Page 307 of Vasmora

In a small dirt clearing, a scorpion circled a spider the size of my palm, its tail poised to strike any moment.

“Branimir!” I hooked my arm beneath his shoulders and dragged him away, my eyes anchored on the spider.

“What, Mommy? It’s just a huntsman spider.” It was scary, sometimes, how incredibly astute and knowledgeable he could be for a six-year-old. “Watch.” No sooner had he said the word, and the scorpion sank its stinger into the spider.

I waited for the black ooze. The telling signs of infection to come pouring out of it. Instead, the spider’s legs curled beneath its body as the scorpion’s venom pulsed inside of it.

I ran a trembling hand across my forehead and exhaled a fatigued breath. While I’d made a point to educate Branimir about the plague, his young mind struggled to grasp that something so small could invoke so much fear.

He couldn’t comprehend the world the way it’d been a decade ago, where even the smallest spiders had served as harbingers of plague. So many of us remembered, though. And as a result, Queen Calisza had been forced to institute a law to keep villagers from killing every spider they stumbled upon for fear of a rising pest infestation.

“Okay, it’ll be dark soon. We need to return to Eidolon. Your father comes home from Solassios today.”

Appointed as the first Lithoviver by Queen Calisza, Zevander’s job involved travelling to dead veins and attempting to revive them. A commitment that kept him away for weeks at a time. Not that we needed the coin. Calisza had granted us more land than we’d ever use, and more coin than we’d ever spend. But for every vein he revived, thousands of spindling children would have access to vivicantem, and in the last few years alone, spindling births had seen a sharp decline.

“Yay!” Branimir jumped to his feet, hopping up and down. “Do you think he’ll bring home a razorwolf pup from King Lothare?”

I took his hand, leading him back around the cottage toward Raivox. “No, Bran. You have Rho at home.”

“But Rho needs a friend, mommy. He’s lonely.”

“He has lots of friends. You, Raivox, Luna …” Two of the three eggs that Corwin had unburied all those years ago had hatched within months of discovering them. The third had remained mysteriously unhatched—until the night Branimir was born. As I’d nursed my son, I’d watched the egg we’d displayed on his bookshelf, one we’d assumed to be empty, twitch. Zevander had used his flame to confirm the small creature inside, and within hours, Luna hatched.

She’d lingered around Eidolon for quite some time before we realized it was Branimir who’d drawn her. The two of them had formed a bond early on, growing together.

“Mommy, can I fly Luna tonight?” he asked, slipping his hand from mine. He darted ahead of me, hands clasped and walking backward. “Please?”

“Not tonight, Love. Mommy’s tired.” I kept on, passing him for Raivox, refusing to be swayed by his cuteness.

“But I can ride myself. Luna is careful. She won’t drop me,” he argued from behind.

“I told you. No flying without me. Not another word about it.”

“Godsdamnit,” he muttered at my back.

Eyes wide, I swung around to find him standing with his arms crossed over his chest. “Branimir Rydainn. What did you just say? Where did you learn that?”

At first, he glanced away, seeming to hesitate, then unraveled his arms, head tilted toward the ground. “Aunt Rykaia.”

I figured as much.

Brow raised, I braced my hands on my hips. “Mmm-hmmm. And what else did you learn from Aunt Rykaia?”

He huffed. “That girls are always right.” Brows pulled to a frown, he turned away. “Even when they’re wrong.”

I bit the inside of my lip, fighting the urge to smile, and rolled my shoulders back. “Well, I won’t argue with that one, but no more bad language. Understood?”

“But Aunt Rykaia said people who say bad words are more interesting.”

“Yes, well, you tell Aunt Rykaia you aspire to be a gentleman, not a cursing scamp.”

He tipped his head. “Is Daddy a scamp? Because he curses all the time. He cursed three times in a row when Raivox pooped on his shoulder.”

I pressed my fingers to my lips to contain the laugh begging to escape and cleared my throat. “Daddy is … complicated.”

“What’s comp … complicated mean?” he asked.

“I mean, sometimes he’s a gentleman. But sometimes he’s very naughty.”