Chapter 20 In the Crucible
Casimir
Zane hit the ground hard.
I was already moving, catching the tail end of his fall so his head didn’t crack against the floor. His body slumped against me like a rag doll, limp and all deadweight. Pale. Sweat slicked his hairline, his mouth slightly parted, his crimson lashes a dark fan against his freckles.
My hand was on his throat before I registered it. Pulse rapid, but steady. Lungs expanding, chest rising and falling. No seizure. No bleeding from his eyes. No rupture in the brain.
Still, my throat burned.
“It’s fine. This is normal. He’s done this before.”
But no matter how many times I told myself that, the sight of him like this always made my stomach twist.
“Damnation.” I exhaled sharply through my nose, shifting my grip under his arms so I could haul him up. “You always push too hard, you dumb bastard.”
His head lolled against my shoulder like a child’s, utterly gone.
“Too deep a dive for too long. You know better than this.”
From the basement, I heard a rattling wail, and a snarl bubbled in my throat. I didn’t even realize I’d bared my teeth until my hand clenched into a fist. I forced it open. Forced myself to breathe. Koa was taking care of her, and later I’d take care of him. For now—
Get your brother off the damn floor.
I shouldered Zane’s weight and carried him out of the security room and down the hall to the library. He wasn’t heavy, not to me, but he was mine, and that made it unbearable. He wasn’t fragile, but he felt it.
“It’s normal,” I reminded myself again. “Happens sometimes. Deep dives pull him under. He’ll wake up in a few hours, grinning like a jackal, and start talking shit like nothing happened. It’s fine.”
Didn’t mean my heart wasn’t a vice in my chest.
I kicked the library door open and lowered him onto one of the large leather couches, adjusting his limbs carefully so nothing was crimped or twisted.
My hands didn’t stop moving, cataloguing, assessing.
Just as he was in the security room: Skin warm, but clammy.
Heart rate high, but consistent. No tremors, no seizure.
No sign of brain hemorrhage from psionic strain.
“You always crawl out of everything like some moon-damn roach.” I ran the heel of my palm down my jaw as I stepped back. “You’re fine. You have to be. Because if you’re not…”
I didn’t finish the thought. Couldn’t. The idea of being too late, of failing them, was a weight I couldn’t carry and still breathe.
I automatically calculated what came next. Zane would wake up cold, shaky, dehydrated. I needed carbs, electrolytes, water. Pain meds on hand in case the migraine hit hard. I needed to—
He mumbled something incoherent, his hand twitching like he was reaching for something.
“Seri,” he mouthed.
Of course.
Our little wife. Our heart. Even unconscious, he wanted her, drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
We all were.
I turned to the window seat, where she was sound asleep, her curls in a tangle over the cushions, her cheek pressed to her folded hands. Steve, Zane’s hoodie, swallowed her, hanging down to her knees. She looked soft. Small. Unbearably fragile.
And sanguine mortis, how it terrified me that I might fail her. That I might be too late, just once, and lose her forever.
Brumous lay on the floor at her feet. As I approached, his blue eyes snapped up, narrowed at me.
Don’t drop her, they warned, or I’ll rip your throat out.
I stopped, one hand flexing at my side.
“Noted.”
Brumous didn’t blink.
I exhaled sharply, then moved. Scooping Seri up was easy; she was still far too light. I brought her to the couch. Lowered her onto Zane and the second her body touched his, they melted together.
It was unconscious. Immediate. Zane turned toward her in his sleep, his arm draping over her waist, face tucking into her neck.
Seri shifted, pressing closer into his chest, her fingers curling over his heart like she knew it was hers.
Their breathing fell into sync. Two broken pieces that somehow only felt whole when they touched.
The sight of it made my chest ache.
“Damnation.”
I’d lingered too long. Just watching. One hand braced against the couch back, my jaw locked tight as I stared at the way she softened him.
The way his face, usually stretched into that reckless, shit-eating grin, now looked younger.
Unarmored. His smirk turned into something vulnerable the second she touched him.
And Seri? She was boneless without the tension.
Not even stress lines bracketing her mouth.
She knew she was somewhere safe.
I took a few steps back, raking a hand through my hair as that awful, familiar pressure built behind my ribs. That bone-deep ache I never spoke about.
You should’ve protected them better.
My teeth clenched.
I hated when these thoughts came, but they always did. When we were kids, I told myself it was my job. I was the biggest billy goat gruff. I took the hits. Carried the weight. Broke before they did. Because they still had something inside them worth protecting.
Zane with his feral joy. His madness. His unkillable spark of light, even when everything else around us dimmed. Koa with his heart. Gentle. Good. Still capable of softness, no matter how dark things got.
So I became their shield. The one who put himself between them and what lurked in the dark.
So why had I led them into hunting monsters?
You were trying to save them.
Bullshit.
I failed. I let it happen. I watched Zane’s grins turn into razor-toothed smirks.
I watched Koa’s softness die, his kindness buried under layers of rage.
If I’d been stronger, smarter, they wouldn’t have had to harden.
I should have found a way to stop Father.
They shouldn’t have spent their whole fang-rotted lives becoming monsters to fight monsters just to survive.
I should’ve broken first.
And now there was her. Serafina. She didn’t have a single ounce of monster in her. She wasn’t like us; she was better. Pure. It clawed at me that she was here, tangled in our mess. She deserved more than this. More than us.
But she made them better. That’s what killed me the most. She touched Zane, and his chaos softened. She smiled at Koa, and his walls crumbled. She wasn’t built for darkness, but she pulled the light back out of them.
And now you have to protect that, too. A lump burned in my throat. Another light to guard. Another reason to fight.
I clenched my fists hard enough to hurt. Sentimentality was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Not when there were threats to neutralize, plans to make, people to protect. But standing there, watching Zane and Seri sleep, it was hard not to wish things were different.
It was a dangerous thing to love someone this much, but I couldn’t help it. She and my brothers were worth every risk.
Footsteps creaked in the hall. Koa. Up from the basement. My ears tracked him to the gym, where I knew he’d head for the shower room.
Move. Don’t linger.
I looked back once.
Zane, slack and unconscious, his hand tangled in her hair, Seri tucked safe beneath his arm. Brumous, still watching me, his don’t screw up glare unwavering.
I exhaled hard.
Crossed the room.
Stopped, for one moon-damned second, and roughly shoved his mess of red hair off his forehead. I scowled at this emotional nonsense, but I still did it. Just to remind myself he was breathing, of course.
Then I bent and pressed a kiss, lighter than air, to Seri’s temple.
“Keep each other safe.”
Then I turned fast, like I could outrun the weight of it all before it crushed me, and went to find Ko to make sure he hadn’t gone too far.
Because that was what the biggest billy goat gruff did.
He kept them alive. Carried the weight. Broke before they did.
And stood as the shield with a single, unshakable promise: “Nothing touches you while I’m still breathing.”
#
Koa
The water burned hot against my skin. Almost scalding. I didn’t turn it down.
Blood sluiced off my knuckles in thin, rust-colored streams, curling down the drain like it couldn’t get away fast enough. My hands ached. Bone-deep. Maybe even broken. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Didn’t matter. I deserved worse.
She’d almost gotten our beloved.
Eluned had almost killed Seri.
And we hadn’t been here to stop it.
Our beloved had had to defend herself with a fucking branch because her fucking husbands weren’t fucking there!
I scrubbed harder to get Eluned’s stink off me, a mix of blood and rot and Dark magic, but it clung. Giving up, I braced my hands against the sink edge, head dropping.
Eluned had been begging at the end. Clawing at me, hurting my ears with her high-pitched keening. I’d kept going without a shred of remorse, without a moment of hesitation. Partly because she deserved it, and partly because we weren’t there when our beloved needed us.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the door open. I only felt it when the air pressure dropped like a stone. A deep cold sank into the walls, thick and heavy like graveyard fog, and the hairs on my nape stood up.
I turned my head and spotted Casimir just inside the door, where he hovered for a second. Then he moved at dhampir speed, his gaze fixed on my hands. Slowly, almost absently, he turned them over. Examined the damage. Feeling if anything was broken. Ignoring the blood dripping on the floor.
A chill scraped down my spine.
“Cas?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t meet my eyes. He just kept studying my hands, like he was reading something in the torn skin and cracked knuckles that I couldn’t see. Like something inside him was trying to sift through the aftermath.
Slowly, the pit of my stomach started to turn.
I didn’t know why I asked it, maybe instinct, but my mouth moved before my brain could stop it.
“Zane?”
And Casimir’s head jerked up. When his gaze locked on mine, my pulse stuttered.
Noctem maledicta.