“We are dying!” Lhynion snapped. “Indigo takes and takes, and we are but a shadow of what we could be.”
Meléan sighed. “Pity. I had hoped you would see reason so I need not do this.” She extracted something from the folds of her dress, and Lhynion jolted, knowing she planned to harm him.
“No!” Galadaine shouted, ripping his blade from its scabbard. The sword aimed for Meléan, but standing behind her, Lhynion didn’t step in the way as Sean had been told. Instead, Meléan darted to the side, and the sword plunged into Lhynion’s—Sean’s—chest.
Galadaine’s eyes flew wide. “No. Brother!”
Lhynion collapsed to the ground, and the memory grew hazy.
Galadaine fell beside him and cradled Lhynion’s head in his lap. “No. Please, no.” His voice raised to a yell. “You fix this! Fix it now!”
“How can I fix this?” came Isobel’s—Meléan’s—voice from a place Sean couldn’t see. “This is what she asked of me.”
“This death was meant for you. You are infected! Diseased by madness. Who is this mistress who has beguiled you? She is ripping us all apart.”
“She is the truth. I have only done what I believe to be right. Lhynion Sidera has grown too powerful. The Queen relies on him too much. Indigo is not our enemy, Gal. He has to die, and so does the Exorcism. And you will too if you do not obey. Please just listen to her. I cannot bear to lose you.”
Tears streaked Galadaine’s face as he gazed at his brother, but Sean’s vision of it was darkening. “You made him love you,” he said. “Made him trust you. He was the best of us. How could you do this?”
“I never wanted this! I only ever wanted you. You tried to kill me.”
“You would have murdered my brother!”
Tears weakened her voice. “I thought you loved me.”
Galadaine looked up. Light from the stained glass behind dyed him red and blue in splotches. “Your kiss is a bewitching poison. It fooled me for a time, but I never loved you better than him.”
Meléan sucked in a breath, and her voice hardened. “Well, he did. You should know better than anyone how easy it is to manipulate someone who loves you.”
“I never manipulated you,” Galadaine spat at her. “But I will now.”
“What—”
“I will steal your poisoned kiss and make everything as it should be. Swear him your life.”
The taint was present in Galadaine’s voice, and Lhynion fought to stop him, but he was weak with blood loss and air hunger.
Meléan balked. “But?—”
“Do it now, Meléan. You do not live while he dies. You will return this life you’ve taken.”
“A blood oath? No, Galadaine!”
“Do it now!” he screamed. “What you’ve taken will follow your soul through time. Swear him your life’s blood, Meléan. Swear your soul will love his the way he loves you. Swear you will repay this debt, even if in another life. You will die for him the way he would have died for you.”
Meléan’s face dominated Lhynion’s hazy field of vision, and while he shook his head to stop her, she was cutting her hand, swearing on her blood everything Galadaine forced of her—to love him always, to repay this lost life, to follow him through the illusion of time. The force of the magic she created cocooned him in warmth despite the blood loss.
“Goodbye, brother,” Galadaine murmured. “We shall meet again someday.”
Sean’s vision faded to black, and the memory ended with Lhynion’s life.
Unsure how to broach the subject, Sean decided against speaking of the memory until he’d fully processed it, but everything he’d learned since coming to this realm had inverted. Galadaine hadn’t killed Lhynion at all. His death had been an accident, a byproduct of a cowardly, disloyal woman and some player acting from the shadows.
The mistress.
Did Isobel know Galadaine had forced that blood oath on Meléan to protect his brother? Surely not. It left Sean wondering two things: First, why did he feel so tied to Isobel? Love hadn’t forged this blood oath between them. Coercion had. So why was he forced to endure the obsessive love Lhynion had felt for Meléan? Was that part of Lhynion simply impossible to ignore?
Second, why had David ever hated him? Where had that hate come from? Certainly not from Galadaine. He’d loved his brother, and Lhynion had loved him back, right to the very end.
