Kovren #2
Maren's hands press harder. I can see the toll it's taking. Her shoulders are shaking. Her color is wrong, too pale, and I remember Mother Sanque's warning. Fatigue. Disorientation. Cold. Don't push past your limits.
“Rodvek.” Her voice is quiet now, addressed to the creature in front of her, not to me. “The children you saved. They escaped. All of them. Your oath was fulfilled long ago. You just didn't know.”
The creature shudders. The metal plates on his skin grind against each other, and the keening sound grows louder, higher.
“You held the line,” she says. “They got out. Every single one of them. You did what you swore to do.”
“LIES.” The grinding voice. But weaker. The gold in his eyes is flickering.
“Not lies.” Maren's voice doesn't waver. “Your brother has been looking for you for all this time. Not to kill you. To tell you this. To tell you it's done. Your oath is paid.”
The creature's hands come up. Not to strike.
To grip. His massive fingers close around Maren's forearms and I'm moving, I'm halfway across the hall before I see her face hasn't changed.
She's not in pain. She's holding still, letting him grip her, letting the anchor push through her hands and into him.
“Let it go,” she says. “The oath is done. The rage doesn't have anything to hold onto. Let it go, Rodvek.”
He screams again. But the sound is different this time. Not rage. Grief. A howl that fills the ruined hall and shakes the Oath Brothers statue and breaks something in me that has been locked tight since that night.
The gold in his eyes sputters. Flickers. And underneath it, amber.
Maren's hands are white where she grips him. She's shaking hard now, her legs unsteady, and I can feel through the bond what it's costing her. The anchor is pulling from her, draining warmth and strength, and she is not letting go.
“Maren.” My voice cracks. “That's enough.”
“Not yet.” She presses harder. “He's almost here. Rodvek. Come back. The way Kovren comes back. Come back.”
The armor plates on Rodvek's body are shifting. Moving. The fused metal is separating from his skin, peeling away in sheets that fall to the stone floor with a ringing that fills the hall. Underneath, skin. Bronze and rough, the same texture as mine. Scarred, damaged, but skin.
His face emerges last. The metal mask cracks down the center and falls in two pieces, and underneath is a face I know. Sharp features, hollowed by years and rage, but his. Rodvek's. The eyes are amber now, not gold, and they are looking at me.
“Kovren.” His voice. Not the grinding metal. His. Rough and broken and his. “Brother.”
I cross the hall in three strides. Maren steps aside, stumbling, and I catch her with one arm and reach for Rodvek with the other.
He's smaller than the creature was. Still massive, still Bogatyr, but the twisted proportions are gone, the monstrous bulk shed with the armor. He's thinner than I remember.
He falls.
I catch him. Lower him to the stone floor, his weight against my chest, my arm around his shoulders. Maren drops to her knees beside us, her hands already moving, checking his pulse, his breathing, the places where the armor tore free from his skin.
“The children,” Rodvek says. His eyes are searching my face. “She said they escaped.”
“All of them. Every one. You held the line long enough.”
His face crumples. Not the berserker's rage. A man's grief. Eight years of it, trapped behind the fury, breaking free at once.
“I thought I failed.” The words come out barely audible. “I thought they all died. The rage told me they died and I couldn't stop believing it.”
“The rage lied.” I hold him tighter. “You did it, Rodvek. You saved them.”
He makes a sound. A breath that carries everything in it. His hand comes up, grips my forearm, and the grip is weak. He's fading. Not dying. Releasing. The oath that kept him alive, kept the rage burning, is dissolving now that it knows it was fulfilled.
“You found an anchor.” He's looking at Maren. His eyes are clear. “I can feel it. The bond. It's strong.”
“She found me,” I say.
“Good.” His grip on my arm loosens. “That's good, brother.”
“Rodvek.”
“It doesn't hurt.” He looks up at the open sky above the ruined hall, the stars just visible through the broken roof. “I thought it would hurt. But it doesn't.”
“Stay.” My voice breaks. “Rodvek. Stay.”
“I can't. You know I can't.” He turns his head, finds my face again. “The oath is paid. The rage is gone. There's nothing holding me here.”
“I'm holding you here.”
“You're letting me go.” His hand tightens once on my arm. Brief. Strong. “The way I should have let you go when you wanted to save that village. I should have let you go and come with you.”
“Don't.”
“Goodbye, Kovren.” His voice is steady. Clearer than it's been since the armor fell. “Take care of your anchor. She walked straight at me and didn't flinch. Don't let that one go.”
“I won't.”
“And learn to make tea properly. I never could. At least one of us should know how.”
The sound that comes out of me is not a laugh. It's too broken for that. But it's close.
His eyes close. His body relaxes against mine. His breathing slows, each exhale longer than the last, until there's nothing but stillness and the press of his body against mine.
My brother is dead.
I hold him.
Maren's hand is on my back. I feel her pulse through the bond, close and warm, and her other hand is on my arm.
She is here, she is here, and the berserker is nowhere.
I hold my brother's body in a ruined hall under a broken sky and I break.
Not the berserker's breaking. Not rage. Just grief.
The grief comes and I let it come because she is beside me and the bond holds and I am just a man holding his dead brother and crying.
Maren doesn't speak. She wraps her arms around me from behind, her face pressed against my back, her hands gripping my shirt. She holds on while the grief moves through me and she doesn't let go.
The fire burns down. The stars turn overhead through the broken roof.
She holds on.