The Phoinix: Age of Demigods (29 page)

Alina patted his arm and smiled
comfortingly at him. “Don’t worry,” Alina assured Lysandros, “They
need this time together. She needs to get to know her
brothers.”

Alina’s soft touch and sweet smile
eased Lysandros’ nerves, but still gave an unnerved, sideward
glance at Nik.

Cole stood, concerned for
Bre
.
“Everything
alright, Princess?”

“Bootlicker,” Leo grumbled under his
breath as Cole stood up.

Cole grabbed his blanket
and flung it in the air to get the grass off
.
With a subtle twist of his wrist,
the corner of the blanket whipped the side of Leo’s head with a
loud crack. Cole smirked at Leo’s vulgar exclamations as he headed
towards Nikolaos and Bre.

“Everyone alright over here?” Cole
asked and flashed a kind smile at Breanna.

“We’re ok,
Cole
.”
Nikolaos
leaned in to look at Bre’s shoulder
.
“Nothing that cannot be mended.
Here, I can heal this and Queen Alina is good with
clothing.”

Nik held a hand over Breanna’s wound
and a blue light radiated from his palm, warming Bre’s
shoulder.

Cole understood Nikolaos’
subtle hint. Breanna did not know they were her brothers. All she
knew was that they
were
three soldiers her mother brought to help her
family.

A pang of guilt in Cole’s
gut for not being around as Breanna grew up caught him off guard.
They could have taught
her
so much. He was a master of magic, better than
Nik
,
and Leo
refused to develop his. Nikolaos was a great at diplomacy, which he
learned from Lysandros and their father. Then there
was
cheeky Leo,
who
was
good for
his yammering vulgarity, complaints, and pranks. This coincidently
worked well on their enemies for quick escapes.

Breanna nudged Nikolaos with her elbow
as he stood still and somber next to her. She jested, “Don’t you
ever smile or laugh?”

“Ha! Nikolaos
laugh?
The day
he
has a good time and relaxes is the day I have to figure out what
spell he is under,” Cole said, bent over laughing.

Breanna and Cole laughed
at Nikolaos’ expense. He stood there with his arms folded behind
his back. He acknowledged the humor with a small smirk
and said
, “Are you two
finished? Can we continue with your lesson, Your Majesty? Cole, go
hunt something.”

“Wait, Cole can help
us
.”
Breanna
placed a hand on Cole’s arm before he walked away.

“As target practice?” Nikolaos
sniped.

“Ouch! Clever, Nik,” Cole
laughed
, and
then
turned back to Bre after giving
Nikolaos
a feigned look of
pain
.
“How can I
be of help?”

“You said you were the
master of magic out of you three brothers. Why not help me learn
what the o’Conaills cannot
,
or I should say will not
,
teach me?”

Shivers ran through their
bodies as
Nikolaos and Cole
exchanged apprehensive glances
. “Breanna, I never said that,” Cole said, defensively
shifting his body closer to Leo and Nik

“Yes, you did. You just
said
that
Nikolaos was great at diplomacy
,
you were a master of
magic
,
and that
Leo is good with yammering vulgarity, complaints, and pranks. If
you are the master, then let me be your pupil,” Breanna
said
, bending
her
hands back
and
cracking her knuckles
,
waiting impatiently for Cole’s
response.

“Complaints and pranks, huh? You were
thankful for my pranks and yammering in our fight with that ugly
elf in Álfheimr!” Leo shouted as he gathered his blanket and
tripped over his feet, rushing to confront his brother.

“Hush, Leonidas,” Cole barked, waving
a dismissive hand at his little brother.

Leo
shut his mouth and his expression changed from annoyed to
vigilant at his brother’s tense command. Cole only used Leo’s full
name in serious
situations
.

“Breanna
,
I
never said those things. I thought them, yes, but I never said
them,” Cole slowly said, staring at Bre pensively.

Leo arrived with his
blanket slung over his shoulder
.
“Great
.
now she can read minds?”

“Enough, Leo!” both Nikolaos and Cole
said in frustration.

Leo gave them a nasty
look
,
but
listened.

“Can you hear anyone else?” Cole
asked.

“I can hear you three just
fine,” Bre said impatiently
.
“Let’s get on with the lessons. I want to learn
new spells so the next time I meet Eversor I can…”

Nikolaos cut Bre off, “You
just heard Cole’s thoughts
,
and if you can combine this power with all
of
your other ones you
can offset your attackers. It is important that we figure out what
is happening.”

Breanna stopped talking,
rolled her eyes and scrunched her face up
,
concentrating on listening. Two
seconds later, Breanna huffed and flung her eyes open. “Nobody is
thinking!”

“How about now?” Cole strained his
face as he tried to think “loud enough” for Breanna.

Breanna
! Bre heard Cole screaming her name without moving his
lips.

The situation startled her
and she stumbled backwards
.
“What is going on? How are you doing
that?”

“You
are doing that,” Cole reached for her shoulder but she dipped
it out of his grasp.

Cole instinctively
grasped
his
dagger handle when sparks flickered between Breanna’s
fingertips. A long forgotten memory of sparks flickering from his
fingers replayed in his mind. The incongruous event occurs when an
individual first develops their powers. The memory
ended with
a boat
exploding because he got scared and lost control
.
He sympathized with her anxiety,
but he had to calm her down before
somebody
got hurt.

Breanna glanced at Eoghan
by the fire, laughing nostalgically with Brian as they recounted
old stories. She longed to call out to him
,
but he had done so much for her in
the past few weeks that he deserved to relax. She turned back to
the brothers, uncomfortable as they silently stared at her with
uneasy eyes.

“You don’t need Eoghan and we are
staring at you because you could blow us up or set us on fire if
you lose control of your emotions,” Leo snapped.

Leo’s brothers and Breanna stared at
him in shock.

“
What?” Leo asked,
irritated.

“Where did that come from?” Cole faced
Leo with his arms folded across his chest.

Leo grew even more frustrated. “She
said she wished Eoghan was here and didn’t want us staring at
her.”

Leo started talking with his hands.
His brothers always made fun of him for being so animated, but they
found no humor in this situation.

“I never
said
any of
that
,”
Breanna
paused, worried. “I may have thought it, but I never...” She
stopped abruptly because they were all thinking the same
thing.

“Great! Now I can read
minds too?” Leo shouted, “It’s contagious! How did you? Why did
you? Aww come on.” Leo started pacing back
and
forth, muttering to
himself.

“I didn’t do a thing,” Breanna said as
she held back a laugh at Leo’s ridiculous, panicked
state.

Nikolaos shook his head
and rolled his eyes at
Leo’s
overreaction
.

“There is nothing wrong with him, Nik,
this is his normal state,” Cole chuckled.

“He didn’t say that out loud, Cole,”
Breanna noted.

Nikolaos and Cole’s jaws
dropped and
they
gawked at each other with wide eyes. Leo continued to wave
his arms around emphatically. “I told you it was
contagious!”

The group around the fire
overheard Leo’s voice
, and
then Cole heard Lysandros reply,
The only thing contagious is the annoyance you
create
.

Cole burst out laughing while Leo
stared daggers at Lysandros.

“Perfectly stated,” Cole
said
,
trying to
catch his breath.

“His lips didn’t move and I heard him
as well,” Breanna once again noted.

Leo pleaded with Cole, “Will you fix
this? The last thing I need is for the three of you to hear my most
personal thoughts.”

“Why? So we don’t know when your
pranks are coming?” Nikolaos asked with a raised
eyebrow.

“Exactly! It’ll ruin all the fun,” Leo
said and started to pace again.

“Let me try something.” Cole’s face
scrunched up while looking at the group by the fire.

Leo burst out laughing while Nikolaos
disapprovingly shook his head and said, “Not funny,
Cole.”

Breanna gasped and smacked
Cole’s arm, which snapped him out of his thoughts. “Do not talk
about Eoghan that way. Besides
,
that is not proper language to
use
in front of a lady.”
Breanna blushed from Cole’s comment about Eoghan. “Not proper at
all.”

Bre looked at Eoghan and
noticed he had not heard any of Cole’s remarks. Otherwise, he
surely would have
sought
a fight.

Cole smiled devilishly at
Breanna but apologized for his crude remark
.
“I just wanted to see if they
could read our thoughts as well. Just to make sure Leo was not
completely paranoid.”

From a distance, all four
of them heard Alina’s thoughts,
I don’t
know how I will tell her they are her brothers
.

Cole, Leo, and Nikolaos gawked at each
other and then cautiously turned to Breanna.

Bre looked between her
mother and her newly
acquired brothers
with the same open-
mouthed
expression. “What did she say?”

“Uh, Mother? You might want to handle
this one,” Nik called out, pushing his brothers back, away from
Bre. He put his body in between them and her.

Alina
turned
to
them
and saw her sons backing away
from Bre.

What is wrong?
Breanna heard Alina’s thoughts.

“They are my brothers?” Breanna
shouted with more anger than she intended.

“Do not raise your voice to me, young
lady. Be mindful that I am still Queen,” Alina was surprised at her
daughter’s rage.

“You said ‘I don’t know
how I am going to tell her they are her brothers.’
Well
,
you just
did,” Breanna’s anger steadily grew.

“Did you read my mind, young lady?”
Alina walked down the hill with her finger pointed at Bre, scolding
her daughter.

“Yes, this is my fault! Because I have
full control over these damned powers.” Bre threw her arms in the
air, mimicking Leo’s animation.

Breanna’s sarcasm shocked
Alina, “You listen to me, right now,” Alina’s singsong Gaelic
accent came through thicker than Bre had ever heard. Whenever her
mother was angry, her accent came out
;
but her burr had never been this
thick. It was as if she had never left Cymru
.
“You do not speak to me in that
manner. Yes, they are your brothers. Yes, you are all immortal
demigods because I am a goddess. And yes, you have a magical
connection between you. How extensive it is, I cannot be
sure.”

“Don’t blame her. She has
been through a lot
;
We all have. Bre is just coming into her powers and
apparently we have new ones as well,” Cole
said, attempting
to calm his
mother.

“But you need to tell us everything,
because it is obvious you have been hiding facts,” Nikolaos
added.

Alina looked at her four
children, debating whether she should tell them what she
knew
.

From behind her, Brian called out a
warning, “Tell them Alina, or we will."