Brannal huffed a laugh. “But you just kept coming back. You didn’t let it scare you. You have such a big heart, Perian, and a willingness to look for the best in people. It’s so very admirable.”
“Thank you,” Perian said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “That means a lot, coming from you, with all the muscles and the most dangerous job in the country.”
He’d learned over the weeks that it was all right to bring that up, that even if Brannal wasn’t Summus or a Mage Warrior anymore, he didn’t want to pretend it had never happened.
“You have the spirit of a Warrior,” Brannal said with a smile. “We don’t always win, we can’t beat everyone, but we keep trying to protect and defend.”
“So my body might be lacking, but my heart’s in the right place, is that it?”
Brannal laughed. “Just to be clear, you have the most delectable body, and I wouldn’t change anything about it.”
“Maybe you should come show me how much you like it.”
Truthfully, the novel-reading devolved into sexa lot, especially because the hero and heroine were never having it.
“Why don’t they just get on with it? I think they’d both feel better!” Perian complained.
“Maybe the author is saving it up for the finale? So it will have more impact?” Brannal suggested.
“The possibility of getting to the finale would be greatly increased if they would at least have sex,” Perian grumbled. “Did the doctor think we were really this bored? I don’t understand.”
Brannal shrugged. “It doesn’t really seem like the sort of thing she would enjoy, but maybe there’s a terrible-novel-reading part of her that she wanted to share with you.”
Perian snorted a laugh. “Oh, is this her deep, dark secret, and she’s sharing it with us now that she knows my secret?”
Brannal laughed as well. “That’s an idea, isn’t it?”
Perian was pretty sure the doctor had figured his secret out a long time ago. But she’d still supported him, which meant a lot.
So he was trying to persevere with thebook.
About three quarters of the way through, after a terrible fight with the villains, the hero was gravely wounded. The heroine was being as useless as always, unfortunately.
“Do you think we could rewrite it?” Perian asked.
Brannal laughed. “You want us to write a book?”
Perian shrugged. “We could do it better, surely. I mean, do you want this to be the sort of book that Renny reads? What would she be learning?”
“How to be a swashbuckling hero?”
Perian nodded. “That’s true. She would make agreatswashbuckling hero. But I like to think she would fall in love with someone with at least a little more gumption than this.”
“We don’t always pick who we fall in love with,” Brannal said. “Sometimes, it just happens.”
Perian, who’d been pacing while Brannal read, popped over to give him a kiss, and Brannal took the opportunity to pawn the book off on him.
“Your turn!”
Perian made an annoyed noise, but he dutifully started reading aloud, detailing how at least the heroine had a servant who was smart enough to call a doctor.
“Seriously,” Perian said. “Was she just going to sit there and weep while he died? Ooh, wouldn’t it be way more interesting if the hero fell in love withhim?”
Brannal laughed. “Shall I start taking notes for your new version?”
“Yes, please!” Perian said happily. “We’re not going to be nearly so wordy, so it’s going to be, like, a quarter of this size. I’m confident we can do it!”
“Go on. Let’s find out if he dies and the rest of the book is the heroine crying.”
