AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Though pleased that at least he wasn’t the worst of the warriors she knew, Bannin only shrugged. “I don’t suppose they were wrong. Though I was in a rage to to prove that they were.”
And humiliated by the rejection.
The sudden softening of her gaze told Bannin that Sarya understood that part without him saying. “Is that when you first left Galoth?”
He nodded. “I joined up with a band of mercenary soldiers—”
“At thirteen?”
“I was a strong lad even back then. Though a bit skinnier.”
She snorted. “I can imagine.”
He grinned. “Have you studied my strapping form so closely, then?”
“I’ve seen plenty of thirteen-year-old boys,” she said dryly. “All of them soft in the cheeks, with the tall ones made up of elbows and knees. You’d have been the tallest of them all—and topped by flaming hair? Oh yes, I can imagine it well.”
His hair had been even brighter red then. But the picture she’d painted wasn’t otherwise wrong. “I grew into my height quick enough.”
“You’re as solid a man as I’ve ever seen, that’s for certain.” Before he could wallow in the pleasure that statement gave him, she asked, “Where did you go after joining up with the mercenaries?”
“We made our way across the Illwind Sea.” And eventually halfway around the world. “That’s when I met Warrick. I’d ended up playing guard to a princeling. I didn’t know then he’d only hired us because no one who knew his reputation would work for him. And when Warrick showed me what the princeling had done—”
“Showed you?”
“A ghost. A girl.”
Bannin had told her of Warrick’s ability to see ghosts before, so that wasn’t new. But he hadn’t shared this story with her before.
“What did you do?” she asked, the softness of her tone suggesting that something in his face revealed how much that girl haunted him still.
“I killed the princeling. Then joined up with Warrick.”
And soon after, he and Warrick had began searching for the jewels that would break Anhera’s stone curse—a search that Bannin had never abandoned, though it had taken ten years.
“And together you saved all of Galoth,” she said with an admiring glance.
Though Bannin had told her himself how he’d been with Warrick when the curse was broken, now his face heated in embarrassment. “In truth, I didn’t have much to do with that. I would have helped Warrick bring the jewels back to Galoth but…Helana sent a message that Ouin’s feet were turning to stone.”
Sarya gave him a look that said he’d left out an important part of the story. “Helana once told me your arm had begun to turn, too.”
Next to the devastation of knowing what was happening to Ouin, his own suffering hardly mattered. “If I could have helped Warrick bring the jewels, I’d have stayed at his side even if I turned into a statue before it was done. As it was, I’d have only been in his way. So I returned to help Helana and Ouin—and trusted that Warrick would arrive before it was too late.”
No one had known then that those who’d been fully turned to stone would become living flesh again. Most people had thought them permanently dead. Sarya’s parents hadn’t been alone in that.
Yet they had returned to flesh. Bannin had been glad of that since the moment the curse had broken, but knowing now how Sarya had been one of those statues, and knowing he’d never have met her had the outcome been different…
He couldn’t bear to even think about it.
Sarya’s thoughts had apparently turned in a different direction. “You weren’t surprised when I described the demon. Have you seen a monster like it before in your travels?”
“More often than I’d like, and not as distant or as long ago as I’d wish. Though I haven’t before seen a demon that resembled a tree—or maybe it can simply disguise itself as one. Hard to know.”
“Not long ago? You’ve seen demons recently?” She frowned when he nodded. “Where?”
“A valley up north, near Aleron.”
“That’s where Warrick the Cursebreaker is living now, isn’t it—as king consort to Aleron’s queen?”
Bannin had to smile. He himself had first called Warrick the ‘Cursebreaker,’ and the name had spread throughout Galoth. Over the years, the barbarian warrior had become closer to Bannin than his blood brother had ever been. But then, Warrick was a true brother.
Now his true brother was a king. “He is.”
“You think this demon came from that valley? That it made its way south over the Glass Mountains?”
“I do. We’ve been trying to slay the demons before they escape the valley, but some slip out.” Then killed as many people as it could. “Don’t mistake them for the usual monster. These things come from the scaling of a spell gone wrong. This demon probably began as a real tree. Maybe even a twig. Then corrupted magic got into it.”
