Page 55 of A Thousand Burning Ravens

Bryar shrugs. “According to a man in the palace last night, I am considered a disgrace to their kind. They referred to my mother and father’s dalliance as my mother ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’.”

“That is ridiculous!” Myla says aghast. “Your father was a good man.” She fiercely defends the man she watched raise Bryar with every tool he could find; every deep pool of wisdom known to man, Bryar’s father had scoured. There was not a single thing that man would not have done for his son. To refer to him as ‘bottom of the barrel’ was nothing short of treachery in Myla’s eyes. By the look on his face, Myla can see his thoughts race similarly to hers. Something she has learned as queen is when to fuel the fire and when to let it burn naturally. Right now, she chooses to let the fire die entirely. He has enough of it, without her adding to the beast.

“So, where are we left?”

“Well,” he answers hopefully, walking directly to a nearby shelf to scan for a text. “They say I must prove myself in some test. If I pass, they will allow me to train with them and learn to control it, summon it at will.”

Summon it at will. It sounds frightening. It sounds fierce. It sounds exactly like what she would need, were she to defeat the Blood Stealer. Chills rush down Myla’s spine. “It would have been easier, had the Spirit Mother just told us what you are.”

“Not really,” Bryar disagrees absently as he flips from page to page in a hefty brown book. “We would have had to make the journey nonetheless. Here—” He jabs a finger at an illustration on the page. It depicts a slight and slivering looking man, and at his feet is a pool of blood, seeming to drip from his fingertips. Behind him, mindless minions gather, awaiting instructions. A Blood Stealer. His face is twisted in agony as a winged woman above him, flanked by a score more of her kind, obliterate him in a bath of lava-hot fire.

“This does not stand to reason,” Myla whispers, tracing the exquisite depiction with a light finger. “If the Ashborn can defeat Vesperian, why have they not?”

Bryar’s eyebrows arch cunningly. “There is a caveat.” He directs her to a small line near the end of the page. “It says here that in the absence of a Restorer, an Ashborn, when aided by the essence of a Restorer, might be strong enough to conquer the Blood Stealer, or the essence of a Restorer channeled alongside an Ashborn bond. I have no clue what that means, but maybe we can continue to read and find out more.”

A voice from behind startles Myla. A scrollwarden approaches, shaking her head discouragingly as she walks by. “Do not put too much stock in those scripts.” Her old voice sounds like a quiver, barely released from her lungs. “Those are theoretical; nothing has been tested, nor set in stone.” She leaves them, abandoning them to more questions and frustration.

Myla stares blankly at the page, the crackling of flame drowning out any cohesive thoughts. “I do not understand. Essence? As in, you need to carry some of Caius’s ashes?”

Bryar looks at her, disgusted. “Gods, Myla. That is morbid.”

“Well!”

“No,” he enunciates the no while pointing to her belly, visibly shrugging off the discouragement of the old Ashborn woman. “You carry a Restorer. Is that not essence enough?”

Myla slumps into the chair behind her. “I am not letting you carry my infant into battle, Bryar. Though I trust you implicitly, that is an excellent way for both of you to die.”

Bryar chuckles and sits next to her. “No. I mean you. You must be there, with the baby inside you.”

“And, when I am standing on the battlefield, aiming to kill him, and he turns me against my own? Are you prepared to kill me to save our people?”

Bryar’s face stiffens, darkness swallowing his being. “We have to try something.”

“In other words, no?”

“What do you want me to say?” he asks, holding up both hands helplessly. A spark of rigid defiance flashes across his face. “You want me to look at you, and tell you I am going to kill you, like your Council members agreed to? They are fucking power-hungry cowards; your death would not cause them to lose a single night of sleep. Your death, to me, would be my death. And I will not agree to that. I will do whatever I can to help you, but that does not include killing you. That is a solution I would not live with.”

Myla balls her fists, both thankful for his commitment to her and also angered that he does not see the greater need beyond her own life. “I want you to tell me you will do what is necessary, Bryar. We wait until the child is born. Essence can be anything—nails, hair, saliva. We will make a potion from it that you can drink, or douse your blade in. We will go in to battle together, and if we can not defeat him, you will kill me. That is final! I will not exist as my own child’s greatest threat.”

Bryar stands now, slamming the book shut. “I will do no such thing!” Heat seeps from his pores now, and a red glow edges the surface of his skin, anger fighting to be released.

“Fine,” Myla retorts, eyes ablaze. “I guess I will just have to fall on my own gods-damned sword then.” And she walks away, leaving him to glare angrily at the book before him.

Not halfway up the stairs, she hears a clamoring of steps behind her, Bryar taking them two at a time.

“Myla, wait.”

She turns to face him, her arms drawn around her middle, trying to ward off the nausea. Be it the child or the conversation, something has soured her stomach.

“I do not see us agreeing on this, Bryar. I do not want to fight with you. We never have, and I do not understand why we are fighting now.”

With a pant, he runs a tousled hand though his hair, righting a few stray locks. “We are not fighting,” he corrects. “We are simply disagreeing, and I do not want us to let a disagreement escalate into a fight so . . . let us talk this through.”

Myla grinds her teeth, annoyed. “Bryar, we very clearly have problems.”

“What makes you say that?” he asks, perturbed.

“I do not know, Bryar! Maybe it is the fact that you have avoided talking in situations where you would normally be an open book to me. Or maybe, it is the way you have been short-tempered and aloof with me at the strangest of times before you are warm again? Or when you almost kissed me on the stairs, but for some infernal reason, you stopped yourself. Now, Bryar, you tell me why I might think that?”