Part One: Laughter

by Jirina Linnea

     Even if Bran had not been able to sense the guard walking toward his room, he would have recognized the cadence of his footsteps.

     It was always the same guard – Shensa, he reminded himself – who visited Bran each day to either deliver a meal or to fetch him for his visits with Kerak Nol.

    This Shensa had been there when he and Keela first arrived in Thyria. He had been the one to take Keela from the cell and guide her as they were brought before Kerak Nol for the first time. He had been the one to hold her back as Bran was dragged away to that room he refused to think about – for with that room brought the pain of his wings pushing through the skin of his shoulder blades, and the agony of the entire city’s thoughts and feeling and fears breaking upon him with the force of a tidal wave; tearing through his brain with a thunderous, all-consuming intensity that had left him unable to breathe. That room had stripped him of his identity and left him drowning in a sea of others; battling toward the surface as he was dragged down again and again by the feelings of everyone around him.

     Kyden was the Shensa’s name, and he didn’t appear to like Bran any more than Bran liked him.

     Bran made sure to set his face into a scowl as the door opened and the red-headed dog man stepped in.

     Kyden took one quick glance around the room before his eyes landed on Bran perched on the long, cushioned seat by the window. “You have to eat.”

     Bran had only been allowed out several times since the fateful night Keela escaped with the two taren [people]. Each time he had been accompanied by Kyden or another Shensa as he was lead through the cavernous halls of the Oberen. If their group encountered anyone else on their way to meet with Kerak Nol and Lurleen, those taren would often look upon him with awe – their eyes wide and mouths ajar. They looked upon him with reverence like he was some fragile artifact from a forgotten age they dare not approach.

     So, as much as Bran disliked Kyden, he begrudgingly welcomed his visits because the man was nothing if not blunt.

     It was better to be treated as a disliked person, Bran had come to realize, than as an untouchable object.

     Kyden narrowed his eyes. “I will not be responsible for your starvation.”

     Bran glared at the tray of food held in his gloved hands. “Maybe I’m just not hungry.”

     The expression that pinched the Shensa’s face looked as if he was fighting as hard as he could to refrain from rolling his eyes. “Of course you are hungry. You have barely eaten in the past several enairsa.” [days]

     “Maybe I’m on a diet and all you’re bringing me is carbs.” Bran shot back, miming flipping a lock of hair over his shoulder in his best impression of a mean girl from a teen sitcom. “I have to watch my weight, you know.”

     “If you keep refusing your food, you won’t have any weight left to watch.”

     Kyden took several steps closer, and Bran cocked his head up at the tall man. “Answer something for me, will you?”

     “If I do, will you eat what I have brought you?”

     Bran ignored this – because he hated how much he liked that Kyden hadn’t missed a beat with his response. “Why am I here in this room?” His arm swept out in a wide gesture, indicating the soft bed, the paintings of the walls, the stunning view through the intricate window – “I am a prisoner, so why am I not being kept in the dungeons?”

     Kyden sighed with all the weariness of an overworked parent. He turned away from Bran, moving across the room to the small table by the bed. Gathering the tray from the previous night with its food left untouched, he replaced it with the one he had brought with him. “Would you prefer the dungeons? I will gladly inform Kerak Nol.”

     Bran snorted – and then caught himself. The feeling had drifted through his mind unbidden from the man who had turned once again to face him. In all Kyden’s previous visits, everything had been brief and blunt; all his thoughts and feelings guarded and grey – radiating nothing but his own dislike of the situation.

     This feeling, however, had been so unexpected that Bran had reacted involuntarily to it – because it had felt bright and refreshing.

     Because this feeling had almost felt like a laugh.

     “I don’t like the illusion of being treated well,” he replied, his face settling carefully back into a scowl. “They’re pretending I am a welcomed guest, but it’s obviously a lie.”

     Kyden reached back, his fingers messaging the muscle by his neck absentmindedly. “You are the Sphinx. Of course you are a welcomed guest.” It was clear to Bran that he believed it – at least to the extent needed to not question it further. “There is no pretending here.”

     “There is always pretending.”

     The words slipped out – cold and bitter and truthful. He hadn’t even meant to say it, but as soon as he did, he saw Kyden stiffen.

     The man drew in a sharp breath, refusing to meet Bran’s eyes. “Just eat the food,” he snapped, before turning and striding hurriedly from the room, slamming the door behind him, and taking with him the fleeting feeling of light and laughter.

     For the first time since Bran’s erith el had manifested, he was tempted to reach out with his power; to open his mind and pry into Kyden’s thoughts and find what exactly this particular man was hiding.

     Instead, he sighed and tried to concentrate on shutting his mind to everything but his own thoughts as he reluctantly rose to his feet and walked over toward the food tray.

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