37. Draven
37
DRAVEN
The blue light wraps around me like a shroud, familiar as death itself. Of course, my tunnel would feel like this. Cold, precise, inevitable. Everything I am.
My power, usually as controlled as a perfectly tuned instrument, fluctuates wildly. It’s unsettling, but I refuse to let it show. Old habits die hard, and showing weakness has never been an option. Not in Hell, not on Earth, and certainly not now, wherever the fuck dimension we are in now.
“Always so composed,” my dad’s voice echoes around me. But it’s wrong somehow. Hollow. “Always so careful to be perfect. Tell me, son, what happens when you can’t maintain that control?”
The blue light shifts, forming shapes that coalesce into memories. I see myself as a child in Hell, watching Luc play with our mother while I stand apart, spine straight, face blank. Always apart.
“You’re trying to make me feel isolated,” I say coolly. “Rather pedestrian, don’t you think, Devlin?”
The shadows laugh. “Resorting to my name instead of Dad. Typical you. So closed off. So unable to feel or connect. So tell me, Draven, am I trying to make you feel isolated? Or are you doing that to yourself, just like you always have?”
The scene changes. Luc and I as teenagers, his fire wild and free while my power flows in careful, measured streams. Always controlling. Always holding back.
“Because the alternative was chaos,” I respond, but something uncomfortable stirs in my chest. “Because someone had to be responsible. Luc was and always has been the wildcard.”
“Responsible,” the voice mocks. “Is that what you call it? Or were you just afraid?”
The memories shift again, forcing me to see Luc’s reckless decisions and the constant cleaning up after him that I had to do. But this time, I see something else: the joy on his face when he lets go, the easy way he draws people to him, how even our mother’s stern features soften when he laughs.
“I wasn’t afraid,” I say, but the words taste false. “I was practical. Someone had to be.”
“Did they? Why you? He wasn’t your responsibility. He is your brother.”
“Half-brother,” I correct.
“ Brother ,” Devlin snaps. “You know your mother hates it when you do that.”
Another scene forms before I can reply.
Luc is surrounded by friends in Hell while I stand in my father’s study, practising necromancy with precise, perfect movements. Surrounded by the dead.
“Did you hide behind duty because you couldn’t bear to admit you envied him?”
“Fuck right off,” I growl in my Irish accent that I’ve practised, controlled, and forced when everyone around me was speaking differently in a nod to my father’s roots, even if he forgot.
“You are a liar,” Devlin tuts as more memories rise.
Luc, failing spectacularly but getting back up, grinning through bloody teeth. Luc, breaking every rule but somehow making it work. Luc, living while I just existed.
“He was reckless,” I say through gritted teeth. “Dangerous. Someone had to maintain control.”
“Control,” the voice ripples through the blue light. “Such a convenient shield. Tell me, perfect son, master Necromancer, when was the last time you actually felt anything?”
The scene before me changes to something recent, seeing Matilda on the side of the road, of talking to her, fucking her. I see myself watching Matilda interact with Luc, their easy banter, the way something in my chest tightens when she laughs at his jokes.
“Enough,” I snap, but my power pulses erratically, responding to emotions I’ve spent years burying.
“Ah, now we reach the truth,” the voice whispers as the blue light dims. And suddenly, I’m not alone.
They rise from the ground like mist. Translucent faces, empty eyes, obedient and utterly devoid of life. My constant companions. My perfect, silent army.
“These are your true friends, aren’t they?” The voice feels colder now. “The dead don’t disappoint. The dead don’t feel. The dead don’t leave.”
I watch as they move around me in their eternal dance. Each one evidence of my mastery, my control. Each one as empty as I’ve made myself.
“They serve their purpose,” I say, but the words echo hollowly in the tunnel.
“Do they? Or do they serve as an excuse?”
“The dead are reliable,” I argue, but even I can hear the defensiveness in my tone. “They don’t require maintenance.”
“Or connection? Emotion? Life? Is that why you chose them over your brother? Because seeing him live was too… what?”
“I didn’t abandon him!”
“Who said you did?”
I stop, floored by the words that tumbled out of my mouth. “I didn’t abandon him,” I say tightly. “He abandoned me.”
“Ah, so now the truth swirls around you like dust motes in the air.”
The spirits swirl around me faster now, a whirlwind of empty faces and vacant eyes. Each one a choice I made. Each one a wall I built.
“I am a Necromancer,” I say firmly. “This is my blood.”
“Is it your blood? Or your hiding place?”
Devlin steps out into the light, and I stare at him. I look almost exactly like him. Everything about me is like him, except the way he lives and loves.
“Can’t it be both?” I ask him.
“It can. But you can’t keep blaming Luc, Dray. This was your choice.”
“He made a choice as well,” I argue.
Devlin sighs and gives me a death stare. “So what if he did? This is about you and your life. Forget him for a sec. Think about your choices.”
The dead swirl faster around us, their empty faces a mirror of what I’ve become. Each one representing a moment I chose control over connection, perfection over living.
“I chose what was expected of me,” I say, but the words sound weak.
“Did you?” Devlin asks, his eyes boring into mine. “Or did you choose what was safe? What couldn’t hurt you?”
I watch the spirits dance their macabre waltz, remembering each time I raised them. Each perfect incantation. Each flawless ritual. Each moment, I told myself this was enough.
“You gave me this power,” I remind him.
“I gave you the ability,” he corrects. “You chose to make it your entire existence.”
The blue light pulses and I see myself through the years. Always perfect, always controlled, always alone. Even with Matilda, I keep that wall up. Even in pleasure with her, I maintain distance.
“What do you want from me?” I demand. “To admit I’m fucked up? That I’m jealous of my brother? That I’m?—”
“Scared,” Devlin finishes softly. “That you’re scared, Dray.”
The word hits me like a fist to the face. The dead pause in their dance, suspended in the blue light like frozen moments of my own isolation.
“I’m not…” I start, but for once, I can’t maintain the lie. “Fuck.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Devlin says, and he sounds more like my dad than some figment of my imagination. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know how to be different,” I admit, the words tasting foreign on my tongue. “This is who I am.”
“Is it?” Devlin steps closer, and the dead part around him like water. “Or is this who you trained yourself to be? You feel more than you admit. You want more than you allow yourself to have.”
“Wanting isn’t having,” I snap, but even as I say it, I realise how childish it sounds.
“No,” he agrees. “But neither is hiding. You’re so afraid of being hurt that you’ve stopped living altogether. Your brother isn’t your enemy, Draven. Your fear is.”
The dead swirl faster, their faces morphing into all the moments I chose not to feel, not to connect, not to risk.
“And what if I change?” I ask, hating the vulnerability in my voice. “What if I let go of this control and everything falls apart?”
“So what?”
I look at my hands, blue energy crackling between my fingers. “The dead are easier.”
“Easier isn’t better, Dray. And you know it.”
I let myself feel how tired I am of carrying it. “I don’t know how to be any other way,” I whisper, still resisting. Something doesn’t feel right about this.
“You will lose her if you don’t admit what you are.”
The sly tone snaps me to attention, and I remember this isn’t my dad. This is some fucked up illusion that is trying to make me weak. Too weak to be with Matilda. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I won’t be weak.”
“You don’t know how to be anything else.”
“You fucking bastard,” I snarl. “You’re trying to get me to admit that I’m weak. No, I can give you the rest. I am closed off. The dead are safer. But Matilda is worth more than all of that. I won’t be weak, but I can still give her what she wants.”
“Says who?”
“Me,” I growl and throw a beam of death straight at him.
As expected, it goes straight through him, but the light grows brighter in the tunnel, and I grimace. “Fucking prick,” I mutter as I move forward, pissed off that the truth about why I hate Luc has been revealed. He will never know. I couldn’t stand it if he knew. This is my secret, and that’s final.