JD Valentino's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

JD had a night and a place, but no offering and no partner. He left Aldric's tent with the sun still down. Two days of travel ahead, and a god who wanted something he couldn't name. He rubbed the gold bracelet on his wrist and stopped walking. He was not going to do this alone. He turned toward the road that led to his brother. Marco stood outside a low tavern, boot propped on a barrel, watching the street like he owned it. He and JD had worked together since they were kids. They had never made a big move apart. Marco looked up and grinned. "You have that look. The one you get before you ask me for something." "I need you," JD said. "There's a god at the coast in three days. He blesses one man each generation. I mean to be that man." Marco's grin held, but his eyes went still. "A god." He rolled the word around. "Grandmother spent every Sunday cursing one of those." He pushed off the barrel. "She never said which. Never said what he took from us." He looked at JD. "Maybe I find out at the same coast." "Then come." "I was already coming." Marco clasped JD's forearm. Their bracelets touched. "We don't split up. Not for this." JD felt the weight lift off his chest. With Marco beside him, the room always tilted their way. But they still had nothing to bring. "The scholar's finding out what the god accepts. He said return at daybreak." They went back together as the sky turned grey. Aldric was awake, bent over an open book, a torn fragment pinned flat beside it. He did not greet them. He read to the end of a line, then looked up. "You brought your brother," Aldric said. He studied Marco a moment. "Good. You'll need him." He turned the book so the brothers could see. The page showed a figure and below it a single word in old script. "I found what he takes," Aldric said. "Not gold. Not beasts. He is worshipped for his beauty, so nothing crafted impresses him." He tapped the page. "He accepts one thing. A living offering more beautiful than the last man who tried and failed. Bring a lesser face and he sends you off. Bring nothing living at all and he does not look at you." JD stared at the word. "A person." "A person who wants to be given," Aldric said. "Willing, or the god knows and refuses." He closed the book. "That's the whole of it. The rest is up to you." Marco was quiet. Then he laughed, low. "So we don't buy our way in. We charm our way in." He looked at JD, and the old certainty passed between them. JD's plan was ruined and remade in one breath. He had come for an object to trade. Now he needed a living soul, willing, beautiful enough to move a god. And he had two days to find one.