Page 89 of The Lost Art of Seducing a Mage Warrior

“I never wanted you to get hurt. I swear,” Brannal assured him. “That’swhyI wanted him to feel like he won!”

Perian stared him dead in the eye. “He did.”

And Brannal finally stopped talking.

Molun wet a handkerchief so that Arvus could carefully clean his skin, and then Arvus was scooping the salve out of a tin much like the one that the doctor had given Perian when he had helped out.

“This one is specifically for burns,” Arvus told him. “Even better than the all-purpose salve.”

At the first touch of the cool ointment, Perian sucked in a startled breath, and then he sagged. Molun hurried to prop him up while Arvus continued to smear on the ointment. Perian had known the wound hurt, but it was only as the searing burn abruptly muted that he realized just how tense he’d been.

“Brannal, get Perian a shirt, please,” Arvus said calmly.

Without a word, Brannal disappeared into the bedroom.

“Now,” Arvus said to Perian, his voice a low, soothing rumble as he began to wrap the wound carefully in bandages. “You have every right to be upset, and you are welcome to stay with us as long as you want. But I think you should know that after you left, Brannal concluded the lesson by rightly raking us over the coals for failing to protect you as we should have. When he pointed out that the Princess would have been in a similar situation, I think what he said struck home for everyone.”

Sounding embarrassed, Molun admitted, “We were supposed to protect you. Both of us. I didn’t listen.”

Arvus interposed, “And I went after you when I heard you yell, and we both left Perian exposed.”

“It’s not your fault,” Perian said immediately.

Arvus’s expression was wry. “Only it kind of is, isn’t it? Not what we intended but consequences we have to accept?”

Perian blew out a breath. “I was annoyed when I said that.”

“As you have every right to be,” Arvus confirmed gently, finishing with the bandage and neatly tying it off, tucking in the ends. “We failed you. We knew as well as Brannal that Cormal was… annoyed.”

And this had seemed like asafeway to deal with him. The Queen herself had told Perian that Cormal was “wary” of him. What must he have said to her? What might Cormal have done if he’d come across Perian in an empty corridor and they’d antagonized one another? This had been in a room full of Mage Warriors, entirely supervised… it had just gone completely wrong.

“And you know what would make Cormal really happy?” Molun asked. He gestured around the room. “This right here.”

“Molun!” Arvus admonished.

Molun didn’t look very apologetic. “Just saying.”

Perian grimaced. “You hit below the belt.” His lips quirked, and he admitted, “It was well aimed, but below the belt.”

Now Molun looked smug.

“As I said, you can stay as long as you want,” Arvus assured him. “You can come with us right now, but you can also show up at any point including in the next ten minutes or the next hour or the middle of the night.”

Perian blew out a breath, nodded. He was still angry, but not nearly as angry as he had been before Arvus used that salve.

He was allowed to be angry, of course, and upset about what had happened, but he’d maybe been misdirecting at least some of that anger and pain.

He nodded to Molun and Arvus. “I make no promises I won’t wake you up in the middle of the night.”

Molun grinned at him and waggled his eyebrows. “You’re welcome to crawl into our bed at any time. That is an absolutely open invitation.”

Arvus elbowed him in the ribs, and Perian gave a tired but genuine smile. Arvus winked at him.

“He’s not wrong,” Arvus agreed, a small smile on his lips. “But we have zero expectations, all right?”

Perian nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

Brannal was taking way longer in the bedroom than was required for grabbing one shirt. What was he doing in there?

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