by Leigh Evans
I gave him a dumb nod.
“It will be over, soon,” he murmured. “Stay strong.”
Seriously, he was saying that to a Stronghold?
I wanted to tell him—this wasn’t near over; this was only the beginning. Because I knew what lay ahead—I could see that string of nights where I would wake up and lie there, unable to fall back to sleep because I’d had a nightmare about my brother being trapped inside the portal’s walls for eternity. But why share with my mate the things that will haunt my soul?
We both bore scars already, didn’t we? Some of them hardly scabbed over.
If he could silently bear the pulling pain of his healing wounds, I could bear the sharp slicing pain of mine.
Besides. It was a little late to start wringing my hands in dismay and whining doubt. I’d put my trust in a wily old goat. And yes, when it all came down to it, I’d wagered my twin’s life on the slim odds and a brief nod toward higher principles—which had to have Karma bent over in a belly laugh. What follows now … oh Goddess, what follows now?
Karma. Please. If I’m wrong, take it out on me.
Not the people I love.
A quack from the pond below the cliff turned my head. The water looked dark and brown but a ray of a fading sun had fallen across the pond in a streak of golden light. It played on the beaks of the duck family, gilding them with vibrant green highlights. I watched them paddle single file. Daddy led—at least I assumed the pretty one was the father—then made a sharp turn at the edge of some bullrushes. The entire raft uniformly turned at exactly the same spot, though the third mallard in the string waggled his tail feathers at the apex of the curve.
Seems even duck families have their Biggs.
They should leave before the wind turns frigid and the pond ices over.
I slid my hand into my pocket. The small glass bottle resting inside it had already been heated to my body temperature. What if my mate was wrong? What if the contents sent Lexi into a final sleep, not just a coma?
Trowbridge whispered in my ear, “They’re coming.”
Harry nodded and picked up the stick he’d leaned against a nearby tree. “I’ll be off to the cemetery to wrangle a ghost, then.” When I’d voiced a concern that Casperella might try to snatch some of my magic from the air, he said, “Ghosts don’t scare me. I’ll take care of it.”
I watched him leave, his spine erect, his long white silver hair strangely riveting in the dying light. Though—perhaps not so strange. We instinctively search for light in the gathering dark, don’t we?
Make it be over soon. The air in my chest stayed there—heavy and hurting—until I saw that first flash of my brother’s light gray shirt through the dark shadows of the pines.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Lexi had to have known the pack was waiting for him long before he stepped into the clearing. His nose would have warned him. But smelling danger and seeing it are two very different things.
He entered the clearing with a bit of a fanfare, stumbling into Biggs’s back hard enough to send the smaller Were tripping into a shrub. Whether Lexi meant to do that or it was a consequence of the fact that his hands were tied behind his back and the symptoms of his withdrawal had turned his balance to crap, I couldn’t be sure.
But still, his feet faltered as he saw the gathered pack.
Perhaps he’d forgotten how many of them there were.
I knew what that felt like. Walking into a field with your arms pinned behind your back, smelling the pack’s excitement and the pond. Hearing those murmurs drop to hushed anticipation.
The Stronghold in me resented the ropes, but I couldn’t completely blame Biggs. His upper lip was swollen and that shirt he loved so much was never going to be wearable again.
Score one for my brother, I thought.
He looked so foreign and Fae, with his high boots and his tight pants.
One of the pack escorts gave my brother’s back a hard, motivational push that sent Lexi staggering for a few steps. But ever graceful—yet another gene he’d swiped from me in the great placenta divide—he grimly turned what could have been a face-planting sprawl into a dancer’s run.
His gaze bounced from the pack, to me and Trowbridge, then to the small path beyond us—the one that led down the Trowbridge ridge to the pond and then wound back up to the Stronghold property. That he gave brief consideration.
A bead of sweat rolled down my back.
Finally, he was before us. Sandwiched between two of the taller pack guys, with Biggs in the rear. The setting sun made the wolf tattooed above his ear seem almost alive.
Lexi didn’t look at the Alpha of Creemore. Just at me.
His brows rose in a silent question.
I should have said something soothing along the lines of “it will be all right.” But I—that girl who could spin a lie faster than the truth—came up empty. Treachery had formed a knot in the middle of my throat and I couldn’t push a word past it. So, I gave him my very best I’m-no-betrayer smile instead.
But we were twins.
Lexi’s expression turned to stone. My eyes burned as he took a deep breath and lifted his chin—exactly the way he had back in grade two when Sean Edwards had called him the son of a whore. “Am I on trial?” he drawled. “Or is this my execution?”
I can’t do this.
“Neither, Shadow,” said Trowbridge truthfully.
“So you’re full pack now, Hell?” Three dark vees of sweat soaked Lexi’s shirt—one for each armpit and another below his pecs. “Do you have a leash hanging from a hook somewhere?”
“She is your sister and my mate,” Trowbridge grated. “Show her your respect.”
My twin shook his head with slow insult. “All I see is a wolf’s bitch.”
Trowbridge’s fist caught Lexi’s chin hard enough to snap my twin’s head back. But my twin was a Stronghold, too, wasn’t he? Again, he didn’t fall—probably because he must have counted on a blow coming his way the instant he used the B-word and, accordingly, had braced himself. An appalled hush came from the spectators as Lexi shook his head like a boxer.
Then, in an impressive display of insolence, my brother rolled his neck and firmed his mouth. I read the intent behind his glittering eyes.
“Don’t, Lexi!” I said in a low voice. “Don’t force him to hurt you.”
Blood welled from Lexi’s split lip. “Still the mouse afraid of a raised fist, Hell?”
Hedi, the mouse-hearted.
Hedi, the betrayer.
“Idiot. You were brought here to summon the portal.” I forced that stiff smile back on my liar’s face. “Not to die.”
My twin’s mask fell. Very, very briefly. Almost immediately he covered up his response with an overlay of gloating triumph, but I saw quick unguarded reaction and for once—Karma still had her claws in at that point—I could read a facial expression without having to consult a manual to figure out what it meant.
Restored faith. That’s what I saw.
“You did it,” he said in the softest whisper. “You talked him into letting me go.”
I gave him a dumb nod for which he favored me with a large smile—one of his real ones—too wide, white teeth gleaming. “Are you coming with me?”
“No, she’s not,” said Trowbridge.
Lexi’s gaze clung to mine for another beat or two then he nodded. “That’s all right,” he said. Just like he did the afternoon I didn’t want to try using that flimsy rope to swing over the pond. “I’m going to have to move fast once I go through the other side, anyhow. You never were that good in a footrace, Hell.”
You won’t be running when you get to other side, brother-mine. You’ll be shambling on your feet. Tossing your head in agony.
I can’t do this.
Misreading my expression, my twin gave me a quick grin. “Don’t worry, runt. I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve. I’ll get through.”
I searched his face. “You’re sure?”
“Do you think I’d
have come here without a backup plan?” He looked around. “Where’s my bag?”
Cordelia held it up by the straps. “I have it.”
My twin stared at it then gave me a frustrated smile. “You’re going to have to tell them to undo these ropes. I can’t go through the passage tied up.”
Trowbridge answered for me. “You lose those after you call the gates.”
“Alpha to the end, Son of Lukynae?” mocked Lexi.
“Mate to the end, Shadow,” replied Trowbridge.
I wanted to cry again but I figured I hadn’t earned the right.
See it through.
Then cry.
* * *
The pack remained wary of the woo-woo. They’d moved back in the clearing—far enough that they could scoot into the woods if any Fae came slithering through the gates when we called them. But close enough to watch.
To stare.
Back at the house, when all this had been theory and planning, I’d told Trowbridge that I’d need a minute or two for just me and Lexi.
“He’ll be easier to handle that way,” I’d said.
A few moments ago, Trowbridge had taken my silent cue. As had Cordelia and Biggs, who’d taken a few steps back.
So here we were. Ninety seconds and counting for alone-time. And I had thought the right words for good-bye would come to me. My twin and I stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing at my trailer on the opposite ridge. From the Trowbridge property it really did look like a silver bug.
“Tell them to tow it away,” he said. “Mum would have hated it.”
“I will.”
He tapped his toe, once, twice. “I was beginning to think you were going to leave me there in that room … I thought…” His voice drifted off and he shrugged. “Never mind what I thought. In the end, you came through.” Then he gave me a rogue’s wink. “For you, runt, I’m giving a one-time, special performance.”
Lexi’s long fall of hair rippled down his back as he tilted back his head and closed his eyes.
I don’t think I can stand to listen to him sing—not like this.
Back when we’d been very small, Lexi had liked singing. Little tunes as he waited for his turn at the sink. Small little-boy ditties as he helped shell the peas. His voice had been girlish high. Fluting even. But when we hit school, one of our classmates had chosen the purity of his tone as a good tool for mockery and had hit him over the head with it, over and over again. “Celine Dion”—that’s what the boys of St. Hubert of Liege called my brother.
I never heard him sing again. Yeah, I’d listened to him making ch-ch-ch sounds for guns in his bedroom. I’d rolled my eyes as he hummed to pop songs played on the car radio. But after Brad Mosbergen taunted him in the halls after Miss Fitzgerald’s Christmas pageant, he’d never truly sung again. Not once.
And now I knew why he refused.
His true singing voice had never really broken. It was still pure and high as a choirboy’s. A clean falsetto. No slur, no funny trills. It was as if the sweetness of my brother had been distilled and saved for song. Kept shielded from all the ugly, completely untainted.
Does the portal retain the essence of those trapped Fae souls? Do they hear the music? Appreciate it? Value one voice over another? I’m not sure. All I know is that it took my aunt Lou over five minutes to lure the portal to her call and it only took my brother a few bars of song. Almost immediately, Fae magic started sweetening the soup of pond smells. As his voice rose, the air began to swirl over the pond, clockwise. Next the myst began to show, pink-white, at first, then circling, circling. My brother sang all the way to the end—even that high and hard bit—eyes closed, head thrown back, and as he did, I saw the Weres straining to listen.
It was utterly beautiful.
When Lexi finished, the portal floated in midair some six feet below the crumbling edge of the ridge. Merenwyn beckoned through its hobbit-round window.
“I’ll love you forever, Lexi,” I said, staring at it. “Don’t ever forget that, okay?”
“Hey.” He gave me a shoulder bump. “Don’t get all sentimental on me. It’s a portal. I can come back.” Green eyes, two shades darker than mine. Winning and for once guileless. Bloodshot, though. “Matter of fact, I will come back. To check on—” His head rotated. “I can’t find her among them. Is she here?”
“No,” I said. “We thought it best Anu stayed low for a bit.”
Another lie. Anu had wanted to come and I’d put my foot down. She may not have known that Lexi was her father but I did.
That piece of information hit him hard—why, I couldn’t fathom. He’d barely looked at her. Never publicly claimed her. But the fact that she wasn’t there, watching him cross the portal? It hurt him. I could read his deep unhappiness by the very fact that his expression grew shuttered and remote.
Lexi, you complicated man. “Can I tell her about you later?”
A tiny shoulder lift as he gazed at Merenwyn. “I don’t know what you’d say.”
That once you were a good brother and a loved son.
“It’s time for me to go,” he said. “Which of the amulets do I get?”
“Someone needs to cut these ropes off my brother,” I said sharply.
A pause. Then I heard Trowbridge say, “Do it.”
Lexi slanted his head as Biggs came up behind him with a knife. “Easy, little guy,” he said insouciantly. “Don’t pinch.” When the knots were sliced and Biggs had stepped away, Lexi flexed his hands. He gave me his big-brother look, ruined somewhat by the fact that his face was a sheen of sweat and a nerve was tugging at the corner of his eye.
Give me strength, Goddess, so I can do what must be done.
“I’ll be back,” he lied.
I opened my mouth because it was time—hell, it was beyond time. The second hand was sweeping us toward the point of no return. Once that line was crossed? Even if I won—the Book of Spells destroyed, the Old Mage bested, my brother’s soul restored—I was going to lose.
Trust is an exquisitely valued thing to someone who’s had near every particle of it wrung from them. If you break it? There’s nothing left.
Suddenly, my brother said in a hard, flat voice, “I became a father because I was piss drunk.”
“What?”
“Listen, okay?” He swallowed, hard, giving me his profile. “I’d been taking potion all night and had topped that off with several glasses of mead. I’d left the table—just to get some air—because I’d suddenly felt like…” He knuckled the blood from his lip, his gaze downcast and unseeing. “Sometimes it was hard to breathe in that room. On the way out, I stopped to let a Kuskador servant refill my cup because I was out of the juice.”
“You don’t have to tell me this,” I said, reaching for him.
He twisted away from my touch. “I only want to say this once, so listen. My mage was making a toast—he’s always such an asshole with the toasts, they go on forever—and … I’m a good mimic, do you remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
“That’s what did it. I mimicked the Black Mage.” My twin shook his head, his face bleak. “The timing couldn’t have been worse. The room had fallen quiet and everyone heard me. They were still laughing as I was being dragged by my heels out of the Great Hall.”
Absently, he went to push back his hat. But it was missing, like his natty suspenders—both stripped from him before he’d been locked in the room in the basement. Instead he raked his fingers through his hair, from brow to nape, roughly twisting its length into a golden tail that he pulled over his shoulder.
His fist dropped. Tapped against his thigh twice.
“I spent a few days in prison. Then I was brought to the Spectacle field and thrown into the pen with the Kuskador servant who’d served me the wine.”
Lexi inside that pen, with the wolves in the field.
“I’d lived in the Royal Court long enough to forget that I really didn’t belong there,” he said. “You start believing that as long you’r
e careful and smarter than most of them … But that night I looked up at the spectators and saw the women I’d slept with, and the men I’d gamed with, making bets on how long I’d last.”
All expression left his face. “They’d given the Kuskador her ration of sun potion—so she couldn’t change—but hadn’t given me a drop in four days. I changed to my beast, half crazed from withdrawal, contained in that cage with no one but a small, terrified girl to fight me off…”
My hand went to my mouth.
“After my appetite had been satisfied, they dropped the sides of the pen and the Raha’ells moved in. You know what saved me? I flared. For the first time in my miserable existence, I flared.” His shoulders lifted in a huff of disbelief. “Saved by the Raha’ells’ prophecy—that one day the Son of Lukynae would come for them and they’d know him by his flare. I ended up fucking one of their bitches right under the viewing stand, a few feet from all my fine royal friends.”
“Was that Anu’s mother?”
“Yes, that was her mother,” he replied. “The Black Mage ‘forgave’ me the next day though he gave me something to remember my ‘error.’”
A paw print, forever inked upon his skin.
“When I found out that the Raha’ell carried my seed, I went down to the birthing stalls to kill her. But I was a day late. The bitch had whelped my by-blow the night before and died early that morning. The baby still lived … She had your eyes, Hell.” A muscle flexed in his cheek. “No one has eyes like yours—so clear.”
His chest lifted as he drew in a long, slow breath.
“Anyhow, you tell her what you want from that.”
My twin pursed his lips as he stared at the shimmering gates to the world he’d so recently left. “Now give me some of your magic, Hell. I’ll bring it closer.”
My hand tightened on the glass bottle.
“Let me,” said Trowbridge, moving to my side.
Hedi, the mouse-hearted.
I clenched my teeth and shook my head. “No.” That was part of the deal—I’d told Trowbridge that if I were the one who passed Lexi the potion, I’d look more badass to the pack. And if my mate smelled my lie, he chose not to call me on it in front of the others.