Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Lambert
“Hey, man, did you see Leo?” I ask Aaron.
I followed my brother outside, but he’s not with the group smoking by the main door.
The older man puffs out a stream of herbal smoke from beneath his umbrella and jerks his head to the left. “Went that way, looking green around the gills.” He takes another drag from the spliff. “Pah. Back in my day, an ó Rinn could’ve drunk all of us under the table.”
“Thanks.” I tug my hood up—because the rain is murder on my hair—and head left around the main keep, squinting down the dark, narrow path between the castle and the outer wall. “Leo? You back here?”
Silence.
Did I miss him?
I grab a scrap, summoning a wisplight, only to grimace and flick it away as my pale-ass brother throws up his hands like a vampire hiding from the sun.
“Sorry, dude.”
Leo lowers his hands, but he’s still on his ass in the dirt, leaning against the castle wall despite the damp clinging to the stones from the rain. His posture is so hunched that I’d have to be an idiot to misread how he’s silently screaming at me to go away.
But there are shiny tear tracks under his eyes, and I’m not enough of an asshole that I’m just gonna leave my bro here to cry in a dark, rainy alley.
I’m not sitting in a puddle, though.
“Come on. You don’t want to sit down there.” I offer him my free hand.
He stares at it, a fresh wave of tears falling.
“I was a fecking asshole to you,” he says, like I’ve somehow forgotten.
“Yeah.”
“You told me to stay away.”
“I’ll let you hold my hand for good behaviour,” I quip.
Leo shakes his head, apparently mute, and I sigh, grabbing his arm and pulling him up instead.
“C’mon, dude, the ground is wet.”
“She finished all of them,” he mumbles. “I hurt her, really hurt her, and she finished every last one, anyway.”
“Yep.”
“And now she won’t want anything to do with me.”
“Possibly.” I tug him towards the light, but he’s dead weight. “Let’s get you inside. You can sleep this off.”
“I thought she was wearing his collar.”
I cock my head at that. “What? Oh, you mean Dakari’s necklace? I mean, yeah, I don’t think it’s a kinky thing, but good for them if it is, I guess?”
Our girl deserves all the love in the world. If they’re making things official, that means I’ve got the green light to go shopping. The others seem to have decided that her colours are silver-toned metals and blue gems. Wait. Maybe I won’t have to go shopping? My gram’s ring is blue.
Last time I proposed, she thought I was kidding. Maybe that was because I conjured something too flashy? I thought three carats was a good idea, but it probably was a bit cheesy. If I give her Gram’s, it’s meaningful and sentimental and all the things she secretly melts for. It’s perfect.
“Should’ve been my collar,” Leo slurs, dragging my mind away from where I last saw my future wife’s engagement ring. “But I had to feck it up.”
“She has enough neck to wear two if she wants them,” I point out, rolling my eyes. “But maybe hold off on that for a bit. I’m pretty sure she’d garrotte you with it if you gave it to her right now. For good reason.”
“Where’s the line?” he asks. “I want to respect her choices, but I’m this close to throwing myself at her feet every morning and begging her to let me back in. Which one am I supposed to do?”
He’s asking me?
“This is your mess.”
He pulls his arm away. “Yeah.”
Aww, fuck. “You’re pathetic.”
He lets out a deep, resigned sigh. “Yeah…”
“I lost a game because of you.” It seems a little petty, but that might end up being the last game I ever get to play now that the shit has hit the fan, and I lost because he dropped the brother bomb right before it started. “My stats tanked.”
His eyes drop to the ground. “I know. And you were benched for missing the last match.”
I wince. I’ve been keeping that quiet, not wanting Kyrith to worry about it.
None of the others have said anything. It’s probably slipped their minds that I’m supposed to be training and going to games.
I’ve snuck out with North once or twice to practice, but my focus is on my girl.
It’s not fair to Coach or the team to pretend otherwise.
I shouldn’t be surprised Leo noticed. He’s always kept a close eye on magiball. Before I knew he was my brother, I assumed it was because he was a secret fan.
With an eye roll at my past self for being so oblivious, I reach over and draw him into a massive, crushing hug.
Instead of shoving me off and continuing his pity party in the rain like I expect him to, he just…breaks.
The ragged rise and fall of his shoulders is the only sign that he’s sobbing.
“It’s okay, you cry this out,” I tell him. “And then we’ll work on the plan.”
“Plan?” He lifts his head, and I shake mine at the confusion there.
“You’ve made a solid start, but you’ve got to put in a bit more work, no offence.”
Drunk-and-depressed Leo is definitely not Kyrith’s type. A lot of girls do have a soft spot for sad boys, but I just don’t see her being one of them.
He rubs his red eyes, pulling back. “Shite. The magister exam is tomorrow. I drank too much.”
“Really? I would never have guessed.” I pinch my brow. “Hold on a second.” The scraps for sobriety and curing a hangover are tucked into the back of my grimoire. I was saving them for Kyrith, but Pierce is taking care of her.
I hand Leo both. “There. You can sleep the last of it off while I figure out how you’re going to fix your relationship with Dakari.”
Leo scrunches his face up, and I take that opportunity to grab his arm and resume steering him out of the rain. “I don’t love Dakari.”
“If you want to prove to Kyrith that you’ve changed, you’re going to have to bury the hatchet.”
“He threw me off the wall last time I tried to apologise.”
“Expressing emotions is healthy, and you lived.”
Leo staggers through the door after me, muttering, “Barely.”
“You used their relationship against her.”
His shoulders drop. “Yeah. I was a prat.” He rubs his eyes, tripping over his own feet as we trudge up the stairs. “I… I was terrified, and she saw it and called me out on my shite. So, instead of stopping, I went out of my way to be worse.”
We reach our landing, but I pause on the top step, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “Is that why you went to Mathias?”
Leo huffs out a breath. “Maybe subconsciously. But I’m not going to lie and pretend I saw it that way at the time.”
I release him. I can work with that kind of honesty. “If you manage to get Dakari to tolerate you, prove to everyone that you’ve pulled your head out of your ass, and she still doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, then you have to let her go.”
He slumps against his door, glancing longingly down the hallway to Kyrith’s room. “Why are you helping me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was an absolute arse to you. Why would you help me get her back?”
I snort. “I’m still upset, don’t get me wrong, but I’m helping you because you’re my brother, and I believe you genuinely want to make up for what you did.
But I’m not helping you win Kyrith back.
You can’t.” His eyes slide closed, and I sigh.
“What you can do is put your life back together so that if our girl decides to fall in love with the new you, then you’re worthy of her.
If she doesn’t, then you’ve got the support you need to move on and not repeat those mistakes with the next girl. ”
Leo shakes his head, twisting the door handle. “There is no next girl. She’s it for me.”
I want to contradict him, but unfortunately, I understand him all too well.
Kyrith is it for me, too.