“Oi,” the man said, red hair in tight dreads tied back high on his head. “Oi? Rev?”
Liam. The name came to him like a bullet from a pistol. He shot up, groaning from the pain he felt in every muscle and fiber of his being. Breathing was more difficult than he cared to admit. He wheezed and winced, then repeated the process instead of breathing normally. When he looked around, everyone looked at him with stunned expressions. What had he done?
Another bright rush of light brought Azure back to his side. The phoenix flew to Reven’s lap, nuzzling just beneath his chin.
Are you alright, Beloved? The phoenix asked. Reven responded by petting the bird’s soft feathers absently. Reven?
He felt raw. His whole arm ached, the flesh of his palm feeling as if it was burned. A slow glance down confirmed his theory, the flesh red and blistered. Beside him was a tywyll olve - or, rather, what had been a tywyll at one point - unconscious, bleeding at the temple while another duende man that was not at all familiar to Reven tied him up in ropes. Where had they found ropes? There were no ropes in a church.
“Reven?”
A softer voice, one that called to him and made him look up to a copper-skinned woman. She smiled at him, offering her hand to him. He looked at it then back at her, frowning. He had done this before, but when? He took her hand anyway, feeling the scars on her skin as she helped him to his feet.
“Ajana?” he asked, his voice as raw as his skin felt. Her smile brightened as he looked around again, still cradling his arm against his middle as if to defend against more pain. Faces continued to stare at him but, slowly, those faces became familiar to him. Some of them anyway. Too many of them were as strange as his sudden surroundings. No, his surroundings were not strange. He wanted to be here.
Everything roared through his mind all at once, as if his thoughts had finally caught up to his body. It was so sudden that he cried out, doubling over again with his hands gripping his head. He felt hands on his shoulders and flinched, pulling away until stumbling into something solid.
“I’ve got you,” said a rumbling voice from above forcing Reven to look up into the face of an aging centaur. The one Kaleo had gone to save. Seeing him made the bard groan and shake his head.
“I am entirely too sober for all of this,” Reven croaked. “Everyone intact?”
“I think I left my stomach in Kormaine,” Lara grimaced but it was an answer in the positive.
“S’what ya get fer bein’ an arse,” Liam chastised. “Tol’ ya t’ditch the brat.”
“Do not for one second think that we are at all on speaking terms you sack of shit,” Reven grumbled as he took a few steps toward Serai who sat quietly on the front porch of the manse in the foothills. He did not get very far, crying out when a lancing pain tore through his side. It was then that he noticed the sticky wet sensation of his own blood and looked down. The entirety of his right side was a dark red mess. “Godsdammit, that shit actually got me…”
Nothing else was said as consciousness left the bard.
***
Navid looked at the young amatti in disbelief. Nothing; Gannon remembered nothing of his former life, not even his own son. Navid knew the things Kaleo wrote, but it was like knowing people of other nations did things differently; you knew it, but it did not come into practice until you went to the country in question. According to Kaleo, he was an entirely different person. Reven, they all called him. This band of thieves and mercenaries that trained a prince, and not only that, a Speaker, to find their baubles and play for coin like some common pond scum. It was confounding and somewhat infuriating given the slip Kaleo gave that Master Roe knew from the beginning who the prince really was. Yet, at the same time, Navid knew it was the only reason that the prince still drew breath. Anyone else would have killed Gannon on sight.
“Your aunt is not going to like this at all,” Navid sighed. He sat with hands before his lips as if in prayer. The manse was large if ugly in appearance - a work in progress per Kaleo’s description. No one knew what to say or do, too many wounded to count and not enough energy to spread among them. The woman called Serai did what she could; so did Kaleo and Nadya but they were stretched thin. Kaleo looked terrible. He was dirty, his wings tousled to the point that Navid was sure one was probably broken, and had scratches all over the exposed parts of skin. Not that anyone else looked any better. Demons did not fight fair, and now they had one tied in iron and silver chains with a permanent spell locked on him to keep him unconscious. The damage he’d done was more than enough.
“What does your mother say about all this?” Navid continued, stretching his front leg before tucking it beneath him once more. Kaleo made a face.
“Step-mother,” Kaleo corrected with a disgusted frown. “She’s ignoring it. Kalelako told her what he saw when he went digging through Reven’s mind; she won’t believe it. Can’t, maybe. She’s an idiot and a dangerous one. Let’s hope she doesn’t insist on having me brought back to Esbeth again.”
“And the boy with the claws?” Navid asked after some silence passed between them. Kaleo seemed to deflate. The boy received a serious wound from the tywyll-demon. Navid refused to believe it was once Xandrix like Kaleo said. The boy with claws looked similar to the tywyll-demon if a
