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Did he think it?

He’s never been able to speak as a lion. Or any of the other animals he shifts into.

Or maybe all the cursed magic in his bones has seeped away with his blood and he is human again.

He feels hollow and cold and so impossibly far away.

“Gabriel.” That’s Silas. “We’re going to fix you.”

But somehow Gabriel knows there is no returning from this one. No healer, no magic can save him now.

“We need to stabilize the wound,” the Wizard says.

He didn’t mean to step out of the line of soldiers. He didn’t mean to act. It was so unlike him to go against anything he was told.

But it felt like the right thing to do.

He intended to stop his brother from striking.

The dog had told Gabriel that the Wizard was using him, but there was this nagging feeling in the back of his mind that his brother was also being used.

He wanted to stop him from making a terrible mistake.

He did not entirely expect to be hit with the axe.

But maybe he was exactly where he was meant to be. Maybe all three of them were exactly where they were meant to be.

“Stop fighting,” he repeats, and the darkness grows until it swallows him whole.

And finally, he is free.

THIRTY-FIVETinman

The silence is deafening and my ears are ringing from it.

After several attempts to bring Gabriel back, my brother, the Great and Powerful Wizard, has failed.

Gabriel is dead. The Wizard looks shocked and dismayed.

I am numb to it, but there is a writhing need to mourn Gabriel, a serpent caught between two rocks, desperate to escape. That’s what my grief feels like, like it’s trapped.

I stand up.

The Wizard watches me. His eyes are glassy and bloodshot.

“I’m leaving,” I tell him.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere. Somewhere far from here.”

“Silas. I mean, Tin…”

“You must feel so impossibly alone.”

I’m not sure if I mean it as an insult, but it hits him like one. Like a punch to the gut.

“You stole my heart, so I couldn’t love you if I tried. And now you’ve killed the only brother who might have, if you’d given him the chance.”