And I remember, faintly, but I do. Centuries ago, when I carved something vicious and fanged from my own darkness, because I wasn’t strong enough to stop my father, I couldn’t protect Ezekial or his sister. And the guilt, the pain, it created him.
“And now…” Ezekial’s voice softens as the snake nudges his cheek. “You’re making another.”
His gaze flicks to a corner of the room, and I follow, noting a smaller strand of darkness, slender and delicate in form.
And this one…
This one is for her.
“Only the deepest emotions take shape in shadow,” Ezekial says. “You taught me that, brother. Pain, grief, love—feelings felt so fiercely, it reshapes the dark.”
He nods towards the new shadow. “And Kane, the creature you’re making for Jasmine, it moves like mine.”
I say nothing, but I stare at the wispy being not quite yet formed.
“It’s time to stop blocking everything out, brother. You’re not used to feeling, andespecially not feeling everything from everyone all at once.” His eyes, hard as steel, glimmer with something warm. “She understands, Kane. We all do. You don’t need to push us away anymore. Not now, not ever.”
I slowly inhale the darkness, using the cold to ease the bubbling sensation in my gut. I can’t quite name it, not sure I’ve learnt this emotion yet, but I want to. I want to learn, to master this, to stop pushing for them—for her.
“I will,” I say, simple and blunt, but it’s enough to make my brother smile, a warm hand landing on my shoulder. “But there’s something else.”
His gaze turns wary, fingers falling away.
Because when Jasmine fell asleep, after I’d convinced my unit she was safe, I spent the remaining hours indulging in the feel of our connection. How the bond felt so much stronger, impenetrable, older…
Much older than the five years we had lost with her.
“Our bond is stronger now, so much stronger,” I murmur. “I can feel both her powers, her empath abilities, her darkness—they’re strong, Ezekial.” Our eyes meet. “Almost as strong as ours.”
Shadows creep around us, Ezekial’s shoulders tensing under the realisation I’ve yet to voice.
“How old, Kane?” he asks, voice low as his snake slithers across his shoulder and onto mine.
I’d spent all night trying to approximate that exactly, comparing the strength of her powers to mine, allowing me to estimate…
“A century.”
He curses, clenching his jaw as he shakes his head. “How?Howcan she be a hundred years old, Kane?” We stare at each other, his concern and bitterness bleeding into the shadows as they grow. “But she isn’t immortal, we would feel it…”
“You know it can take many centuries to reach immortality,” I remind him, and our eyes darken with the same unspoken memory. It took us two. “Her darkness has overpowered the light enough to stop her ageing, like it did for you. Maybe the rune is also interfering somehow. But now that I can feel her, there’s no doubt in my mind. She’s a hundred years old. At least.”
Ezekial winces, and his snake hisses in kind. “I erased her memories, hundreds of years’ worth of memories.” He stares into the distance. “I’ve taken so much—”
“No, brother.” I wait for him to face me again. “Whatever life she was living during that time, she suffered. We may not know how or with who, but we know that. She understands that. Whether it was decades or a century, you removed that past of pain.”
He shakes his head, struggling to accept my words. The burden of his act, erasing her memories and in effect, erasing us, too difficult to ignore.
“We cannot change the past, but we have her now,” I say, feeding from his previous strength. “Out of all the beings in this damned universe, she has us. Now and always.”
His gaze locks with mine, one eye silver fire, the other granite and storm. “And Goddess help anyone that tries to take her.”
“Even Gods can’t save them.”
He smirks, and I try to match it.
His snake, the one I formed for him centuries ago, curls around my throat before dissolving like mist.
Then we feel it. That quiet, impossible thread though the bond. The pull. The call to our bonded.
