Page 116 of The Princesses of Ruin
“Me?” Adrik’s voice causes all the tension to release from my chest.
I see my brother at the alchemy table, completely unharmed, grinding something in a mortar, and the inescapable urge to embrace him overcomes me. I walk to him. Adrik drops the pestle and hugs me fiercely.
“It seems my arms don’t wrap around you like they used to,” I say as I pull back.
“Is that another fat joke?” he asks.
I slap his stomach with the back of my hand. “A skinny joke.”
The air huffs out of him and he gives me an annoyed glare. “I was on a diet of rabbit…and pussy.”
It hurts to raise my brow, but it happens anyway. The mask shifts on my face and I tsk in pain. Adrik scowls. He grabs the edge where the deactivation rune sits and thumbs it to no effect.
“What have you done now?” he asks, his voice weighed down by exasperation. I can see the concern in his eyes, though. This has never happened before.
“A dragon shocked me half to death. And what about you?” I ask, looking at Zane and then to the spider in the corner. It has just the hoof sticking out of its mouth. Fucking abomination.
“A giant pigeon tried to eat me.” He looks at Alastair. “What about you?”
“A duskwalkerdideat me. And then saved me.”
We’re all quiet for a moment, marinating in our misfortune.
“Why?” I ask, ending the silence.
He holds up his scale-covered arm to reveal a thorny brand in gold, green, and red. It almost looks festive. “She made a deal with it to save us.”
I hold up my arm to show off the lightning brand. “Same.”
Adrik grabs my arm. “Come here. Sit down.”
I sigh as I sit on the chair I know for a fact he got fucked in over the summer by those two Spiders. Adrik moves around the room, collecting tinctures and powders.
“The next part of the potion requires the bile,” Adrik says. “Where are Reina and Jasper?”
“Unknown,” Zane says. “We only arrived a few days ago.”
With just a week left before Zephrom’s “doom day,” the tension in the air is palpable.
“What can we do if they don’t return?” I ask.
“They will,” Alastair says with confidence and finality.
“How do you know?” Zane asks.
Alastair scratches the skin surrounding the scales on his stomach absently. “I can’t explain it, but something has happened to me after the encounter with Ashai. I can sense things. Not in the way that others prophesize events by seeing them, but…Ifeelthings.”
“Perhaps the breeze,” Adrik says, motioning to the gaping rip on the side of his pants.
Alastair grumbles and cinches the spot shut with his hand.
“Your mother is a skilled prophetic, isn’t she?” Zane says more than asks.
We all know this.
Alastair nods. “However, there are no records of magus abilities being passed down generationally.”
“But you don’t have a magus ability, right? It’s just the…” I stall for words as I roll my hand through the air.
