“Nope,” Brynnius thundered out, which managed to do what the movie could not. The loudness of his voice made Victor’s pulse pick up, and his eyes whipped to the usually soft-spoken sentinel. He’d already gotten his cloak on from wherever sentinels kept it hidden, and a second later he vanished. Someone flipped on the light, and Victor blinked as his vision tried to adjust to the sudden change.
“Turn it off,” Cassius demanded.
Victor glanced at the screen and although his nose wrinkled at the bloody murder that the characters had acted out, he’d not reacted nearly as adversely as the men who’d been ordered to slit throats by their evil necromancers for centuries. He set down his plate and pushed aside his blanket. “I’m going to go talk to him and make sure he’s okay.”
Cassius moved swiftly to pile two treats on a plate. “Take him these. He always likes cupcakes when he’s upset.”
Well-aware of Brynnius’s choice of snack to soothe himself but knowing the protective Cassius had to find a way to help, Victor offered the boisterous sentinel a nod. Weaving his way around the furniture, Victor got to the staircase near the entrance of their home swiftly. Once he was at the top, he strolled past the doors decorated with daggers to represent the men whose private space was behind them until he got to Brynnius’s.
“Brynn, it’s me, Victor,” he said as he gave the wood a quick rap. It was often Victor that managed to get the sentinels to open a door or have a conversation when they got rattled, and it was something he took great pride in. He also took the utmost care to calm them how he could, so he was relieved when the barrier between him and Brynnius crept open.
“Hi, Victor.”
“Hi, sweetie, you okay?” Victor asked. “Cass sent up cupcakes.”
If there was a room in the house Victor loved as much as his own, it was Brynnius’s. The sentinel had the kind of taste that reflected his gentle way of speaking. Done in black and shades of petal pink, it was a symphony of gothic romance. Lit by an enormous chandelier, under it the bedspread was a soft floral with ruffled edges, and gauzy dark fabric was draped above the tufted headboard. It accented beautifully with the soft, striped wallpaper and the pale wooden floors gleamed where they peeked out around the large area rug. Brynnius beckoned Victor into the suite after taking the plate, and the shifter let out a sigh as he sat in front of the pile of pillows that went halfway down the mattress.
There was a kaleidoscope of texture and lace, and Victor’s gaze was drawn to the ornate settee where Brynnius had parked himself. Behind him was a bookcase filled with cookbooks, and the lacquered surface was as opulent as everything else in the room. The sentinel was staring miserably at his cupcakes, and Victor’s soul ached for what Brynnius had suffered. It didn’t matter that it was two millennia ago that he’d been resurrected or that he was an elite assassin—Victor was overprotective of him and everyone else in the house.
“I shouldn’t have teleported out of the living room because of a movie,” Brynnius told his lap.
“It’s okay if you were bothered or if what you saw triggered something from your past. Sometimes we don’t even know what’s going to upset us until we find ourselves facing it.”
“It was supposed to be a fun night.”
“I don’t know if anyone was enjoying our movie. Horror isn’t for everyone. Just think about how Chand bitches when we put on a really sappy one. We have to listen to him go on and on about how unrealistic they are. You’d think we were making him drink juice.”
Brynnius gave a little smile and glanced up. “I like the sappy ones.”
“They’re the best.”
“It’s also fun to make Chand bitch.”
“Well, we can’t let his bitching skill go to waste, can we? Now, eat those delicious cupcakes, and we’ll go downstairs. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing them we should pick another movie. I vote we pick a comedy.”
“Do you want one of these cupcakes?”
Knowing Brynnius would insist Victor eat something, he got up and accepted the treat. “Thanks, Brynn.”
“I like that one with the three witches trying to survive more than one night after the black flame candle is lit.”
“Yes, it’s one of the best ever for this time of year. Are you feeling better?”
When he lifted his gaze, Victor saw horrors in them no movie could muster. Brynnius had suffered under his necromancer for nearly a thousand years, and though he refused to say just how many people he’d killed, Victor knew he could give an exact count. “I don’t want to think about the past, and that movie sucked me back there.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. We don’t have to do horror nights anymore.”
“Maybe spookier and less murder,” Brynnius said after polishing off his cupcake quietly.
“We’ll have to get Del to give us something like that for next year,” Victor said as he got to his feet. There was no way he was going to agree to put Brynnius through another potentially triggering experience again before that. And they were only going to do it next All Hallow’s Eve if Brynnius decided he was ready to even try. Perhaps the key was to find more movies that celebrated the season without freaking out the traumatized sentinels.
“Was your mojito good?” Brynnius asked as Victor led them out to the hallway.
“I didn’t put in enough mint. What do you say we make ourselves a pitcher to guzzle down as we laugh at our next movie?”
“I would like that.”
“Me too,” Victor assured him. He was also going to persuade Brynnius to eat more of his infamous sweets to help free his mind of the panic and terror, which had surely spawned his retreat from the room. While Victor might live in arguably the safest condo on the planet with so many sentinels guarding it, what no one could possibly understand without getting to know the skeletons who made up the vaulted Skeleton Seven was, they needed their own protection from the world. And the barely five-foot-five Victor with the too-short shorts and painted nails was just the man to do it.
