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

face deepened, especially the crinkles around his eyes, which squinted with disbelief as he stared. “I thought you were to take back the Horns of Llorveth.”
    “Oh, I am,” she nodded. “But somewhere along the way I’m meant to do something that changes the time cycle and wakes the serpent. Once it’s woken, it is up to me to slay it and shatter its hold on our world so we can move forward again.”
    For a long time her brother said nothing. Eventually he leaned back again, stretched his shoulders wide and then let them hunch inward again with a sigh. “Who else knows about this?”
    “I told Finn,” she shook her head. “I went to Brendolowyn to ask if he knew of it. Yovenna knew, and maybe the seer I’m supposed to find in Port Felar, I don’t know.”
    “Hodon has no idea,” he muttered. “At least I don’t think he does. Why wouldn’t she tell him?”
    “I don’t know,” she shrugged, “because it’s not his task to worry about. Retrieving the horns, that affects everyone in the city, but this whole business with the serpent…”
    “Affects people all over the world!” Logren brought his hand up, stroked it through the hairs of his beard and mustache and tightened his lips. “This explains so much, and it changes everything, Lorelei...”
    “Not really. It is what it is, and nothing more. There’s still a lot I don’t understand.”
    “I could come with you,” he said. “Help Finn and Bren keep you safe so you can do what needs to be done.”
    “You can’t, Logren. Yovenna said…”
    “Yovenna said a change would wake the serpent. If I came with you, wouldn’t that be change enough?”
    She didn’t like how eager he was to wake the serpent spinning against their world. The tightness in her neck yielded to the jellying effect of chills. Her shoulder shook against it, neck tensing again. “Logren, you can’t come with me. Your place is here. The people of Dunvarak depend on you.”
    She remembered what Viina said to her in the bathhouse, about how little time Logren spent at home with his family, how agitated and restless he’d been waiting for Lorelei to come as the seer said she would. She thought about Roggi’s fretful tears just two days before, when he’d thought his father was leaving again. She’d felt so guilty then, because the boy was angry with her for going too, and terrified his father would leave with her. She couldn’t take him away from them, wouldn’t dare.
    “Viina needs you and Roggi too. And if Aelfric sends men through the Edgelands, those men will eventually make their way south to Dunvarak in search of me. Who will protect your city? Everything you’ve built here…”
    “This city protects itself. You heard me before. I am no mage. It is not my magic holding the world at bay, Lorelei.”
    “Maybe you don’t hold this city together with magic, but magic can be broken, Logren. I come from a place where the very essence of magic has been collared and enslaved…”
    “If you don’t want me to come then…”
    “It isn’t that I don’t want you to come,” she insisted. “I hate that when the sun comes up I must leave this place and put miles between us again. I’ve only just gotten here, only learned I have a brother and a nephew. I don’t want to be parted from you, and I would give anything to have your sword to protect me, but I cannot take you away from those who need you more than I. Your family, Logren…”
    “You are my family too,” he lamented.
    “And I will always be your family now.” Lorelei reached her arm around his broad shoulders and drew him close to her. “I know you are here now, and I won’t ever let anything come between us again, I promise.”
    Her brother tilted his temple into her forehead, a deflating sigh of defeat lowering his shoulders as he exhaled. “I just wish I could be there for you. I’m your big brother. It’s my job to protect you.”
    “You are here for me,” she pointed out. “And you’ll