“After what you both just pulled, why would I do that? Why would I unleash you from your cage? You touched my human. My human, who is with child. You put her in a position where you could have killed her.” My voice rises as my temper builds, as my vision turns a violent red and blood pools in my palms from the talons I sink into flesh. “You were told not to go near her.”
Dain is not listening.
His mind is a whirlpool of indignation and arrogance.
“We will do whatever it takes to be free of you. Even if that means ripping that spawn—”
I snap every tendon and vein in his body. I expose his nerves to the dust and filth of the room. I work my tendrils through the friseurs between each muscle and slice. I rip his organs from his chest and let him watch as they explode before his eyes before I take those, too. I step into the expanding pool of his blood while my brother lies at my feet, a shivering, howling husk of useless flesh.
His organs will return. His eyes. His tendons and muscles will heal.
But I keep his nerves out.
I leave them stripped and exposed. He will not be able to breathe without feeling the extent of my fury. He will remain in perpetual agony as a reminder to stay away from Lenora.
“If you go near her again, I will strip your meat and make you live the remainder of your miserable life as a pile of bones.” I lift my gaze to Rase. “Both of you. Return to your hole.”
I don’t wait to see them follow orders. I know Rase will drag Dain’s carcass through the void where he will huddle in the darkness, waiting for his body to heal.
One day, eventually, I may take pity and relieve his pain, but I doubt it. This isn’t the first time they thought they could take my place. It’s not even the second time. And still, I allow them to continue existing because … they are my brothers. For good or bad, they are a part of me. Even when they try to kill me. But Lenora is the final straw. She is the hill I will kill them on. She is the line in the sand. I will tear them apart with my bare hands to protect her.
I ignore the prodding voice insisting I should have killed them. The same one that says the same thing every time, and like before, I ignore it as I pass through the mirror.
The in-between place that divides the two worlds exists in a fractured reality of images. Broken spaces, as if incomplete where there are no mirrors. Even a small one is enough for me to slip through. Not a reflection on a silver kettle. I require a mirror, that is a mirror that exists to be a mirror. Usher House has many in various rooms. Rooms that no one inhabits. Places no one goes anymore. Chambers with garbage, discarded furniture and empty crates. I can move through all of them, except when Lenora needed me, I could not reach her.
The corridor.
The stairs.
The foyer below.
There isn’t another mirror along the main floor, except the washrooms and now her greenhouse. That will not do. My brothers will learn of this disadvantage and use it. But I also cannot live with that fear again. That overpowering surge ofdesperation where she was in danger and I could not reach her. I will not live with that gnawing numbness that consumed every shred of my sanity while I waited for that human to bring her back to me.
But it is a matter I will deal with once I am sure she’s unharmed.
So lost am I in my thoughts that I falter mid stride when I emerge from the mirror to find Lenora sitting up, back propped by dozens of pillows. Her pallor is milky, but her eyes light up when I arrive.
I circle the bed, ignoring the human on her other side and capture her face between my hands.
“How are you?”
“Tired,” she murmurs. “I feel like I’ve been running for hours.”
I perch gingerly on the mattress at her hip and search her eyes. “That will not happen again.”
She offers me the hint of a smile. “That’s good. The waking up in different places was beginning to scare me.”
The statement has me shooting a glance in the human’s direction. “This has happened before?”
“I thought it was just the baby or stress,” he counters, equally hostile.
“You were wrong. Losing time isn’t normal,” I bark. “You should have told me.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit,” he retorts. “She isn’t your concern.”
That same boiling inferno of rage I felt below when addressing Dain returns and I’m contemplating adorning every inch of his useless body with thousands of tiny cuts when small, cool fingers touch my cheek. My face is physically turned away from the idiot on the bed with her to the tiny figure peering up at me with such gentle sweetness in her eyes.
“I’m fine. Thank you for taking care of it.”
