Chapter 50 Kane
G o to her.
Go to her.
We sit in silence.
Go to her. Go to her.
I normally thrive in silence.
Go to her. Go to her. Go to her.
But this isn’t true silence.
GO TO HER.
I grip the glass within my palm, focus upon the sensation, tilt it to the side and watch the amber liquid move.
GO TO HER.
I couldn’t remember the last time I truly possessed silence.
GO TO HER. GO TO HER.
That was a lie. I did remember. But that just made the voice scream even louder.
GO TO HER! GO TO HER! GO TO HER! GO TO HER! GO TO HER! GO TO HER!
We sit around the table, in silence. We haven’t spoken. We’ve barely spared a glance at one another. We’re all enduring our own battles.
We cannot.
I should never have tried to reason with it.
She is alone. Vulnerable. We need to go to her. We need to take her. We need to ma —
The voice is incessant. As is the pain.
My fingers tighten around the glass. I imagine the welcomed burn the liquid would bring but refuse to give myself the relief. I don’t deserve it.
I just endure it.
Go to her, now. Now. Go to her. Now. Now. NOW!
I just wait.
NOW! GO TO HER! GET HER! TAKE HER!
Wait for the silence to be fractured by Sai’s ridiculous remarks, or Julien’s wise words, or Ezekial’s calming commentary. But they all remain silent.
NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW!
But the voice is never silent. At least, not here. Not now. Not without…
We can fix this. We just need to go to her, now. We go to her, together. We need —
It’s changing tactics.
I place my glass down, the soft clink is the only sound in this abhorrent room as I peer across the table. As I try to distract myself from this agony.
Sai is barely with us, fluctuating between the realms because he cannot settle in either.
Julien stares into the void, I feel his darkness pulling at him as he resists the urge to feed. He starves himself.
Ezekial studies us all as he rubs his scar with his thumb and shakes his head.
It seems we’re all still battling our own demons.
Go to her, we need her, she’s ours, she belongs to us, she’s ours, go to her, take her, make her —
I tilt the glass between my fingers and watch the liquid move. I want to drink it. I want to feel the burn. Need to feel it.
But I don’t deserve it.
I don’t deserve anything.
I’m not worthy.
Worthless. You’re worthless. You’re weak. You don’t deserve her. You don’t deserve anyone.
“Don’t listen to it.” Ezekial. My half brother. The light bearer. The only good thing that our father ever spawned. “ Brother, it lies. You know it does.”
You’ll only taint her. Make her like us. Darken her light. Ruin her.
I stare into the liquid, swirl it between my fingers, inhale the sharp, medicinal scent.
“ Focus on the others.” His voice, the light it brings, smoothers the other. Makes the incessant provocations become a murmur, albeit one which still scratches insufferably. “ Help them, ground them, they need you. ”
His gaze is always so bright. Blinding. Eating away at the darkness that perpetually enshrouds me.
Ezekial: the righteous one.
My father mockingly naming him after a powerful being of light was the only gift he ever bestowed upon my brother. He hoped it’d bring him pain. Humiliation. For a time it did. But it was truly a prophecy.
I close my eyes, slip into the dark, revel in the momentary silence it brings. I can’t stay here for long, not in this state, but it’ll be enough.
I call to the darkness clinging to my brothers, my brothers by choice, and feel it immediately release. Feel it coil around me, slither into my soul and settle once more.
I open my gaze. I know they feel the change but they refuse to acknowledge it. To acknowledge me . They continue to stare ahead into nothingness.
The silence continues.
“Stop.” Ezekial, again. Of course. The peacekeeper. The mediator. He’s the one to finally break it.
No longer held captive by the dark, Sai fully returns to our realm. His eyes barely register Ezekial.
Julien tilts his head in the same direction, I note his fingers twisting the ring adoring his thumb.
My gaze flickers to Ezekial as I continue to swirl the liquid. It seems no one else is willing to participate.
“Stop what, brother?” I can at least humour him, but the droll tone makes me seem utterly disinterested. I have to be this way. I need to mask myself.
“Moping,” he adds and my ears perk.
Moping.
He thinks we’re moping. He thinks I’m moping.
I am not moping. Children mope. Lovestruck fools mope. I do not mope.
“All of you.” His silver eyes flash as they flicker over each of us, my fingers tighten around the glass. I note he studies Sai the longest. So do I.
Our vivacious, jovial fae no longer resembles the man we knew. Even with the darkness no longer feeding him, he casts shadows.
“You did this.”
And there it is.
I place my glass back down, my gaze flickers to Sai. The eternal glow his fae markings provide is noticeably dull, they’re barely alight as he glares at me, his accusation leaving his lips in a snarl.
“Sai, this will not help.” Julien begins. Always so judicious. The strategist. Sagacious. Until he’s overpowered by his ravenous blood-lust, that is.
“You pushed her away.” Sai continues anyway, crackles of his power spiking the air. “You never even tried.” He glowers at me. “You decided you didn’t want her and you didn’t give a shit what happened to the rest of us. Did you? And look.” He opens his hands, palms finally flaring momentarily as he indicates to each person in our unit, and then the empty chair. The one beside me.
“You got what you fucking wanted. Like you always do, Kane.” He shakes his head, a sour smile adorning his lips as he abruptly stands from his chair.
“Sai, stay.” Julien is stood with him, warily watching Sai whose markings are beginning to glow more vibrantly.
“I can’t!” His narrowed glare lands on me and I hold it. “I can’t just sit here and feel like… like this! I have to do something, anything . I need to go to her and—”
“No,” I interrupt and I’m certain that Julien’s grasp upon Sai is the only thing stopping him from launching himself over the table at me. Disappointing. I would have appreciated the distraction. “You will not go to her.”
“Kane,” my brother warns aloud. Before adding internally, “Don’t push him, you know he’s barely grounded.”
I shift in my seat, placing my elbows upon the table as I stare across at Sai’s rageful expression. “If you go to her now, you will lose her.”
His vehement fury falters as he hears my words, it’s enough that Julien is able to coax him into sitting again.
“You need to fix this, Kane,” Sai utters, hands fisted upon the table, furious glare still narrowed on me. He never stops looking at me. And then his glare softens, his markings lose their light. “You have to fix this.” His words become somewhat of a plea.
My role. The fixer. The pertinacious demon who does what is needed. Who isn’t governed by their emotions. Who makes the difficult decisions. And when it’s decided, I’m irrefutable. Irrepressible.
Stubborn , some might say.
I stare down at my drink, gripping it again, just holding it is torturous.
“She needs time,” I say, my eyes never straying from the amber liquid as it swirls and swirls. “We owe her that.” I look up, I meet all of their gazes. “We owe her that, at the very least.”
Sai groans in pain, his markings pulse. “Time? I don’t know how long I can take this, man. It’s like—it’s like I can barely breathe.” He slumps back in his seat, facing the ceiling. I study his chest, watching it shudder as he takes stunted breaths. “She’s completely blocked me out.” His voice is lifeless. He stares up into nothing. “I can’t feel her. I can’t feel a fucking thing.” His chest heaves. “It’s like she’s—”
“Sai, stop.” Ezekial’s eyes glow as he adds darkness to the order.
We all knew what he was about to say. We’d already lived that possibility. Three of us had felt it twice . We didn’t need to hear it again. We didn’t need to relive that agony. Didn’t need our darkness to remember it.
“She shouldn’t be able to block me,” Sai murmurs, changing his focus. “We’re meant to be connected. I should be able to feel her... She must be in agony.” His body tenses, his face scrunches. “I can’t stay here knowing she’s in pain.” His markings cast us all in a sudden glow as he looks to each of us, pleading with just his eyes. “She needs me, us , she can’t handle—”
“She can.” I know she can, because she is.
Because I can feel the agony she’s currently undergoing, because I’m consuming it. Because it’s the only thing stopping me from falling into the darkness. Her pain is the only emotion tying me to this realm.
Touching her seconds before she was ripped away from me, ensuring a small fragment of my darkness stayed with her, allows me to take away the pain I knew she would face.
Being separated from the four of us so abruptly would have been agonising. She would have felt like her body was being torn apart.
For just a moment.
My fingers tighten around the glass again.
“Kane is taking the pain.” I want to spear my brother for revealing that.
“You cannot take it all, my brethren.”
I grit my teeth. Stare at the liquid. “I can and I will.”
“You have to stop punishing yourself.” I look to my brother, his eyes lacking their normal glow, then I trace the scar carved into his skin. Slicing through his lightest eye. A scar I should have prevented. A permanent reminder of what I allowed to happen. Of my own weakness.
My worthlessness.
“You have to forgive yourself.”
I don’t deserve forgiveness. I don’t deserve anything.
“Do you so easily forget that we are bonded? By blood, by power, by life?” Ezekial’s voice is resolute, it numbs the voice, the darkness. “You are not alone in this. You will never be alone.”
Someone reaches me, distracted by Ezekial I wasn’t able to thwart it in time. Their darkness and my own grapples as warm fingers firmly clasp my shoulder.
“You will not endure this alone,” Julien vows. I feel the weight of his darkness, his power, his words, as his hand rests upon me. “We made a promise that day, my brethren.”
The pain lightens a fraction, being siphoned by Julien I feel the ache in my bones begin to dull.
I’m hit again, another layer of darkness, and light, combining with mine. “You’ve taken enough pain for us all, brother.”
The third and final touch crackles as it hits. My gaze flickers to Sai whose semblance of a smirk tints his lips. “Sorry mate, I forget sometimes.”
I quirk a brow, no longer drowning in the agony she should be suffering. No longer fighting against the voice.
Sai knows all my idiosyncrasies, they all do, and he immediately answers my silent question. “I forget you push away the things you care about.”
I ignore him. I simply stare back at my glass as I contemplate their words, their actions, their vows.
I’ll allow it.
That’s what I tell myself as our conjoined darkness lightens the agony to an icy ache. Not because I deserve it, but because they want it. That’s what I tell myself.
I’ll allow it, for them.
Sai, like his namesake, sighs, slumping back in his chair into the relaxed form we were all accustomed to.
“So, how do we fix this?” he asks, cracking his neck as he rolls his head from shoulder to shoulder.
“We have to let her choose,” Julien states, his gaze surveying us all as he provides his wisdom. “We have to let her make the choice we didn’t allow her to have. Which means we have to be patient.” His sight pauses on Sai before he continues his perusal. “We have to wait until she’s ready.” Julien’s words hover in the silence as we contemplate them.
I’m instantly cynical. I’m the singular drop of rain that threatens to smoother the candle light. The small thread waiting to be pulled. Always siding on the edge of caution, of harsh reality. Because that’s all I’ve ever known.
Harshness. Brutality. Cruelty.
But I don’t say a thing. I don’t need to, not with these men. My brothers. Their speculative eyes all land on me. They know me. They see me. They’re the only beings that keep me held to this plane.
Until her .
“And when she is ready.” Julien’s tone is definit ive as his gaze never wavers from mine. “We will make it right.”
“She’ll never forgive me.” Sai’s misery instantly sullies the hope Julien had tried to conjure. It seemed my thoughts were infectious. “You all heard her. You saw the way she looked at me. The way she felt .”
I won’t allow him to be hindered by my darkness. I lean forward and my darkness latches onto him, forces him to look at me, to ensure he listens.
“She was submerged by the dark when she said those things," I say, watching his face soften. “You know how it changes you, corrupts you, especially when you’re not ready for it.”
It takes him a moment but slowly, I see the darkness in him lighten. He rubs a hand over his face, groaning softly, but otherwise seeming to accept my words.
“Thanks man. Needed that.”
“It won’t be easy,” Ezekial says, unknowingly interrupting Sai whilst studying his rings. “Asking her to trust us again.” His eyes dart over us. “Asking her to forgive us.”
It’s all so hypocritical. Hypocrites. Just like she said. Seeking forgiveness when all we ever seek is vengeance. But I remain silent. I tap my finger upon the rim of my glass.
“So, that’s it?” Sai huffs and plants his elbows onto the table. “That’s our grand plan to get our girl back? We just… wait?”
I hate waiting.
“Yes.” Julien’s hand has never left my shoulder and I feel the slightest pressure in his fingertips, his subtle way of speaking to me, telling me ‘You can and will’ . “We wait and we let her choose. No manipulation, no seduction, no bribery, no hidden agendas.”
No one misses how each of those statements were directed to each of us, even Julien himself. Sai’s whispered mutterings immediately after ‘seduction’ making Ezekial’s lips quirk.
“We let Jasmine choose us.” Julien finally resumes his seat beside Sai and we all allow that statement, and the silence, to stretch on.
Not one of us, not even I, say aloud the one doubt flickering in the back of all our minds…
What if she doesn’t?