There was no sign of Adam, but light shone from the room he shared with Neil.Ellie gave the door a little rap.It swung open at her touch, revealing her brother standing by one of the two beds, staring down into his opened travel trunk.He had changed into a clean undershirt, the bandage over the bullet graze just visible through the fabric.His feet were bare beneath the cuffs of his trousers.
Neil didn’t seem to have heard her come in.He was uncomfortably engrossed in whatever he was looking at.
On Adam’s bed, Kalb sprawled across the blanket, completely passed out.His legs twitched as he dreamed of chasing lizards.Ellie wondered whether Adam would bother to move him.
Probably not.
She peered over her brother’s shoulder to see what he was staring at so fixedly inside the trunk.A long, slender bundle wrapped in an old towel rested on top of his things, a hilt of age-yellowed bone protruding from the top.
It was Dyrnwyn, the mythical sword of Rydderch Hael.
A few weeks ago, the arcanum had been a family heirloom of Julian Forster-Mowbray.Now it was Neil’s.Constance had bestowed it upon him on a desert ridge in Egypt after Julian was sent bolting back to the Nile.
Not that Neil wanted anything to do with the sword.He was stuck with it regardless until they could think of a place to put it where it wouldn’t just end up back in Lord Aldbury’s attic.
At least now, Ellie understood why Neil had been so adamant about Vijay’s servants not opening his luggage.Dyrnwyn had a habit of bursting into wild blue flames when handled by someone it deemed well-born or worthy—which included Neil.The sword might also decide that one of the hotel staff fit the bill, which could result in the room getting scorched.
Ellie pulled her attention from the arcanum to her brother.His shoulders were slumped with exhaustion and dismay.His soft brown hair fell over the top of his spectacles much like it had nearly two decades before, when he had burst into her life and very quickly gone from stranger to family.
The thought sparked a burst of love and affection.
“How are you, really?”Ellie prompted.
Neil startled, dropping the lid of the trunk.“What?Oh.I’m fine.”
Ellie sat on the bed beside the trunk.“It would be quite understandable if you weren’t, you know.”
Neil dropped down to sit on the other side of the trunk, wincing slightly as the movement irritated his wounded side.He took the glasses off, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and tried to clean them.
“The last few weeks haven’t exactly been ideal.Losing my job.Being kidnapped by my murderous boss.And now—you know.Possibly being shot.Not that any of it could really be helped.”
Ellie felt a little dart of guilt, as she had been the one responsible for throwing Neil from his comfortable life into a maelstrom of unpredictability and danger.
He looked forlornly at the spectacles in his hand.“I’m just not at all certain that I’m cut out for this.”
“I think you’ve been handling all of it splendidly… for the most part,” Ellie hedged.
Neil winced at the reminder, clearly intuiting that ‘for the most part’ referred to the idiotic apology letter he had written to the man who had later kidnapped and tried to kill him, along with his sister and friends.
“You’ve always been braver than I am.All of you—Bates and Connie too.”
Ellie’s heart twisted at the quiet resignation in his words.“There’s more than one sort of courage, Neil.”
He slipped the spectacles back on.Ellie could feel the weight of his lingering skepticism.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?”she asked, deliberately changing the subject.“The sword, I mean.”
Neil stared down at the lid of the trunk as though he could see through it to the arcanum inside.“Not really.”
Ellie studied her brother for a moment—pale and bespectacled, stripped to his undershirt with a minor gunshot wound on his side.“Have you considered possibly… using it?”
Neil blinked at her with surprise.“What on earth would I use itfor?”
Ellie didn’t have an answer.She couldn’t picture her brother swinging the blade about like a medieval warrior.
“Maybe it wouldn’t have to be for fighting,” she offered instead.
Neil’s expression of low-grade horror fell away into something more uncertain.
