38. Brothers Never Abandon Each Other
38. brOTHERS NEVER ABANDON EACH OTHER
ELOWYN
I sank against Rush’s chest, allowing the heat of the bathtub’s water to soothe my aching body. A healer had attended to the puncture wound in my calf; everything else was scrapes and bruises. The healer could have also erased those—a course he’d insisted on. As the new queen of the fae, I had to be strong and ready to lead them, he’d boldly insisted. He was right, of course. But innumerable fae had teetered on the narrow edge between life and death, and there were only so many healers to tend to them all.
The Hall of Mirrors hadn’t been the only battlefield. Bodies littered many other rooms and their connecting hallways throughout the palace, and beyond its walls, the forces that had come in our support had suffered high casualties. When Rush and I had retired to the rooms originally assigned to me, the bodies of the dead were being dragged out from even the tunnels hidden behind the walls. It would take hours to check the plethora of rooms and take proper stock of our losses—and of Talisa’s dead too, who after all were fae as much as the rest of us, just those who’d succumbed to her wicked machinations.
After our arrival at court at daybreak, while we’d fought, news of our attack—our grand, final stand—had continued to spread. Fae of all sorts had arrived to join us in vanquishing the darkness, and even now, with dawn about to shine on a new day, more still trickled in to assist. Where Talisa had endeavored to pit everyone against each other, in the short hours since her death a new sense of camaraderie and kinship was bonding those who would otherwise be strangers.
“You’re rubbing your chest again,” Rush said softly, close to my ear.
Since Ryder and Hiroshi had vanished into the mirrors, everything he did was either soft and morose, or hard and furious.
Rush’s thighs wrapped around mine, his fingertips absently tracing circles along my arms, much as he’d done when I’d returned so unexpectedly from the Sorumbra to compete in the Nuptialis Probatio—before Talisa had stopped bothering to keep to rules of her own making.
I allowed my hand to slide from the swell of my breasts to rest on his bent knee.
“Is it your … Kiss of Death scar?” he asked.
Even now, after all we’d been through together, he winced whenever he referred to the evidence that would never leave me of when he’d stabbed me through the heart to save me.
Languidly, I stirred the water with my other hand. “No, it’s not that. It’s…”
“Everyone we lost,” he supplied readily.
Even with his face behind me, I could too easily picture the exact shade of his sorrow; it had been swirling through his moonlit eyes the rest of the day and all night as we’d labored to rescue any who could be saved. Next came the work of saying farewell to the countless who’d died in the name of the Mirror World—in the name of the light. Grief and exhaustion had forced us to stop an hour ago, leaving most of the others to do the same, many claiming a bare patch of floor somewhere in the palace or on its grounds for a few hours’ rest.
“Yeah,” I eventually said, rubbing at my heart again though the ache didn’t go away. “It’s everyone we lost. I just … I can’t believe they’re gone.” I wasn’t sure whom exactly I was referencing this time when there were so many.
“Ry jumped in front of West ‘cause of Ramana,” Rush said in that same quiet, devastated timbre. “Because West just got her back, and Ry knew how much they love each other.”
I turned in his embrace to gaze up at him. His hair was shorn short. He, West, Roan, and even Reed had sliced off their hair to honor their dead brothers. In the way of the fae warrior, they’d used their fighting blades to mark their mourning. West, whose hair had already been short, had cut it even shorter.
Without his long, silver hair, the planes of Rush’s face were sharper, more severely masculine, though still hauntingly beautiful. His skin, like mine, shone continuously now, a permanent luminescence that shone like faint moonlight. It also swept through his eyes and along his skin whenever his tattoos flared, which was happening often with his emotions so raw.
His eyes met mine. He brushed a wet hand gently, almost reverently, along my cheek. His smile was so very deeply sad.
“And Hiro jumped in after Ry ‘cause we brothers never abandon each other.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
I reached up to run my fingers along the thin silver hair of his chest. “You know you didn’t abandon them, right?”
His brow furrowed; clouds obscured the moon in his eyes.
I prodded him with a finger. “You do know that, don’t you?”
Seconds passed before he shrugged. “I do.”
“It doesn’t sound like you do.”
He shrugged again and glanced toward the open door of the bathing chamber, which we’d left wide open to the bedroom and its windows. A diffuse light was brightening the chamber, suggesting the sun was rising beyond it .
“West didn’t go in after Ry or Hiro either,” I pointed out.
“That’s ‘cause he has Ramana to consider.”
I waited for a few seconds. When he didn’t add anything else, I said, “And you have not just me, but an entire realm that needs a whole lot of help to get back on its feet.”
“I know.”
“You still don’t sound like you do. Why’s it an okay excuse for West not to go in after them but not for you?”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “It’s not an ‘excuse.’ It’s a reason. You don’t know what West went through when Ramana supposedly died. It was awful.”
“I can imagine it all too easily.” My own throat bobbed. Since arriving in Embermere, practically my every lesson had been painful and hard-learned. “You suffered Ramana’s loss too. She’s his mate. But she’s your sister.”
I rubbed his chest over his heart, trying to ease his suffering though it hadn’t helped to do the same for mine. “Do you think there’s any chance Ryder and Hiroshi are still alive?” I’d been working up to ask the question since we’d lowered ourselves into the tub.
His lips pressed into a grim line. Finally, he shook his head, the short strands barely moving. “If they are alive, it’ll be in a world of Talisa’s making. Even if Braque’s the one who performed the spell, she would've been the one to direct its terms. If they’re not dead yet, it’s probably best that they die soon.” His voice squeezed, as if sorrow were strangling him. He sniffed. “Better that way.”
“That’s … awful.” Then, it was all so very awful, wasn’t it? We’d secured our victory, but its cost was too steep to bear. Even so, what other choice did we have? Surely no better one.
Rush’s eyes glistened, the twin moons glazing over like crystals. “If they find each other in there, they’ll soon take care of each other.”
My breath hitched; my finger stilled near one of his nipples. “You mean, they’ll kill each other?”
“Aye. If it’s all that’s left to do, better to free their essences so they can travel to the Etherlands. They can’t stay trapped where they are. Who knows what it’s like there? They might linger forever. No, better that they end it and start over, free of any of Talisa’s taint.”
“And you’re sure there’s no getting them out?” I’d already asked the question many times.
“Anyone with any kind of applicable power has examined the mirrors, even Ivar. There’s no way. Maybe there was before the dragons sealed them, but now there’s not.”
An automatic sorry slipped to the edge of my tongue, where I reined it back. I wouldn’t apologize for the dragons sealing the mirrors. We’d all be dead if the monsters had been allowed to keep coming at us.
Rush scrubbed at my cheekbone with his thumb, dunking it into the water to keep rubbing whatever spot clean. We’d had to empty the tub of water once already after all the gunk that had dirtied us .
I offered my own sad smile before turning back around to face forward. An artful, colorful mosaic of a brook meandering through a copse of trees covered much of one wall.
“So now what?”
Rush kicked his legs out straight, causing the water to ripple, and his cock to bob against the small of my back. “Now we sleep for a few hours. By then, the healers will have made their way through even the less urgent wounds, and everyone should be accounted for. We’ll have a complete picture of casualties and any with severe injuries. Then, maybe the dragons can help us incinerate the dead. That’ll speed things up a lot with so many dead.”
I dropped my hands to his thighs, running my fingers along his marked muscles. “I can’t help but think there was something more we could’ve done. Something that could’ve kept so many from dying.”
His arms wove around my shoulders, pressing me to his chest. “I keep wondering the same, but in the end…”
“In the end, what?”
“In the end, we did the best we could, didn’t we?”
I hesitated before nodding, my loose hair a dark cloud floating in the water around our limbs.
“Well then,” he said. “Our best is all we’ve got. So it’s gotta be enough.”
“It still doesn’t feel like enough.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
We sat like that, lost to our own thoughts for several minutes before he leaned forward to press a kiss to the crown of my head. “You were magnificent. You absolutely scared the shit out of me. I almost thought I lost you several times. Thank the Ethers and everything holy, you’re safe. You’re here.”
He pressed me hard to his chest, kissed my head again. “Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. We all owe our lives and our freedom to you.”
I hmm ed noncommittally.
“It’s true,” he added.
Eventually I said, “If it is, then I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”
“That’s ‘cause we’re mates.” What almost sounded like happiness sang through his declaration. “You and I, we’ll be together forever now.”
“You promise?”
His thighs and abdomen clenched behind me, and I knew he was remembering how he’d promised never to forget me, only to have Braque erase his memories of me that same day.
“ I promise ,” he growled—feral, fierce. “You’re mine. As I am yours.”
His cock stirred against me, and I found myself wondering if it was appropriate to make love so soon after such devastating losses.
“Elowyn Xiomara Ashira, queen of Embermere and steward of the Mirror World,” he said against my hair. “I fucking love you.”
A laugh bubbled up and out of me before I could wonder if such levity was allowed. “I fucking love you too, Rush Vega, king of Embermere, steward of the Mirror World, and drake of Amarantos.”
I spun in his arms to look up at him, my bare, wet skin sliding against his. “Wait. How’s that work? Are you still a drake if you’re a king or…?”
“I’m still a drake too.”
I’d glanced down to find his dick thickening and lengthening. Though grief still weighed me down, I waggled my brows at him. “So, those hours we’re supposed to sleep … are we allowed to do other things with them?”
The sorrow receded slightly from his gaze. “What kind of ideas do you have? Do tell, mate .”
After the horrors we’d endured, there couldn’t be anything wrong with making love , could there? With celebrating what blessings remained to us? Love was what this realm needed lots more of.
I bit my lip and smiled around it. “Well. I do have some fine ideas, since you asked. How ’bout you?—”
A loud thwak had Rush and I jackknifing to sitting, our heads whipping toward the open door while water sloshed onto the floor. My heart thundered. What now, for fuck’s sake? I thought the nightmare was over!
I didn’t make a sound, nor did Rush. Quietly, he snatched our blades from beside the tub where we’d left them within easy reach. He handed me mine.
Light footfalls sped toward us.
We got our feet under us, preparing to leap from the tub.
“Rush,” West’s voice called out. “You here? ”
Before Rush could answer, West bounded through the door to the bathroom. His stare alighted on us and our nudity for a quick second before he loped from the threshold, didn’t slow, and freaking jumped into the tub with us , splashing water everywhere.
“What the fuck, bro?” Rush exclaimed while he dragged me out of the way of his insane friend.
West’s extra short hair was unevenly cut—thanks to the knife he’d used for the job, no doubt—standing on end in differing heights. He was covered in all the blood and grime Rush and I’d just finished scrubbing off. With his fucking boots and breeches and weapons belt and all on, he danced in the water.
West danced .
He broke into a grin so wide and so bright it rivaled the sun as it crested the horizon.
“What is it?” Rush and I demanded.
Carefree in a way I’d never seen him before, not even after discovering Ramana alive, West wagged his hips and pumped his arms, which were weapon free.
Rush placed his dagger on the side of the tub. I didn’t yet release mine.
“Everyone who went into the mirrors,” West said. “They’re back. They’re fucking back .”
Rush stiffened all over, his dick at half mast, while he stared at his brother with wide, glowing eyes. His tattoos pulsed, the vines crawling all along his naked form.
“Ry and Hiro?” he barely breathed.
West stopped dancing to meet Rush’s stare. “They. Are. Back .” Then he splashed water up in the air as if he were a playful dragonling.
Water droplets raining down on us, Rush and I scrambled out of the tub, dragged on the nearest clothes—which happened to be our disgusting, discarded fighting leathers—without bothering to dry off, the wompa leather squeaking along our damp skin. Dripping wet and barefooted—but with a knife each and clutching our boots—we were running from my rooms and down the hall in moments, West right alongside us, skipping as we went.