I just wanted to wait for him.
I just had to reach for him harder, endure this monster a little longer.
27
THE MIRROR
You’re not getting out anytime soon, brother.
The darkness pressed in, thick enough to breathe.
The room was silent except for the drag of chains against concrete, the low scrape of Callan shifting against the shackles binding him.
His arms and legs were fettered with heavy iron cuffs, a mockery, a reminder that Zaghan wanted him helpless but wide awake, that the tables had turned and now Callan was the prisoner in his own body.
Breath trembling, Callan rasped, desperate, “You have done enough. Let me out.”
A soft, dangerous laugh drifted from the corner as Zaghan stepped into the thin spill of moonlight from the window, his face shadowed, unreadable. But Callan knew what expression laid behind that stillness.
He had tasted her.
He liked it.
Now he wanted more. Because he was greedy like that.
Zaghan tilted his head, wickedly amused. “Scared, brother?” he murmured, words cold as steel. “Good. You should be. I have taken another precious thing that once belonged to you.”
Fury burned at Callan’s chest as he yanked at the chains, violently, yet they wouldn’t budge. “She’s mine. How could you touch–”
“Was,” Zaghan cut him off, jaw slightly tapered. “Shewasyours. But you clearly didn’t know what to do with her. I did. I gave her what she wanted. And she liked it.”
Callan froze, his heart clenching as shame and rage collided behind his ribs. “You had no right, Zaghan.”
Zaghan’s smile bloomed slowly, feral and claiming. “I had every right the moment she walked right into my orbit.”
“Liar,” Callan spat, voice cracking. “You manipulated her. You pushed–you forced her!”
“I didn’t force anything.” Zaghan crouched in front of his seething brother, golden eyes burning like twin suns. “She wanted it. Craved it. Enjoyed it.”
Callan shook his head violently, breath stuttering. “No. She’s, she’s not–”
“The plan was to wring her neck, carve out that little heart of hers, you know.” A devilish grin cut a deep shadow on Zaghan’s face. “I shouldn’t have tasted her.” He clicked his tongue, shaking his head, his grin only sharpening. “Fucking addictive, that girl. Now I’m thinking of keeping her a little longer. Bleed her dry…slowly. Peel off that innocence layer by layer. Leave her bare and empty. And then.” He paused, snapping his finger. “Drive a dagger through her delicate neck, watch her eyes turn white and lifeless.”
Callan choked on air.
This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t supposed to happen.
He had always known Zaghan was cruel. He grew up with him, after all. Zaghan was something old and wrong. A ghost who should have long gone and left no mark. But he stayed, and chose to wear his brother’s shadow instead. But even so, this crossed the line Callan couldn’t believe Zaghan was capable of crossing.
Zaghan knew how he must have felt about Elizabeth. How she had lodged herself beneath his ribs, making him want her in a way nothing else ever had. Wasn’t that enough? Shouldn’t that be enough reason for Zaghan to step back?
Callan believed he had paid for his sins. Had swallowed loss after loss, paid in silence, in obedience, in pieces of himself he would never be able to recover.
So why Elizabeth?
Why this?
Why couldn’t Zaghan, just this once, let something remain untouched?
