There was no judgment in his gaze, yet Noceo felt bared to the core. Not that his brother had any right. Even he knew he was the Clan’s monster.
“I had to.” The words came out ragged. His lips tasted of blood. He hadn’t realized how it could arc. “She was screaming and demanding answers. She would have told Clevsin after we left.”
His brother blinked. Nodded. “You had to,” he repeated tonelessly. Snow fell softly, carpeting his dark hair. “Did you see to the gates?”
“I did.” Noceo drew back from the body and realized that Drenevan’s own dagger was dripping blood. “Did you make him suffer?”
“Just enough.” An eerie smile broke across his brother’s lips.
Noceo stilled at its ugly familiarity. Moonlight illuminated the vicious glint in his brother’s eyes, the severe planes of his face, hardened despite its youth. He looked just like Clevsin.A monster. And Noceo was about to unleash him in the south.
“Let’s go,” he mumbled, leaving Finaze’s corpse in the snow. He felt Drenevan’s black gaze on him for a long moment before his brother followed.
Was this right?Noceo walked past the gates and into the deep furrows wagons had made in the mountain road. Jubilation escaped him. His first real taste of freedom sat sour on his tongue while the second most dangerous man he knew walked beside him. Drenevan wasn’t Clevsin through and through. He had never so much as looked at a woman to Noceo’s knowledge. But he was a Twelfth-Tier Urd whose power had surpassed Clevsin’s if today’s battle was any indication. And his brother had never lied about his enjoyment of murder.
He stopped walking, feigning a smile when Drenevan turned to him with an inquiring look.
“I almost forgot.” Noceo jerked a thumb to the right, letting the barest tendril of magic infuse his voice. Enough to suggest or convince, not to compel. “Father was anticipating a meeting with the Praetor tonight. Can’t risk him and his retinue seeing us down the road. We’ll have to take the forest. The snow should cover us.”
Not a change in Drenevan’s hard mask. “Very well.”
They slipped into the coniferous woods. Pine needles littered the crisp blanket of snow. They crunched under their feet as he walked down the slope, letting his brother take the lead. Clouds hid the moons from their eyes and illuminated Drenevan’s back. An easy target. His fight with Clevsin would already have weakened him.
Yards away, a series of boulders littered the ground. Landmark stones, he had called them, back when he and Drenevan would take this shortcut down the mountain.
He didn’t want to do this.
Darkness pressed on them from all sides. The air grew oddly damp for winter, bringing with it the crisp scent of pine and Komis’s smoke.
“It’ll rain soon,” his brother muttered.
Noceo couldn’t stop staring at the boulders.Shove him into them, then slam one over his head before he can recover.The plan kept repeating in his head. One more life, and he would be done. If anyone deserved to leave this shithole, it was him. Drenevan was another monster in the making. Clevsin was a scourge, but his brother at adulthood would be one of the Dark Elsar themselves, if there was a god for blood.
He swallowed at the image of red spraying through the air again. Of his brother’s head caved in, a vessel for worms. He didn’t want to do this.
The gray stones loomed ahead.Only one more death.They were a yard away, and then a hair’s breadth away. Noceo’s resolve hardened.
In a swift move, he shoved him down the slope. Caught off guard, Drenevan rolled into the boulder with a sickening crack and went limp.One last death. Noceo seized a rock and lifted it over his head in a smooth sweep. He had no choice.
“I’m sorry, Drenevan.” He brought it down on the prone form on the ground.
And it moved.
He only caught a glimpse of black, feral eyes before his brother rolled to the side, just barely missing the impact. The rock crashed against boulder and shattered.
Noceo’s breath heaved as Drenevan rose, one arm hanging uselessly at his side.Broken.Good.
Rage roiled in his brother’s eyes. “Why.” A bare statement.
It hurt. He hadn’t wanted to do this. “You’re too much like him. I can’t allow you out.”
Something that looked almost like pain flashed in Drenevan’s eyes. His arm must be worse than he was letting on. Noceo was willing to bet that there were a few cracked ribs in there too.
“Don’t fight me.” He lifted another rock with ease. “Just accept it and die before you turn into Father.”
Emotion seethed in his brother’s eyes like he had never seen before. Drenevan’s icy mask was gone, violence behind it.I made the right decision.
“I’mlike Clevsin?” Drenevan ground out. “When you just killed a girl for no reason?”
