This wasn’t the first time that Hel or Betts had told us Mageia were free in Illyria, but it was still hard to accept. We’d lived our whole lives in a society that subjugated our race, where we were third-class citizens at best. We were all afraid to trust it.
“Move it along, slackers!” Betts called loudly as we moved off the boat. “No gawking! We’ve got a schedule to keep!”
As she quickly and efficiently offloaded her Mageian cargo I looked at the sixty-odd magic users who came with us from Heraklion. Everyone was shuffling nervously on the dock, their meager possessions in packs on their backs or at their feet. We were literally arriving with just the clothes on our backs. Each of us wore the dark t-shirts we had been issued during the Machi. Each shirt had a small piece torn or cut from the shirt on the left side where the logos had been.
A grim smile teased my lips at the memory.
The battle had just ended and we had begun the grim task of cleaning and removing the bodies of the Alexandria soldiers out of our temporary home. I’d grabbed a bucket from the hall and went to the kitchen to get some cleaning supplies where I’d seen Elex leaning against the sink staring dazedly at the counter where he had set the head of our half-brother, Maalik. He stared into the face of our tormentor as if he couldn’t look away. Hel was watching him helplessly, obviously unsure what to say to break Elex out of his strange funk.
Maalik had done obscenely horrible things to both of us over the years, and I was relieved he was dead. Yet the look in Elex’s eyes tore at my heart. If I could have taken that look off his face by bringing Maalik back to life, I would have.
“Adelfos,” I whispered as I approached him. Elex’s eyes slowly rose to mine.
“Luke…” he whispered, looking up at me through reddened eyes, his voice small and lost. I could hear the unshed tears he was choking down. I knew what he was thinking: Maalik had tried to escape. He could have let him go, let him live, but Elex had followed and executed him and the guilt was killing him.
Hel and I had followed Elex as he chased Maalik as they ran through the tunnels that had been our haven. I’d been terrified of something happening to my brother when we were finally so close to freedom.
We had caught up to them just in time for me to save Elex from a hidden dagger Maalik had thrown at him. Tesseris Mageia ornot, Elex hadn’t seen it until it had been too late. Personally, I was used to Maalik’s dirty tricks, so I had been prepared.
Elex had used his newly awakened powers to dismember Maalik but had somehow forced him to live for far longer than he should have. I remembered the sound of my half-brother’s joints popping from their sockets, and it still turned my stomach. The sight of Maalik’s head and torso floating above the waterfall was nightmare material. The stumps of his arms and legs had been cauterized by magic and, somehow, he had still been conscious.
I knew my brother; Elex was not a sadist. If the King and Maalik hadn’t driven him to it, I doubt Elex would haveeverkilled anyone, much less prolonged their suffering like he had with Maalik. How did I ease his conscience over this death?
Elex was the fiercest, strongest, most protective person I had ever met in my life. He may have been physically smaller than me, but there had never been any doubt he was my big brother and one of the deadliest men I’d ever met. He lived up to the meaning of his name: “Man’s Defender”. He would move heaven and earth to defend those he loved. He had saved my life so many times that I had lost count. If he hadn’t been in the Legion I was assigned to, I’m sure I would have died before I ever made it to Cadet.
That made it even harder to see him weighed down with guilt over Maalik’s death.
“This isn’t on you, Elex,” I whispered, gripping his arm.
“It really kinda is…” he said, his voice trailing off, his eyes drifting over his hands where small whorls of Earth, Air, Fire and Water still spun.
“Maalik brought his death on himself, a thousand times over,” I said.
“Yeah, but the way he died,” he continued. “What I did…That’s on me.”
I looked at the dead face of my torturer and gave my brother the only truth I could.
“If you hadn’t done it, I would have had to,” I said, my voice echoing with the power of the earth. “And I…I would have made it last longer.”
Elex and Hel both looked at me in shock.
“What? Did you think I didn’t know everything he did over the years? How he tortured you? Had us both punished over nothing? After the fuckingCalling?” I demanded. “I love you, and you have always tried to protect me while you were with me, which I appreciate. But you… You weren’talwaysthere, ‘Lex. You couldn’t be. If you don’t believe anything else I ever say, believe this: Maalik deserved to die in agony.”
He looked at me, his eyes a stormy blue. It was an improvement from the lost look that had been there earlier.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
I slammed the bucket on the floor, anger building in me. Maalik didn’t deserve my brother’s guilt.
“After you were sent to the Legion and he was named Crown Prince, I wasalonewith him and Aurelius for years, ‘Lex,” I said. I glared at Maalik’s bloody head. “Believe me, he earned every single second of agony he experienced. More, even.”
I grabbed Maalik’s bloody head by the hair and dropped it into the bucket where it landed with a wet thump.
The silence stretched for long moments before he spoke again.
“’Lex’, huh?” he asked, a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth.
“Well, ‘asshole’ has too many syllables, remember?” I said, bumping his shoulder with my own. Something in his mood seemed to break and I suddenly found his arm wrapped tightly around me.
