn’t a gift.”

“Perhaps all you see is the things you’ve done in your life until this point… and think that those things define you forevermore. Just because you have been tasked with something by the Goddesses in your past, that doesn’t mean you cannot ever deserve to know happiness.”

Rowan let out a heavy sigh. “And what about you? Does the same apply? Where does your happiness come now that you’re stuck wherever you are with our murderous sister?”

Throwing her head back, she let out a sharp laugh. “Don’t worry yourself about Fiadh. I’m much more useful to her alive than chopped up into small pieces and fed to her monsters.”

He didn’t doubt that. Having the most powerful Seer in centuries under her command would be something terrifying indeed. What she might choose to do with Brigid still didn’t bear thinking about.

“Besides… who’s to say I didn’t have plans of my own, hmm? That I don’t have someone I’m long overdue to meet now that the portals have aligned, so to speak?”

Well, shit. He’d not considered that.

“Do you mean—”

“Deflecting onto me won’t allow you to escape this conversation. Now… where were we?” She twisted her lips and gave him a wink. “Ah, that’s right. Grand declarations of love.”

Oh, fuck that for a joke.

“Now, I want you to listen to me, Rowan of Nocturne, and listen well.” Brigid was standing in front of him now, and he had to blink several times to realise that whatever dream state they were in allowed her to move like smoke. “What are you doing here? You’ve got a body you can return to and a beautiful woman who loves you… What more is there to life than proving that you are capable of earning trust and love and receiving compassion? What more is there than being willing to give yourself compassion?”

He found himself staring up at his sister. Wise as the heart of the cosmos and looking a thousand times more powerful than her youthful outward appearance. An elfin-like creature with a soul that saw the darkest depths of everyone around her and somehow still lived with a lightness he couldn’t fathom.

Carrying such a weight that most would collapse beneath such a burden.

But not Brigid.

“Oriana can love you, yes… but can you take the ultimate step of being the man who loves himself complete with all your scars? Someone worthy of her love? There are plenty of weak men out there who will take the care she has to give, and they’ll be greedy and horde it and make themselves feel good. But will they be able to challenge her? Fight for her? Push her to be the best version of herself?“

No. No, they fucking wouldn’t.

And he’d be damned if he allowed anyone else to ever get close enough to his girl to even think they had the right to breathe the same air as her.

The space around him began to spin and churn.

As if his decision had been the key to unlock the door that might release him from being trapped in this space of in-between.

The air around him took on an ethereal glow and the dream space they had both been inhabiting morphed into blackness. Brigid’s face and body dissolved before his eyes. His body began to feel weightless, and her cheerful words followed him as he became sucked into the darkened void.

“I’ll see you again, brother. You deserve to go and find your peace, no?”

Chapter 40

When Rowan felt like he’d thudded back to solid ground, his eyes creaked open. The wooden rafters of his cabin swam into focus as he found himself lying on his back. Spirits and fucking Stars, his entire body felt like it had been flattened. A bone-deep ache spread right through to his extremities, and his eyes struggled to adjust to the light.

It was as though he’d been asleep for a lifetime. Not just the few moments he’d been speaking—or astral projecting or whatever the fuck that was—with Brigid for.

All he knew was that he needed to find Oriana. Someone needed to tend to her wounds inflicted at his own sister’s hands, and he’d be fucked if he allowed anyone else to touch her considering all that they had just endured. It would be his magic, and his alone that tended to her. He had to know she was going to be alright after whatever Fiadh had put her through.

He’d barely had time to register her face in the room, covered in a thick layer of red dirt, after getting Finnic safely back to Astracadia. Now, for whatever reason, on returning from the in-between, he’d ended up back at his cabin.

Why had they moved him here for such a short space of time? It was godsdamned ridiculous.

Shoving into his boots and fitting his blade holster to himself, he was already portaling back to the academy within moments. Cursing beneath his breath, whoever dared to move him, never mind how the fuck they had gotten past his blood wards so quickly.

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