Elena wanted her nowhere near at all, much less attending her wedding.

“That’d be good,” she said.

Gal had swung down from the mantel, and now he stood on the floor opposite Brix, her feet separating the two gnomes.

“She needs food,” Gal told Brix. “She’s been existing on grog for weeks.”

“She needs a kick in the arse and to open her mouth to share what is bothering her,” Brix returned.

“Nothing bothers me,” she lied.

“You lie,” Brix accused.

She fell fully to the pallet on a sigh, turning her back to them and muttering, “I just need more sleep. Then I will go back to my post.”

“Her arse is right there for me to kick,” Brix noted.

“You kick my arse, I’ll wring your gnome neck,” she told the wall.

“At least there’s some rise in her,” Brix said, not to her.

“Leave her be,” Gal retorted.

She closed her eyes.

“I will not. She is in pain. A pain that can be muted with words spoken, releasing some of it.”

She opened her eyes, partly in surprise he sensed this about her, partly in surprise he wished to do something about it, but mostly in disbelief that his assertion was correct.

“It can also be muted with time, my brother, give her more,” Gal said quietly.

“A friend does not let another friend wallow in pain, Galbdor.”

A friend?

“A friend does not push a friend further than they are willing to go either, Welbrix,” Gal retorted.

They thought they were…

Her friends?

She allowed herself to feel the warmth in her belly that brought.

And then she ignored it.

“I will note, you two here, arguing about me like I am not, no one guards that building,” she shared.

“Oh, right,” Brix muttered.

“You go, I’ll get Serena some food,” Gal said.

“A juicy steak,” Brix ordered for her.

“Nadirii do not eat meat,” Gal reminded him.

“Shite. I forgot.”

Serena ate meat.

And for the first time in days, her stomach rumbled.

She rolled toward them.

“Rare, with biscuits and butter,” she demanded.

“That’s more like it,” Brix stated tetchily, arms crossed on his little, but for his frame, wide chest.

“Don’t you have a troll to watch?” she asked.

He sent a glower her way before he turned on his boot and marched to the door. He swung up a rope attached to the wall beside the door for the purpose of allowing the gnomes to turn the handle, something he did.

And then he was gone.

“Steak, biscuits and butter,” Gal said, and she looked to him.

He was grinning.

“Coming right up,” he declared.

And then he was gone too.

106

The Missives

Queen Farah

Outside the Bedchamber of Sir Alfie, Birchlire Castle, Notting Thicket

WODELL

“I do not wish to speak of it.”

“Well, I wish to speak of it.”

“You need to be at your sticks, sir. And if you are too weary, then you need to be abed.”