Lara stared at me as we approached a coffin-sized crystal.
“Okay,” I said to the air as I touched the crystal. “Stand this up vertical with his feet down, please.”
The rock beneath the crystal coffin groaned and grumbled andbegan to change shape. The crystal rumbled and rotated up to the vertical, and I could see the humanoid form inside. I touched the crystal and…
…and felt a great, weary sadness. Quiet yearning. Bittersweet pain.
My half brother.
Thomas.
I felt my breath catch and forced myself to keep breathing evenly. There was this empty pit inside me where all my recent pain and loss lived, and I felt an urge to hurl myself into it, but I held off. That was the point of all the meditation I’d been doing—to give me some measure of ability to keep functioning even when my body and my heart wanted me to collapse screaming.
Sometimes that happened to me at night, late.
I’d just start screaming. I’d scream and I wouldn’t be able to stop until I’d screamed myself out. Until I was breathing too hard to keep doing it, until my throat hurt, until my jaws ached from forcing my mouth open too wide.
Bear said it happened pretty regularly to folks who had gone to war. That I should roll with it.
I wanted to start screaming. But instead, I took a slow, measured breath as I had thousands of times over recent weeks, and murmured, “Here he is. Hang on…”
I focused on the crystal and the energies flowing through it. The entire island was mine to command. Normally, I’d have seen the personification of the genius loci of the place, Alfred, by now, but he hadn’t shown himself. After Alfred had wrestled Ethniu into a cell, he’d been exhausted, and was apparently still resting. So I felt my way through the spells binding the crystal casket on my own and found the one that would let us talk to my brother.
I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a ghostly image of Thomas, superimposed over the shadowy form within the crystal. He was a man just a shade away from six feet in height, pale and beautiful as a statue. The image’s long black hair was curling and textured like Lara’s, and his eyes were closed.
“Hey,” I said gently. “Thomas. Can you hear me, man?”
The image blinked its eyes open slowly. It looked around blindly for a moment and then licked its lips. A voice, somehow sounding as if it was coming from twenty feet away, and not right in front of me, croaked out, “Harry? Is that you?”
Lara inhaled sharply.
“Yeah, man. It’s me.”
“Am I dead?”
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the crystal. “No, man. You’re in stasis until we can figure out how to help you.”
“Who is we?” Thomas asked. “Is Justine with you? Harry, it’s not her. She’s been possessed. You can’t trust her.”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not Justine.”
Lara reached out her hand and touched the crystal. “Brother mine,” she said gently.
Thomas’s image closed his eyes for a moment, his expression pained. “Sister mine.”
“Your Hunger,” Lara said gently. “Are you all right?”
Thomas was silent for a moment before he said, “It’s…stirring.” He grimaced. “It’s still…still chewing on me.”
“I know,” Lara said, her voice compassionate. “Thomas, if we release you and feed it immediately, you might recover.”
“Hah,” he said, his tone glum. “You know where I stand on this.”
“I could make it a command,” Lara almost whispered.
“Don’t you dare,” Thomas snapped. “Harry, don’t you listen to her.”
I held up a hand to Lara and asked Thomas, “What is she talking about doing?”
