Page 58 of The Lost Art of Seducing a Mage Warrior

“Apart from one small defense lesson where I demonstrated falls and, uh, where to hit a man to make it hurt, we’ve actually been pretty restful. I mean, we mostly sit on the blanket.” He gestured at the blanket in question as though it could actually attest to what they’d been doing. “We talk. Eat lunch. That’s kind of it.”

“Luckily, the Queen has noticed that the Princess has been feeling better these last few days, so she’s not categorically opposed to the outings.”

Perian blew out a breath of relief.

“But the Princess running around alone is not ideal.”

Perian made a face. “I think Cormal was yelling that at one point.”

“He is concerned for her safety and well-being,” Brannal chided.

Perian glared at him. “Well, then, he shouldn’t have manhandled her and screamed at her that her brother was dead, now should he?”

There was a collective intake of breath, Brannal winced, and Perian remembered they had an audience.

“No, he shouldn’t have done that,” Brannal agreed mildly. “Don’t you all have somewhere else to be?”

And with that, everyone else was rising from the table, but Nisal gave him a quick hug, Arvus squeezed his arm, and Delana gave him a pat on the shoulder.

“You’re all right,” she told him.

“Thank you,” he said, a bit bemused and kind of touched.

Apparently, he’d passed some sort of test with Delana, and he had a sneaking suspicion it had more to do with teaching Renny how to knee someone in the groin than anything else.

Arvus squinted at Brannal, and on the way past him, he said, “He’d not eaten since yesterday at lunch. Get yourself figured out.”

They all filed out, and suddenly, Perian and Brannal were alone. For the first time since Brannal had fled after their disastrous encounter yesterday. With everything that had happened since, Perian had almost managed to forget about it.

“Would you like to sit down?” Brannal said, gesturing at the chairs by the fire.

There was more space between them than there would have been at the table, but the comfy chairs nevertheless seemed a little more intimate. He sat, and Brannal followed suit.

Carefully, Brannal said, “I mentioned that Cormal’s father was killed six years ago.”

“And you became Summus.”

Brannal nodded. “One of the assembly rooms was attacked by wraiths. A lot of wraiths. Mage Warriors, Warriors, Council members, and other members of staff were killed that day. As was the Prince. It was his sixteenth birthday celebration.”

“Renny said—”

“She was there,” Brannal admitted, face rigid and eyes haunted. “Prince Kinan dove between her and the wraiths. I’d gotten there mere moments before. It was chaos. I was trying to defend so many people, and then I heard Larenia yelling for her brother. Cormal, Molun, and I got shields up to protect people, and then Molun and I flooded the rest of the room with water to kill the wraiths, but it was too late. The Prince was dead, Summus and Secundus were dead, friends and colleagues were dead all around us. Fortunately, the Queen was with the King, who was too ill to leave his bed. He had been ailing for some time, and he died a few weeks later.”

“It sounds awful,” Perian breathed. “I’m so sorry you all went through that.”

The news of the deaths at the castle six years ago had spread throughout the country—throughout all of the Allied Domains—but it felt different when Perian actually knew the people, or at least knew those who had been deeply and personally affected by the loss.

“It was terrible,” Brannal agreed. “Everyone took the loss hard. It was a lot of deaths. Many of us threw ourselves into our work. We tightened all of our security measures, doubled patrols, reviewed procedures. And… when the six-year-old Princess acted like her brother was still there with her, talking to him, insisting that he was sitting beside her, it was decided that it allowed her to cope with what had happened, and we let her be.”

Ah.

“Only now she’s twelve, and some people seem to think it’s been going on long enough?”

It was hard not to sound censorious given that the man had yelled it in Renny’s face. Brannal blew out a breath.

“She’s the heir to the throne.”

“She’s a little girl,” Perian countered.

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