“I’m alive,” Tristen states as he enters my cell.
I’m dead inside.
I peel my eyes open and look at my brother. There he stands. He looks the same—tall, strong, muscled, raven hair—but his face lacks his usual playful glow.
Our gazes lock. He licks his lips, and my eyes water. “You want us to hate you. That’s why you’re doing this. If we hate you, it’s easier to let you go. But if we love you, it forces us to walk thisroad of misery with you.” Approaching my corner, he sits beside me, sighing heavily. Extending his hand, he flexes his fingers. “I’m the same, but I’m different. So are you.”
Tristen’s eyes lock onto the letter Cyrus left in his place. I haven’t touched it. Suddenly, Tristen grabs me, covering me in his shadows, blanketing me the only way he knows how. He’s crying. And I’m… sobbing.
This scene played out before, only the roles were reversed. It was the day the news of our parents’ deaths reached us.
I’m the older brother, yet he holds all the broken pieces of me.
For what might be a century, we sit there in each other’s arms and sob.
Chapter
Fifty-Five
Titus
Is it numbness that tugs on my eyelids, forcing me to blink and breathe again?
Vengeance?
Acceptance?
Our tears have stopped, allowing me to look at my brother. I grab his face in my calloused palms. His skin is smoother, like he has this ethereal glow of candlelight. Battles once stained the whites of his eyes weary and red, but now they are a pure, clean white. His hair is thicker, and the ends shine with new health.
I run my hand over his biceps. Did he gain muscle?
He blinks away tears. “I’m okay,” he assures me.
“Your shadows…” I look around the cell. If it weren’t for the walls, I’d be tricked into thinking we were floating on grey clouds. “You’re magic truly has no ending?”
Tristen nods. I wait for a joke that doesn’t come.
He’s grown into someone who doesn’t laugh as much. “My magic is always there, charged and ready to go, just as Elderan said it would be.”
Is he relieved or stressed?
“You don’t need blood anymore,” I surmise.
“I drank it,” he corrects me. “Old habits die hard. It tastes like chocolate, but it didn’t fuel my magic. It’s just an indulgence now.” He looks down with apprehension. “Selene asked me to give you something, and I denied her,” he blurts out.
My hand drops from him like it’s been burned. “What?”
Tristen bites his lip. “She knew,” he nods. “It was her way of warning me she was leaving. She wanted me to take care of you, but I slammed the door in her face. I finally saw a future where you were happy, and,” he shrugs, “I wanted to keep it that way. So I refused to hear her out. I’m sorry.”
My mate wanted to talk to him and not me! Finally, I reach for the bottle of water and take a sip. It burns. The urge to consume it all almost outweighs my knowledge that it would make me sick.
I hug the bottle to my chest. “Your guilt is misplaced. Selene and Everett are to blame.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive her.” His shadow inches closer like an animal trying to comfort me. “But she died so you could live. I’ll love her for that.” His next breath is sharp. “We had a message sent to us this morning.”
“You sure know how to deliver blow after blow,” I grunt. My lips crack from the few drops of water I had.
“It’s Selene’s father.”
