Conquest by T. C. Edge

Author:T. C. Edge [Edge, T. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

17

Brie

I stand before the small, old, and yet vastly commanding presence of my grandmother, awaiting the inevitable rebuke.

Up here, in her Presidential office, the view around the centre of Inner Haven is quite stunning, presenting a full picture of the square below, coming alive as morning blooms.

Across the way, the City Guard HQ is visible, its current number of occupants now increased by several. Only minutes ago, I watched with a tear in my weary eye, as Rhoth reunited with West, drawing the young man into his arms, thanking the sun and the stars that he still lived.

It was a special moment for me, nothing but a bystander, looking on. The joy of an adopted father and son finding one another again, when everything around them is falling apart.

They'll come back, I know they will, but I do wonder how much more they can take. Will the Fangs soon cease to exist? Will their numbers eventually become so few that the future of their tribe becomes unsustainable?

"Well, Brie," comes the voice of my grandmother, snapping me from my thoughts. I stand ahead of her, hands behind my back, body to attention. "It seems that you've had a busy night."

I hold my form, acting all official. Our relationship has evolved now, splitting into its component parts. In times of peace, in quiet moments, she is just, well, grandma to me. The sweet, yet stern old woman whom I love dearly, the last proper family I have left. In times of war, in official meetings, things are quite different. She is the President. I am a soldier, the loosely titled 'Protector of Haven'.

And whether her granddaughter or not, I am to be treated as such.

"I thought it was worth a go," I say, implacable in my beliefs. "If we'd run into trouble, then we'd have turned right back. There was no real risk at all..."

She stares at me. Her greying eyes can be so cold sometimes. "Do you really believe that, Brie?"

I find myself withering a little under that gaze. "Yes," I say, holding firm. "Well...at least until we got into the camp." I lift my chin. "But I assure you, President Orlando, we were in complete control the entire time."

"Yes," she murmurs. "We..."

The door knocks at that moment, and the President turns her gaze towards it.

"Come in," she says.

Adryan enters, dressed smartly as always, pacing forward with that firm step of his. I don't know what it is, but he seems more robotic these last couple of days. I don't know if it's merely the comparison with Marcus, all balance and guile, but Adryan has taken on a metronomic manner recently that I thought he'd abandoned entirely.

He looks to me as he walks in, though doesn't do much more than that. I feel a stab of hurt at that, a strange sense of abandonment. He's like this every time I go out to fight. Distant. Cold. It always takes a day or two to pass, the subject of my adventures rarely spoken about between us.

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