ELRETH

She barely slept. Her eyes were grainy and aching, and she was awake with the dawn.

But she was also a coward. An utter coward. She skipped breakfast and ate a cold raisin cake in the kitchen standing over the sink.

She had a meeting with her Cohorts after lunch, but nothing planned for the morning because she’d known everyone would have a late night. So by mid-morning she was sick of pacing the cave and decided to see what her parents were doing.

Except, when she got out to the meadow, the door of her brother’s tree was slightly opening, swinging in the breeze and banging against its frame.

Gar was home.

Finally.

Without a second thought, she trotted to the Tree and opened the door, slamming it closed behind her so it would wake him. “It’s morning, Gar!” she sang when he groaned loud enough from the bedroom above that she could hear every curse and growl. “Welcome home, brother!”

The mutter that came in reply was more obscene than anything that had ever left her lips.

Elreth grinned. There was a very simple pleasure to be found in tormenting a younger sibling.

She would have bet the Royal Cave that he’d snuck in late last night—or rather, early this morning—and still had no clue what had happened the past two days.

Sure enough, when she ran up the stairs—stomping her feet on each one—he swore when she finally made it to his room and pushed the door open.

It was black as pitch in there—almost as dark as the cave when the lanterns were unlit—and, coming in from the brightness outside, to her eyes for a split second he was nothing but a pale smudge on the bed.

Then her eyes adjusted to the dark and she swore. “Oh! Gross. Put some clothes on, Gar!” she spat, turning her back.

Her brother chuckled, but didn’t move. “You walk in here at this ungodly hour, you get what you get,” he growled, his voice a hoarse rasp.

“Please. I could walk in her in the middle of the afternoon and the view would be the same. Where have you been?”

“Out.”

“For a week?”

“Five days.”

Elreth side-stepped up to the bed, careful to keep her eyes averted until she could reach the quilt and throw it over him. He grumbled, but pulled it up over his stomach, then laid both arms over his face as Elreth settled herself on the empty side, laying on her back, but turning her head to look at him.

He was a slightly-smaller version of their father, except with tattoos and short hair. He hadn’t quite filled out to their father’s breadth yet, but at not-quite-nineteen, he was going to match him within a year or two. Everyone commented on it—the King’s Copy, they called him. Though less so since he’d hit adulthood and had proven that no matter how much he might look like their father, he was a very, very different male.

And he hated it.

“Where do you go, Gar?” she asked softly. “And why don’t you tell Mom? She’s always so worried when she doesn’t know where to find you.”

“She knows,” he said. “She just doesn’t agree. So she doesn’t want details. So she worries.”

Elreth frowned. He must still be drunk if he was answering her questions. But as she thought about it, she hadn’t been greeted with the stench of stale alcohol when she’d walked into the room as she usually would. “Wait… Are you sober?” she asked, shocked.

“Your surprise is flattering.”

“Are you sick? Do I need to get a wise-woman?” she said, rolling over to put a hand to his forehead like she was checking for a temperature. He slapped it away, swearing again.

“Oooo, don’t let Dad hear you talking like that. He’ll kick you out of the cave. OH WAIT, HE CAN’T.” She’d been about to lay the big news on him, but Gar assumed she meant because that had already happened the year before—which was why he was in the tree.

“Very funny,” he snarled. “We can’t all be the golden child.”

“No, some of us have to be immature man-whores who wouldn’t know a responsibility if it bit them in the ass,” she muttered, remembering how unhappy she was. And that Gar had missed all of it because he was too busy off partying somewhere.

Then a pillow whumped into the side of her head and she growled, leaping on him. They tussled for a minute, but his heart really wasn’t in it, and she found it wasn’t any fun unless he was actually fighting.

She ended up sinking into the gap between his arm and his side, resting her head on his massive shoulder. “Gar, you missed some really big stuff.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I’m serious.”

He groaned and pulled his free arm up over his eyes again. His bicep curled so big, Elreth wondered if he might actually end up bigger than their dad. “Let me guess,” he croaked. “Somebody said something they shouldn’t and Dad got mad, then he made a grand speech and now everyone’s happy and kissing the ground he walks on?”

“No.”

“Wow. So, something new this time?”

“Dad almost banished the disformed.”

“WHAT?”

Gar pulled his arm away from his face and turned to look at her, eyes wide. “Are you serious?”

She nodded.

“Holy shit. What stopped him?”

“I did.”

Gar stared at her a second, then rolled his eyes and slumped back onto the pillow. “Oh. You had me going there. I thought you meant he was actually doing something. You guys arguing about that doesn’t count as him almost doing it. He probably just said it to piss you off and get you thinking.”

Well, that hit a little closer to the truth than she liked to admit, but she elbowed him anyway. “No, Gar. I meant it. He held a Censure because a couple tribes got in an actual fight about the resources the disformed use, and he was going to kick them out of Tree City, get them established somewhere else in their own place.”

He looked at her again. “You’re serious?”

“Deadly.”

“What stopped him?”

“I told you. I did.”

He frowned at her, then blinked. “Wait—”

“I challenged him, Gar. And… I won.”

His jaw dropped.