Anticipation

One of her hands hovering hesitantly over the stone, Glory casts a glance back over her shoulder, looking towards her brother between the dark veil of her hair. But her peeking gaze is not met by the charming assurance of prominent baby blues that she seeks. In fact, he’s not even facing her. The fabric of his shirt has become taut at the shoulders, the white of the shirt he wears turned an eerie, shadowed green by the runes on the stone reacting to the closeness of her magical signature. His broadened back gives away some emotion she hadn’t been privy to in their hushed silence with the glow of the magic in the air consuming all her concentration. Though the tension nearly rises to his ears, what alarms Glory more is that he has one arm drawn back to his waist, poised with the barest brush of his fingertips at the hilt of his blade.

“Oliver?” she asks, voice so nearly soundless that she doesn’t believe he could have heard her, but Oliver holds up his other hand to her, palm flat.

Aborting the step she was about to take, she shifts back to her heels but keeps her own hand safely at her side, away from the stone. Instead, she worries the chain of her ringed bracelet with her thumb and chews on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from calling out his name again. Clearly, he’s heard something. Seen something. Sensed something. None of it could be good, no matter the manner. Not down here.

The craggy ground beneath Glory’s feet makes her soles ache to be standing so still after days of travel off-horse. Her breath stagnates in her lungs, striving for total silence to aid their vigilance at this final stage. The sourceless droplets of water echoing in the cave-like structure haunt her ears as she tries to listen in for whatever he has caught onto.

Glory hears nothing, try as she might, but still Oliver remains a sentinel between herself and whatever he senses.

She draws breath once more—two short ones, quick bursts of oxygen for her protesting lungs, one and then a successively long one, expanding her diaphragm to its limits to replenish its stores before pushing it back out through her mouth—retaining near-silence the way Oliver had taught her. He had taught her a lot for this mission. More than Glory had dreamed of even, and she had dreamt endlessly of mounting his horse and going off with him on his adventures. (She had even dreamed, on nights when resentment grew in thorny thickets around her heart, of going off on her own adventures.)

Truly, she had learned so many new things, and practical things at that. Things that she couldn’t read in all the dog-eared, ink-smudged books she could get her hands on—and Glory could get her hands on a lot, if she put her sharp mind to it. And, to boot, it had all been because—

Oliver crooks his ring and pinky finger until they meet his thumb.

Two? Two what?

He makes no other movement. Glory shifts her weight onto the balls of her feet and stares at his hand like it’s a checkered flag, coiled like a spring, stone forgotten. Her anticipation hovers somewhere in her throat, lodged so deeply it feels suffocating. She desperately wants to clear it. She doesn’t. Glory brings her hand up to the rabbit-beating of her heart and begs it to settle.

They’ve gotten so far that they’ve seen the green runes alight. They’ve got two problems if her brother is to be trusted, and she would trust Oliver with her life—hells, she is at this very second.

They’re missing one piece of the puzzle, and it’s time.