Page 32 of The Brute and the Blade

I raise my voice in a roar of command. "Scour the forests! Search every glen, every gully! Find the Red Blade and bring her back to me!"

My warriors raise their fists in a thunderous salute, eager for the hunt, the capture. They stream from the hall in a clatter of steel and storm of snarls.

Hold fast, my heart, I whisper to Lily, to myself. Hold fast, until I find you, until I claim you...and never, never let you go.

I close my eyes, just for a moment. I let myself remember her smile, her scent. The way she looked at me, as if I were everything. As if she loved me beyond reason, beyond rhyme...

Oh, Lily. What have you done? What have you left me to, in the ruins of your departure, the wreckage of your flight?

I don't know. All I know is that I will find her, claim her, with every last ounce of savage will. I will fight for her, for us...until the very skies burn.

I will have her, my captive, my conquered...my everything.

Or I will have ashes, cold and dead and desolate. A fitting end for a monster, a brute.

Once my warriors are gone, I stand alone in the war room, my heart heavy but my resolve unshakable. I know the road ahead will be fraught with danger and heartache.

But I am ready to do whatever it takes, to be whatever I must, to have Lily by my side again. To build the future I see so vividly...

Hold fast, my heart, I vow silently. Hold fast, until I find you.

And never, never, let you go.

13

Lily

The forests of Thornhall crowd around me, familiar and foreign all at once, like a half-remembered dream. I slow my breakneck pace as I pass beneath the first towering sentinels, their green boughs seeming to whisper and sigh with the weight of my return, my presence.

Home, some deep, instinctive part of me murmurs. Safety. Sanctuary.

But another part, newer and rawer and infinitely more complicated...whispers wrong.

I shake my head fiercely, driving back the insidious tendrils of doubt. This is my home, my world. The place I was born, the place I've bled and fought and nearly died to protect, time and time again.

The place that holds everyone and everything I love, everything I've sworn to defend with my last breath, my final drop of blood.

So why, that treacherous voice murmurs, does it feel like you're walking into a cage? A prison of expectations and obligations, hemming you in on all sides?

Why does it feel...like you left your heart, your home, behind you in a place of stone and shadow, fire and fur?

I grit my teeth savagely, shoving the thoughts away with a surge of desperate, defiant determination. No. I won't let Grok's betrayal, his poisonous influence, turn me against my own people.

I am Lily Thornwood, the Red Blade, sworn shield of Thornhall and scion of the great House Thornwood. My place is here, among the leafy halls and secret glens of my childhood, the beating heart of the resistance against the ogre horde.

My place is here...no matter how my traitor heart might ache, my treacherous flesh might yearn. No matter how empty I feel, walking these once-familiar paths with steps that feel leaden.

You don't belong here anymore, that dark, deadly voice whispers. You don't belong anywhere, little blade...except in his arms, his bed, lost to the heat and the hunger and the devastating, inescapable rightness of his body on yours, around yours, in yours...

"Lily? Gods above and below, is that really you?"

The familiar voice, rich with shock and incredulous hope, shatters the dark spiral of my thoughts like a stone through a pane of glass. I spin around, my hand falling instinctively to the hilt of my sword...and feel my heart seize in my chest, a sob catching in my throat.

"Thane," I whisper, staring at the tall, lean figure emerging from the shadow of an ancient oak. "Brother...I'm home."

For a moment, we simply stare at each other, drinking in the sight of features both beloved and achingly unfamiliar, changed by time and hardship and the brutal calculus of war. Then, with a choked sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, Thane is striding forward and enfolding me in his arms, crushing me against the hard, spare planes of his chest.

"Lily," he breathes into my hair, his voice rough and ragged with emotion. "Little sister...I thought I'd lost you. We all did. When you didn't come back, when weeks passed, then months, and still there was no word, no sign..."

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