Page 96 of My Pleasure

“It looks like a tent version of a bounce house, if that makes sense?”

Hunter eyed the tent. The entire thing looked like a small house with a gabled roof. Hardened plastic tubes acted as the framework, and clear plastic acted as windows. Using his strength, he dragged the tent backwards and positioned it a bit further away from where he built a semi-permanent campfire; he nodded slowly. “It’s not bad.” He dug around the camping tote and pulled out an inflatable mattress pad, blankets, and a lantern.

“Should I do the mattress pad?” she teased.

“Har, har, very funny. I have trauma you know.”

“Poor baby,” she cooed.

He sniffled dramatically, then started up the battery-operated inflator for the mattress pad.

“Ahh, that one doesn’t explode?”

“Thank all the gods it doesn’t,” he muttered, causing her to giggle. “I was trying to be romantic,” he confessed.

She lifted out the jar of peanut butter and a bag of Skittles. “Were you going to woo me with snacks?”

“It has worked for more than one warrior brother.”

After everything was unpacked, he pulled a blanket from the tent and wrapped it around them. It was summer, but nights could still get cool. They got comfortable in front of the fire, each with a glass of wine.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” she asked.

“A warrior.”

“Always?”

“I feel like I wanted it since I could speak and could understand what a warrior was. What about you?”

“Honestly? I wanted to be an apothecary. I love the smell of herbs and the idea that with enough knowledge, no matter how little magic you had, you could still do magical things.”

“Did you never have magic?”

She shook her head. “Some years it barely registered, some not at all.” She took a sip. “Mother and Father never cared about my test scores, only how I’d be treated because of them.” She squeezed his arm tighter. “I think that’s why they wanted to save so much, so I’d have something to fall back on.”

“Every parent wants to ease the way for their children, magic or no magic,” Hunter said. “Take me, for example. Father sat me down when I was younger and said that I could do whatever I set my mind to, it may just take me longer to do it.”

She gasped. “He did not.”

“He did and I loved him for it. I knew I wasn’t as smart as my brothers, but I figured out when I was young, that if I chose the right person to follow, they could be the smart one.”

“Hunter, you’re not dumb.”

“I never said I was. I just said I wasn’t as smart as my brothers. Things took a second or third time to sink in.” He laughed. “I think I was maybe six or seven when I had the epiphany that I didn’t have to be really smart, I just had to follow smart people. We were visiting Storm Keep, I think Graham was serving out here back then. I watched him do drills with Caiden. In my little six year old brain, Caiden could do anything.”

“He was the unit leader back then?”

“Has been for centuries. Kyran and Tristan too.”

“What was he like?”

“Same as now, maybe a bit rougher around the edges without Amelia’s influence. But to me, he seemed to know everything. I snuck onto the training field and walked right up to him and told him he’d be my unit leader someday.”

“What’d he say to that?”

“What could he say? I was adorable.” Hunter remembered the way Caiden smiled down at him and ruffled his hair. “He said, I’d have to grow quite a bit before I could serve. I simply pointed to my brother and told him Armstrongs are tall and that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Cheeky.”