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“Do you think I’m not going to return the favor when it’s clear you’re going about the business of fucking up your life?” Marlow pushed.
“She’s too good for me.”
“You are currently eighth in line to the bloody throne.”
The woman came and set the whisky in front of him.
He didn’t even glance at her when he handed her his empty glass.
“That doesn’t matter to Satrine,” he said, then raised the liquor to his lips and threw back a healthy dose.
“No. But you do.”
Loren said nothing.
“We were in the bloody forest for two and a half bloody years without leave. We’d lost five men, half our number, and our scout, who was just a boy. No one knew of our activities, and if we were discovered, we’d vowed never to divulge. We were assassins being assassinated, one by one. I thought I’d never make it home on so many occasions, it almost became a mantra. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t think the same. Not once did I consider I’d walk into a home and have a woman race into my arms. Or better, stand and watch that same thing happen to you.”
Loren threw back more whisky.
“We had to keep going. If we didn’t find them all, Tor could send no more after us. If Queen Aurora knew he’d sent a kill squad, relations with our greatest ally would have gone to shite. And regardless of the fact that Frey would likely have backed Tor’s play, he wasn’t their ruler. And they’ve got dragons. Tor made the tough choice. We had to succeed. Our people, and theirs, depended on it. We succeeded, Lore, and we came home. Be home. And be happy.”
“I do believe, my brother, that you were at my side challenging that gamesman with his dancing dice,” he noted.
“I don’t have a beautiful woman selecting her wedding garland either.”
He again turned to his friend.
“What happens when the darkness comes?”
Marlow’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s my understanding she was torn from her family for six years of her life, then lived doing without a single luxury, not to mention several necessities, for the next twenty. Is this a woman who cannot absorb the dark?”
“I cannot be an ambassador or sit amongst a council with members who have never in their lives picked up blade or bow in loyalty to this realm.”
“Then tell Tor it’s not for you. He won’t mind.”
“He needs me.”
“Tor could rule the entire Northlands on his stubborn arrogance alone. Fortunately for we underlings, he has Cora to even him out.” Marlow shifted closer and his voice lowered. “Tor doesn’t need you, brother. He knows what you did. He knows what you gave. He wouldn’t blink to release you from duty and continue to give you his love and esteem for who you are and what you’ve done.”
Loren started twirling his whisky in his glass again.
Until Marlow suggested, “Take up the mantle your father dropped.”
“Quiet,” Loren whispered his warning.
“Tor wishes to continue those operations from Ludlum’s reign, it was his idea to begin with. And I’m certain he’d be happy to recruit you. It’s likely he hasn’t suggested it because he knows he’s already asked too much of you.”
Loren narrowed his eyes on his brother. “I said, quiet.”
“You’re already doing it, for the gods’ sakes. You’d have a lot less hassle from the local constabularies if the king was at your back.”
“Can you—?”
He felt it.
Stopped speaking.
Turned his head.
And saw them approaching.
“Delightful. And I thought tonight would be boring,” Marlow drawled.
Loren’s fingers closed securely around the glass.
They kept coming.
And in the mood he was in, he was more than ready for it.
* * * *
Satrine
I took a healthy sip of wine, and said to Mom, “So this is where we’re at.”
I set the wineglass down on the dining room table very close to the bowl of tuna Mr. Popplewell was hunkered over, snarfing down, and lifted my hands to grab fingers as I counted it down.
“No doubt, being no call, no show for over a month, my job is toast.”
Mom lifted her glass and said, “Mine too.”
“All my friends, your friends, our family, Keith, Aunt Mary, various acquaintances, perhaps the news media, definitely the police, have been alerted to our disappearances. They’ve freaked, spent countless resources trying to figure out what became of us, are terrified of what might have befallen us, and if we should get back, healthy and happy, we can’t just say, ‘Had a wild and wacky vacation in a parallel universe. Oh my God! You should try it some time.’ In fact, we have no excuse as to why we disappeared at all.”
“Word, my girl,” Mom agreed and sucked back a sip.
“Dad has likely cashed in those emeralds, used all that money on wine, women and poker, and is probably trying to figure out how to get us back so he can attempt to fleece us or sell us again.”
