Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

her face widened in shock and relief and a strong hint of anger before she dashed toward the stairs—“some kind of, um, oh, a staff, or a—”

“Scepter,” I told Lively absently, my gaze following Branwen and my body turning toward her as she charged down the stairs.

Without saying a word, the high elf threw herself into my arms. Her face pressed against my shoulder and, with a shaky inhalation, she tried not to cry while I held her close to me.

Moved and a little flustered at the sight, Lively looked between the two of us with a motherly smile and said to me, “Just let us know if you need anything while you’re settling back in.”

“I will, of course. Thank you so much.”

While Lively walked off, Branwen looked up at me through red-rimmed eyes and hissed, “We thought you were dead.”

“At moments it felt like I might have been…I think I need to talk to you four.”

“Yes, you certainly do. Oh! You’re so lucky Valeria is—Valeria.” I realized with an odd jolt that Branwen had now spent about as much time with the durrow as I had—more, strictly speaking, with Indra and Odile. “We were talking about going to try to find the scepter without you, but Valeria convinced us to wait. Well—she convinced us to put it to a vote, at least.”

“And which way did you vote?”

With a pouty look and a roll of her eyes, Branwen didn’t answer. She just grabbed my hand and said, “Come on, Rorke—oh! Rorke. I’m glad you’re here. I’m really—so glad you’re here.”

To my astonishment, Branwen said such a thing and I actually believed it. After all…she was still there. With me thought dead by my companions and the town at large under the impression that I was simply out on an errand to another location—either to save a murder investigation or protect their rights to the other horses—Branwen had absolutely nothing binding her to the durrow. If she really wanted to slip free and go her own way, she would have done it while I was gone.

Yet, she did not. She remained, and I felt happy relief to know that her heart was a great deal more stalwart than her business sense tempted it to be. Regardless of whether her staying on was due to latent guilt, (I had, after all, disappeared when she and I had just had something of a row and she had refused to come horseback riding with us), she had stayed on, and the durrow had, too.

Pushing open the door to the room on the end of the hall, Branwen called inside with a grin she couldn’t banish, “Okay—I have great news. But don’t scream.”

From within the room, Odile brusquely asked, “What,” while a chair screeched across the floor. Branwen pushed open the door and I found Valeria had already risen to her feet, her face expectant, her garb—surprising.

The embroidered square neckline of her white blouse crisp against her dark skin, Valeria stood before me in a loose bodice and a skirt that was, for her, something close to chaste. She had modified the long blue garment so that it was no longer quite so long and now was cut closer to the cloth of her priestess’s garb, but modest enough that she could fit in a little better among the denizens of the surface world.

“I knew it,” she whispered. The Materna dashed across the floor to touch my face, then my hands, a literal sigh of relief heaving from her bosom on contact. “Rorke, Rorke—I knew you would be back.”

“Well,” said Odile, tossing down the cards in her hand and leaning forward. “This sure is a surprise! All right, I know when to admit I was wrong—”

Indra, too, bore features wide with delight while slapping her friend on the arm. “I told you,” she bragged in spite of her friend’s attempt to respectfully eat crow, as the saying goes. “Yes! I told you, Odile! There was no way anything could have happened to Rorke. He’s much too great a warrior.”

I hardly had time to be flattered before Valeria drew me down into an intense kiss, her tongue lashing mine. Groaning at the taste of her love, I chuckled as I lifted my head for a breath.

“I’ll have to be abducted by strange witches more often,” I said, earning a laugh from Odile and surprised looks from the others.

The rogues and druid, I noticed, were also dressed in fresh clothes—and, notably, a pair of goggles were poised atop Odile’s head. She adjusted them slightly while leaning forward, asking, “What’s this about witches? Do tell.”

Indra’s eyes had widened with shock. Sitting up all the straighter, she asked, “Is this like that woman you found? The one in the mountainside?”

“The very same,” I told them, removing Strife’s scabbard from my belt and sitting upon the edge of the bed. “Let me tell you some things that happened…”

Starting with the gimlet who stole my torch, I related to all my companions as fully as I could the neglected story of Gundrygia and her awakening. The women listened with intense interest and varying degrees of concern. Odile, for instance, took the story like a man listening to his friend relate a conquest. Indra looked concerned, then vaguely guilty when I mentioned her disappearance into the trees—though I impressed upon them all that this had been caused by Gundrygia, and not by some mistake of Indra’s.

Of them all, Valeria and Branwen appeared the most concerned. In her usual fashion, Valeria did not mind my extracurricular excursions but, seated beside me upon the edge of the bed, focused on that element that also troubled me: “You remember nothing after making love to her?”

“It would be wrong to say I don’t remember anything…but I don’t remember all or even most of what was done and discussed. I remember asking her many questions, and—I do remember her answering me, but…ah!” Irritated, I rubbed my forehead and assured them, “I’ve been rolling it around in my