Page 69 of The Lost Art of Seducing a Mage Warrior

Renny nodded, looking at him like he was silly. Again. “It’s been six years. He’s twenty-two now.”

“Right,” Perian agreed slowly.

This didn’t seem like typical imaginary friend behavior. It seemed far more likely that Renny would have continued to imagine her brother the same age as when he died. But maybe, since so much in Renny’s life was changing and she was growing, she’d thought of the same thing for her brother?

“What do you look like now?” Perian asked curiously.

Renny made a face at him. “Are you asking if he’s handsome?”

Perian snorted. “Well, I wasn’t before, but now I’m curious. Are you?”

Renny made a face. “He can’t see himself, not even in a mirror, so he doesn’t know what he looks like.”

Fire and water, that was depressing.

“And he’s my brother, soIdon’t think he’s handsome,” she told him matter-of-factly.

Perian could only laugh.

“But stand up, let me compare you side-by-side. Come on, both of you, up.”

Perian rose to his feet a little self-consciously and waited for someone he couldn’t see and who might or might not be real to stand beside him.

Renny peered at them.

“He’s this much taller than you are.”

She held up her fingers about an inch apart. Her eyes went back and forth between Perian and the air beside him.

“He’s wider than you are.”

Her brow twisted, and then she rolled her eyes.

“Hisshouldersare wider than yours. He wants you to know that he’s perfectly fit.”

Perian laughed and gestured at his own shoulders. “I think ‘slender’ is the word you’re looking for. Most men are wider than I am.”

“You’re very pretty,” Renny assured him—in much the same way you would tell a child that.

He laughed again. “Thank you.”

“He’s sort of… more solid than you. Like just… bigger looking. His legs and arms are bigger, and he’s just a different shape.”

Yeah, that wasn’t a surprise, either. If you liked lean, pretty brunets, then Perian was your man.

She tilted her head again. “Kee says he takes after our father.”

Which would give her someone to model off of if this was all made up. But she’d lost her father when she was six.

Renny continued. “Kee has dark hair and eyes like mine. I guess he’s… all right-looking?”

Perian laughed at that very sisterly description.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Perian asked.

Renny looked at where her brother was supposedly standing.

“He says not anything he can ask in front of his sister.”

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