SEVENTEEN
ROMULUS
Every moment Laurenis away in Layden’s room, my foot taps against the stone floor.
I don’t even notice until Ksenia snaps at me. “We had to come back in the helicopter early for this supposed emergency only to find that the woman hadn’t been kidnapped after all, and there was no emergency.” Her pale eyes flash with irritation as she shifts in her chair, one hand supporting her massive belly. “I’m about to burst with this pregnancy, and I hate flying in that tiny death trap. So do. Not. Test me.”
The helicopter is a new addition to our collection. Kharon insisted we acquire it in case there were complications with Ksenia’s labor. Considering the increasing size of our family and the fact that only two of us have wings, I purchased a military-style model with substantial space in the cargo hold. If it were anyone else, I’d think they were calling it tiny just to irritate me. But Ksenia genuinely despises flying—the irony of a woman mated to Death himself being afraid of heights isn’t lost on me.
I give her a wounded look, but she doesn’t appear the least bit impressed. Usually, Ksenia favors me. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say she actively dislikes Remus and always welcomes my waking. It’s not exactly a high bar to be more preferable company than a madman.
My eyes drift toward the stairs again, almost against my will.
At least I’m the more preferable company when it comes to everyone except Lauren. And now she’s spending more time with Layden than anyone else has since he returned from the dead.
Well, apart from Remus.
Back when our shared memory still functioned properly, I noticed that he and Layden were spending considerable time together recently. Mostly it was just Remus inquiring about the technology and other magic Layden brought back with him from whatever realm he’d been hiding in.
Abaddon has interrogated Layden on the same subjects extensively, but Layden remains frustratingly tight-lipped. Even the information about the glamours that allow my brothers to walk about looking like normal humans wasn’t offered freely. He only revealed that option when Kharon became anxious about the baby’s birth.
Yes, Hannah’s delivery had been fairly seamless, but should there be any complications with another hybrid birth—considering Kharon’s drastically different physiology with his multiple arms and darker origins—he wanted to be prepared. What if the baby had extra limbs that became caught in the birth canal?
Remus’s solution had been to kidnap a human doctor, naturally.
But Layden offered up the possibility of glamours instead.
When Abaddon demanded to know why he hadn’t mentioned this magical remedy earlier, Layden demurred, claiming he’d been working on perfecting the potion for months.
Abaddon hadn’t looked like he believed it. All things considered, now I’m not sure I do either.
It was around then that Remus suddenly became very pliable about not joining them on their vacation venture to test out the magic potion. Too pliable. I should have known something was wrong.
Every time any of us called it “magic,” Layden got a strained look on his face and said tightly it was not “magic.”
But “inter-realm ingredient potion” is too much of a mouthful. As to how he’d obtained matter from other realms and transported it into this one—and where exactly those other realms were located—he refused to divulge a single detail. He’d rolled his eyes when I pressed him and corrected me irritably: “No, it’sessencefrom other realms, not matter.”
I stare harder at the stairs, my jaw clenching.
Is he telling her? Right now, up in that technology-crammed room of his?
Has he given Remus a different potion to keep me sleeping and separate our memories? As soon as the thought forms, despite my frustration at my attached twin, I can’t deny the burn of curiosity that ignites in my chest.
Because I wonder if it works both ways.
Everything I do now—would my twin be blind to it?
I breathe out long and hard, stretching my neck and blinking at the thought of the first true privacy I might have in... well... ever.
It makes for a certain kind of existence, knowing that while in the moment I might have my mind and body to myself, the second I fall asleep, every corner of my memories canbe excavated while my body is inhabited by someone else. A completely different mind. Perhaps even a different soul.
If we have souls at all, which over the millennia I’ve begun to doubt.
I remember when Kharon once confessed to me—horrified and weeping in a rare moment of lucidity while we were locked together in the dungeons—that there was no afterlife for our kind. He’d searched every inch of the deathly planes for our brother Layden, scoured every shadow and whisper of the in-between.
Back then, we thought Layden long dead. The news devastated Kharon, sent him spiraling into such despair I feared he’d never recover.
But selfishly, I’d felt such wild relief.
