And right now, I can’t trust myself to touch my brother. Neither could Sai. We’d succumb, change into our alters, seek out what it wants, what’s ours... and Julien knows it. He’s made the hard decision for us.
Jaw clenched, Julien doesn’t step away until he’s certain Kane is fully with us, in this realm, seated in a physical object that is only here.
Only then does he retract his fingers, hissing from the ripping pain we all knew too well.
“You good, mate?” Sai moves towards Julien with no thought for the darkness that could infect him.
Julien holds up a hand, keeping Sai at bay.“Absolutely... wonderful.”
Sai’s lips tilt into a smirk as the inky strands disperse over Julien’s dark skin. When they’re fully gone, Sai pats him on the shoulder.
“Ready, brother?” I take the seat beside Kane, searching his face still dashed with harsh lines.
His jaw is clenched so hard the muscles spasm, and his eyes are tightly shut. He’s currently in battle; fighting the darkness.
Then his wall drops.
Being inside Kane’s mind is like wading through thick tar—heavy, clinging, suffocating. There’s no clear path, only a maze of chaos and uncertainty. Walls rise at every turn, towering and impenetrable, confining me to the fragments he lets me see.
Which isn’t much.
Once inside, my presence—my light—forces the darkness to recoil, pulling inward, clearing just enough of the chaos to stabilise him.
When I’m certain Kane’s dark voice has quietened, retreating back into the deepest recesses of his mind, I withdraw.
I hate melding with my brother’s mind, with any of my unit’s minds, but some days it’s a grim necessity. The fear that they might one day be swallowed by the dark completely, knowing it’s almost impossible to come back from, haunts me.
My light doesn’t keep me safe either. My darkness is always looking for an opening. Whether it’s Kane or one of the others, someone’s always there to pull me back, just as I’ve done for them.
But lately, the dark in me feels… closer.
“So, it was that bad?” Sai settles into the seat beside Kane, a small smile in place.
Kane’s too exhausted to respond, providing a half-hearted splutter of sound.
Drinks appear before us, then Julien appears perched on the edge of the table next to Sai, taking a slow sip from his wine glass.
Kane reaches for the glass of whiskey. As he lifts it, I study the grey lines marring his hand and wrist—they lasted days last time.
“I couldn’t control it,” he says, then downs the contents.
No sooner has he set the empty glass on the table than it’s filled, and the bottle joins it. He picks it up—the bottle—and puts it to his lips.
“The dark was desperate to please her, screaming at me to do anything she said.” He tilts his head back, swallowing twice before putting it down. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control it.”
Julien’s gaze meets mine.“He cannot see her again. Not like this.”
I nod once. “I’ll call Kacey, cancel tomorrow—”
“No, I have to—”
“Are you listening to yourself, Kane?” The volume of my voice and intensity of my stare silences him. “What if she says it again? Commands you to go? You’ve barely made it back to us.”
“You weren’t there.” Kane shakes his head, loose strands of inky hair falling over his eyes. “You didn’t see her.”
Kane’s words are accompanied by a brief image. An image of her—vivid, fractured,wrong—and a wave of unrelenting dread hits us.
Sai’s markings blaze, then pulse out of rhythm.
