Brianna moved into the room behind him and waited until he'd switched boots before she moved to place a hand over the center of his chest, instantly channeling healing energy through him to ease the pain she knew he was experiencing.
"What exactly? The part where you had to take a binding blood oath before you got your crown? The part where you thoroughly kissed the oldest incubus in existence and left him panting for air? Or the part where you flirted with a very obviously taken WereTiger?" she asked him impishly.
After a moment, she gave a soft sigh as she eased what she could for him, "I'm sorry about the forced ageing, Merrick... If I could change it, I would... But we need to do this... If you had seen what I did... What they did to him..." her voice caught at the end as she remembered finding their father among the bodies of assassins and the dead Drow... He had been so bloody, so hurt...
She hated that she carried that image, but it had shown her that they were not safe at all.
Add to it the magical bombs found in their nursery as well as their parents' room... She'd heard what they had been intended for: killing Merrick and their mother, keeping Brianna alive so that she could be forcibly wed to whoever the killers chose...
She cleared her throat and stepped back as she finished what she was doing and turned to sit down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder with her eyes closed, "If there was another way I would do it... But we don't have the time... If we waited for us to age normally, they would have us dead or worse before we could fully grow... I couldn't-" she had to stop there as her active mind fueled images of her family dead or worse...
She had been working so hard to stay strong so that she could help her brother. She didn't tell him how much this was costing her to do, or that she was pulling his pain to herself. All she left him with was the uncomfortable bits. She was taking all the pain.
But she was that way. She was a natural Healer with a sweet and pure heart. While she'd been born first, she would be a failure as Queen. She was too tenderhearted. She would be exactly what the last of the Drow needed, though. She was what Aeriolous's cousin, Arcane, needed. The Drow needed someone with such a pure heart and her healing ability.
The Demons needed a firm hand. They thrived on their volatile elemental nature. They needed someone in charge that could make the rules and laws stick. Merrick had that in spades. While he was the image of their father, Brianna knew that he was stronger. He was... He was more... She couldn't think of any way to really describe it... But there was something more inside of Merrick that their father had never possessed.
"You'll be a better King, Merrick... Don't put yourself in his shadow... Eclipse it..." she told him softly, trying to distract herself from what she'd seen.
She didn't want to remember their father that way. She wanted to remember what her brother did. But she couldn't help but see it over and over... Lareth had gone down, but he'd made sure that it had been a bloody fight...
A corner of her mouth quirked up as she remembered something else, "Just remember what Brim said... No funny ideas about his sister," she teased him a little, somehow knowing that he wouldn't be able to help himself.
It also distracted her from how badly she was hurting. Her bones felt like they'd been broken over and over, her muscles and tendons felt like they'd been ripped apart, and don't ask about her internal organs... She had taken on double the pain, but she'd hidden it from everyone. No one else needed to know about that. As long as she could keep Merrick safe, she was happy with whatever outcome came with it.
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