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

still be here when I return with the Horns of Llorveth. We’ll worry about the serpent then. Maybe I will learn more about it from the seer in Port Felar. Right now, I just want to get those horns and bring them back to your people.”
    “You may not know them well, but they are our people,” he corrected her. “Yours and mine.”
    “Our people,” she agreed with a slow grin and a nod.
    She didn’t know how long they sat that way, heads touching, the temple’s silence and one another’s company an eerie comfort against the overwhelming reality of the tasks ahead and the fact that in a matter of hours she would leave that place to do things she’d never imagined in her wildest dreams would be hers to do.
    She was glad he’d taken her to the temple, glad she’d sacrificed an entire night’s worth of sleep before heading out into the world because she’d spent that time with her brother and though she’d been skeptical about the man upon first meeting him, she loved him now just as much as she loved her little sister. She knew that so long as the two of them lived, she would never be without family or a home. She only hoped the gods, in their infinite expectations of her, remembered to reward her by keeping both her brother and her sister alive and safe through the trials that lay ahead.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    The entire city of Dunvarak was awake with the dawn, gathered in the streets to see the Light of Madra and her party of two off on their journey. Finn was only asleep a few minutes, or so it seemed, when the sound of Roggi’s footsteps racing through the house brought him back to consciousness. He rolled and rumbled, almost forgetting he’d spent the night sleeping on the cramped pantry floor, wedged between mead barrels, sacks of grain and his brother. The aching of his lower back quickly reminded him and he stretched with a groan into the space his brother occupied during the night.
    Vilnjar was already awake, and in the emptiness of the pantry Finn felt both agitated and momentarily afraid he’d slept through sunrise and gotten left behind. He dressed, tugged into his boots and stood up. After raking fingers through the loose tangles of his black hair, he stepped toward the door and realized parts of him were trembling.
    Sleeplessness, he told himself, not fear, but on the inside he knew that was a lie.
    He was afraid of the journey that stretched for miles on his path. He was afraid of the things that journey would bring, including his possible death. He was only eighteen, had been eighteen just a couple of months, and before Lorelei came barreling into his life like a runaway doe on the chase, he’d been fairly certain he had a long and healthy, overwhelmingly boring life ahead of him.
    Suddenly the future was uncertain, a future he only wanted to spend with her, and there wasn’t a single boring day in sight.
    Everyone was at the table when he emerged from the pantry. Lorelei and her brother laughed as Roggi danced slowly in front of them with a spoon dangling precariously from the tip of his nose. Vilnjar sat with both hands curled around a steaming mug of kaffe from the carafe in the center of the table. Viina perched at the edge of the table, arms folded across her chest as she smiled and shook her head. Even the half-elf made his way to breakfast, though it was some consolation the dark circles under the mage’s eyes looked about as deep as the ones Finn felt beneath his own.
    At first no one seemed to notice he’d even entered the room, then the boy spotted him and excitedly darted out to meet him, the spoon clanging across the floor as he romped. “Finn, I thought you were going to sleep forever.”
    He laughed, reaching down to tousle Roggi’s hair. The boy threw his arms around Finn’s legs and squeezed, holding on tight and laughing even when Finn started to walk while he was still clinging.
    “I didn’t even know it was time to wake up,” he confessed