Free Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) by Jennifer Melzer

think with my blade first, lashing out long before rational thought reaches my mind. I think that’s why I get so riled up by Vilnjar’s taunts about our father. Rognar was an impulsive man. I know that now. I remember instances that support it as truth, but I don’t always like to accept it. Unfortunately, I inherited that quality from him, and I very rarely think things through as well as I should.”
    “Sometimes quick thinking is the difference between life and death.”
    “Sometimes, yes,” he nodded, “but other times so much more is required, and it’s not that I’m incapable of thinking things through. Most of the time I just choose not to, but you…” As he paused, he shook his head, the braids jostling against his cheek and shoulder with a whisper. “You think about everything, even when you’re threatening rash actions… like putting swords in people who don’t do as you ask them to.”
    He laughed, remembering her threat on his life when they first met beneath Great Sontok.
    “I wouldn’t have really done it, you know.”
    Still laughing, the wheeze of his amusement became a choking cough and he doubled over on the bench in such a dramatic way she actually slapped him on the back. The whack only made him laugh harder, and before long the silliness caught on and she was laughing too. Shoulders together, they howled and rocked with amusement until the absurdity wore thin and both grew sober with the seriousness of events stretched out before them. Laughter became long, loud sighs as they pushed their backs into the bench behind them and both stretched their legs toward the statue in the center of the room.
    “All I’m saying,” he finally said, “is you will do what needs to be done. Maybe it won’t be easy, but you will see it done because the gods would not have given you such a task if you weren’t able to carry it out.”
    “But I haven’t been able to carry it out if everything Yovenna said is to be believed,” she insisted. “I’ve done this before, apparently many times, and each one of them I have failed.”
    She watched from the side as her brother’s face distorted with curiosity before turning to look at her. “What do you mean?”
    That prickling she felt beneath her skin stirred again, an odd numbness spread through her body until it rested at the base of her skull, making her neck feel tight with tension. Her brother did not know about the Tid Ormen, the time serpent thrown against the world in the All-Creator’s rage, nor that the tasks set for her by the gods went well beyond retrieving the Horns of Llorveth. She hadn’t told him, and neither had Brendolowyn. She’d asked him not to, but she just assumed told her brother everything.
    Logren nudged her with his elbow when she didn’t answer, stirring her from her thoughts and forcing her to look at him. “What do you mean?”
    She started to shake her head, fully intent on saying it was nothing, but the look in his eye stopped her. “I don’t know if…”
    “Don’t you dare,” he warned in a severe tone she imagined their father might once have used on him as a boy. “Don’t even try to back out of it now that you’ve said it.”
    “It’s just a story,” she shook her head. “Something Yovenna said about Heidr after the fall of Llorveth. He was so enraged by the atrocities committed by his sons and their children, he wove a serpent from time and then threw it at the world. The serpent, it’s called the Tid Ormen by the elves, chases its own tail, spinning against the cycles of time and causing our world to relive the same events again and again and again until one day we get them right and end the cycle.”
    “Go on,” he urged. His face was hard, every line and wrinkle in the skin visible as he turned to look at her.
    “Yovenna said it is my task to slay this serpent and shatter the cycle so we can move forward again.”
    If he wasn’t sober before, those words did the trick. All the lines in his