Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
ROMULUS
I wake to the sensation of freezing.
Not the gentle drift from sleep to consciousness I’m used to—this is violent. Searing cold that burns through every nerve ending we share, followed by the nauseating sensation of weightlessness.
Where the hell are we?
I try to open my eyes—my eyes, the ones on the back of our head—but everything’s crystallized. Ice crusts my lashes. I force them open anyway and immediately wish I hadn’t.
Space. We’re in fucking space.
And Remus, that reckless idiot, is flying us toward—
I strain to see past the frozen edges of my vision. Creatures. Massive, glowing things heading toward the sun.
The Devourers.
Of course. Of course he’d do this. Launch himself into the void without a plan, without backup, without even waking me to strategize. Just pure chaotic impulse as always, and now we’re both going to die out here in the cold and dark because he can’t think past the immediate moment.
I try to seize control. Try to wrench us back toward Earth before it’s too late.
Nothing happens.
The vampire’s blood. He’s still riding the high from Vlad’s feeding, and it’s keeping him firmly in control even though by all rights, I should be able to override him by now.
Trapped. Again. As always.
I can only watch through crystallized eyes as our tail snaps off, as our wings begin to fail, as Remus’s consciousness grows fuzzy and dim.
This is it, then. This is how we die. Because my brother couldn’t resist playing hero for once in his miserable existence.
Except—
I feel something shift in him. Not surrender. Something else.
The sun’s warmth reaches us, and sensation floods back into our limbs. Our wings regenerate. And with the warmth comes something else—awareness. Clarity.
Remus isn’t just flailing around up here. He’s figured something out.
I watch—trapped in the passenger seat as always—as he flies straight into the first Devourer. For a moment I think he’s finally lost his mind completely, that the cold has addled his brain beyond repair.
But then the creature explodes from within, and I feel it. The power flooding through us. The way Remus instinctively understood his own nature—division, separation, destruction at the cellular level.
Holy shit.
He’s actually doing it. He’s actually winning.
One Devourer after another falls to him. And with each one, more power floods into us. Our body begins to glow, not just from the angel-spark in our chest but from everywhere. Eyes, fingers, the tips of our hair.
We’re absorbing their energy. Becoming something more than we were.
I can feel the godlike power settling into us, making us stronger, faster, more capable than we’ve ever been. More powerful than our brothers. More powerful than Father.
More powerful than anything.
And Remus controls it all.
I should be furious. This is everything I’ve ever wanted—the power to fix things, to impose order, to actually accomplish something meaningful—and it’s in the hands of the least responsible person who’s ever existed.
But I can also feel something else through our shared body. His thoughts, clearer now than they’ve ever been. His emotions.
He’s thinking of her. Of course he is.
I love you. You’ve made my pointless existence worth living.
He meant it when he said it to her. I can feel the truth of it burning through him brighter than the Devourer energy.
The last creature explodes, and we’re alone in space, glowing like a newborn star.
And then I feel it. The shift in his attention.
He’s turned inward. Toward me.
No. Not toward me.
Toward the neural pathways that connect us.
I can feel him seeing them now, mapped out in perfect clarity. Every synapse that makes me me. Every connection point between his consciousness and mine.
And I understand, with sudden cold certainty, what he’s about to do.
He’s going to cut me out.
The power surges. I feel the first incision like a knife through my thoughts.
Clean. Precise. Surgical.
He’s gotten better at this than I ever gave him credit for. Of course he has. Destruction is his nature, and he’s finally gained the power to destroy at the most fundamental level.
The second cut severs something deeper. I feel part of myself beginning to drift, untethered.
I should fight. Should rage against this violation, this murder.
But what’s the point?
I’ve always known this day would come. Known that eventually, his hatred of me would outweigh whatever practical need he had for my strategic thinking. And now he has the power to finally do what we’ve both wanted for millennia.
We’ve been at war since the moment of our creation. This is just the final battle.
The third cut. The fourth.
I’m slipping now. Fading. Parts of me that were solid and certain are becoming ephemeral, ghostlike.
This is what dying feels like, I realize. Not for the body—that will live on without me—but for consciousness itself.
I should be terrified. Furious.
Instead, I just feel... tired.
Tired of fighting. Tired of always being the responsible one, the one who cleans up messes, the one who imposes order on chaos only to watch it unravel again the moment I close my eyes.
Maybe he’s right to do this. Maybe the world—maybe she—is better off with just him.
The fifth cut. Sixth.
I can barely hold onto coherent thought now. Everything’s fragmenting, scattering like ash on the wind.
I think of Lo-Ren. Of the way she looked at us—at me—with something like understanding. Like she saw past the cold exterior to something worth keeping.
I think of how she’d demanded to be part of decisions that affected her. How she’d stood up to both of us when we tried to sideline her.
“Hey, no. What, are you two big men gonna go and decide the fate of the little woman without any input from me?”
I wish I could tell her I’m sorry. That I tried to be better than Father made me. That I—
The seventh cut severs something critical, and the world goes dark.
[start here, and reconnect a little of him thinking of her from backwards]
I don’t know how long I’m in the dark. Time has no meaning when you’re dying.
But somewhere in the void, I feel something change.
The cutting stops.
For a moment, nothing happens. I drift in the space between existence and nonexistence, neither alive nor dead.
And then—
Pain.
Searing, agonizing pain as something reconnects. Neural pathways rebuilding. Consciousness solidifying.
What the hell?
More pain. More connections snapping back into place like bones being reset.
He’s—
He’s healing me.
I surge back toward consciousness, fighting through the disorientation and pain.
What—
My thoughts are barely coherent, but Remus can obviously sense them because I feel his response, sharp and defensive.
Yeah, I was gonna destroy you. But I decided not to. So shut up and let me figure out how to get us home.
The last connections settle into place, and suddenly I’m fully conscious again. Aware. Alive.
He was going to kill me. He admitted it, and truth be told, I felt it. Felt myself dying.
And then he stopped.
Why?
I don’t say it out loud—can’t, in the vacuum of space—but he feels the question anyway.
For a long moment, he doesn’t answer. Just turns us back toward Earth and spreads our wings.
Then, so quietly I almost miss it:
Because she’d never forgive me. And I’d never forgive myself.
Something in my chest—in our chest—tightens.
All these millennia, I thought I knew my brother. Thought he was nothing but chaos and selfishness and destruction. Thought that given the choice, he’d always choose himself.
I was wrong.
The power still burns in us as we fly home. Godlike, world-shaking power. And it’s his to command.
But he didn’t use it to destroy me. To take what he wanted and damn the consequences.
He chose differently.
As we fly through space back toward Earth, back toward her, I make my own choice.
I could sabotage this. Even now, I could feel out the edges of control, find the weaknesses in his grip on the vampire’s blood, and seize the body for myself. Take this power and actually do something competent with it.
It would be so easy. He’s distracted, exhausted, probably doubting himself. I’ve spent millennia learning his patterns, his weaknesses. I could slide in right now and he’d never see it coming.
One shove and the power is mine. The body is mine. She is—
No.
I stop that thought before it can complete.
Because I can see what he’s seeing. Feel what he’s feeling.
Her, kneeling in that courtyard, praying. Praying for us. For him.
And the bastard’s praying too—to her memory, not for power. Not for glory or conquest or victory.
For her.
He risked everything for her. Flew into space, let himself nearly die, gained the power of a god—and then chose to share it rather than hoard it.
He chose connection over solitude.
And I—
And I—
Lauren’s face flashes in my eyes.
And I— I can choose cooperation over control.
My old pattern would be to wait until he’s vulnerable, then strike. Take over. Fix everything my way because obviously I know better.
But that pattern hasn’t worked for thousands of years. All it’s done is fuel the war between us.
What if—
What if I trusted him?
The thought is so alien it almost makes me laugh. Then groan. Trust Remus? The agent of chaos? The one who’s spent our entire existence undoing everything I try to build?
But he just saved the world. And then, he saved me. Well yes, he almost destroyed me. But he stopped. Remus never stops once he’s made a decision.
I could feel how badly he wanted it. Remus never turns back from what he wants. He never changes his mind or grows.
… Except he did.
Maybe it’s time I do the same.
I let go of the edges of control I’d been testing. Let myself settle back into the passenger seat. Not trapped this time.
Choosing to trust.
Thank you, I send the thought toward him, not sure if he can even feel it but needing to say it anyway.
I feel his surprise. His wariness.
And then, grudgingly, something that might be respect.
We fly home together, the power burning between us, both of us conscious and aware.
And for the first time in our endless existence, neither of us is fighting for control.
We’re just... flying.
Together.
It’s strange. Uncomfortable. I don’t entirely trust it—don’t entirely trust him not to change his mind tomorrow or next week or next century.
But I also don’t trust myself not to fall back into old patterns. To try to seize control the moment things get chaotic.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe trust isn’t about certainty. It’s about choosing cooperation even when control is within reach.
Even when you’re sure you could do it better alone.
Earth grows larger in our vision, the blue and white and green of home. Somewhere down there, she’s waiting. Hoping we survived.
We should probably figure out what to tell her, I think toward Remus.
The truth, he responds immediately. She’ll know if we lie.
Even about...
Especially about that.
He’s right. She’ll see right through any attempt to hide what happened out here. What we both chose.
And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe she deserves to know that we’re both trying. Both choosing differently than we were made to be.
As we enter the atmosphere, our body beginning to heat from re-entry, I feel something unexpected.
Hope.
Not certainty. Not confidence that this new pattern will stick.
Just hope that maybe, possibly, we might actually figure out how to do this.
How to share. How to cooperate. How to love the same woman without destroying each other in the process.
It’s not much.
But it’s a start.
And for the first time in millennia, I think that might actually be enough.