Chapter Nine
Maddox
Iwaited until the others were asleep before I went to see my brother.
It was early. The grey light of predawn was just starting to filter through the porthole of our cabin, casting everything in muted shadows.
Alyssa was tucked between Dean and Ryder, all three of them dead to the world after whatever had happened between them last night.
I’d felt it through the bond. The warmth, the pleasure, the magic.
It had washed over me and Tank in waves while we’d been sorting through Rhidian’s maps, and Tank had given me a knowing look that I’d deliberately ignored.
They deserved that moment. All of them did. There was precious little joy to be found in this mess, and I wasn’t going to begrudge them for finding some.
But sleep hadn’t come for me. Not last night. Not really any night since the battle.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Rhidian.
The way he’d looked at me in those final moments. Not with fear or anger or resentment. With gratitude. Like I was doing him a favour by driving my blade into his chest. Like dying at the hands of a friend was somehow better than dying at the hands of an enemy.
Maybe it was. I didn’t know. I just knew that the weight of it was crushing me, and the only person I wanted to talk to about it was chained up in the hold of this ship with a monster living inside his head.
The hold was dark and quiet as I descended the ladder. The smell hit me first. Damp wood and salt and the stale air of a space that never saw sunlight. And beneath it, the faint scent of my brother. Changed now, different from how he used to smell, but still unmistakably Damon.
He was sitting against the far wall, his chains pooled around him like iron snakes. His eyes were open, watching me as I approached.
“Maddox.” His voice was rough but present. Himself. I could tell the difference now. The nightmare had a particular quality to it, like hearing someone speak through water. This was just Damon, tired and worn down but still here.
“Hey.” I lowered myself to sit across from him, close enough to reach out and touch if I wanted to but far enough that the chains would stop him if the nightmare surged forward.
I hated that I had to think like that. Hated that I couldn’t just sit beside my brother without calculating escape routes.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Can’t stop thinking.”
“About what?”
I almost laughed. About what. Like there was just one thing keeping me awake, one singular problem I could identify and solve and move on from. As if my entire world hadn’t been ripped apart and rebuilt into something I barely recognised.
“Rhidian,” I said simply.
Damon’s expression shifted. Not pity, not exactly. Something more like understanding.
“Tell me,” he said.
And gods help me, I did.
It all came pouring out. Everything I’d been holding in since the battlefield, since the moment I’d felt the blade slide between Rhidian’s ribs and watched the light leave his eyes.
I told Damon about the choice Rhidian had forced on me.
How Rhidian had been dying already, had known that if Arik claimed his death, the Summer Court magic would pass to the enemy.
How he’d begged me to do it, to take the kill and the magic with it so that Arik couldn’t have it.
“And I did it,” I said, staring at my hands. The Summer Court marks swirled across my skin, golden and gleaming, but all I could see was blood. “I killed him, Damon. I looked him in the eye as the blade drove into his heart, and now I carry his magic like it’s some kind of prize.”
“It wasn’t a prize,” Damon said quietly. “It was a gift. He chose you.”
“It doesn’t feel like a gift.” My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it.
“It feels like a stain. And the worst part is that I know it was the right thing to do. I know Rhidian made the only call he could make. I know that if I hadn’t done it, Arik would have the Summer Court’s power right now and we’d all be even more screwed than we already are. ”
I looked up at my brother, and I knew my eyes were shining with unshed tears.
“But I feel selfish for wishing it hadn’t been me. He was dying, and all I could think was that I didn’t want to be the one holding the blade. What kind of person does that make me?”
“Human,” Damon said. “It makes you human, Maddox.”
“Except I’m not anymore.” I flexed my hand, watching the Summer mark ripple across my skin. “Not entirely.”
Damon was quiet for a moment, watching me with those too-knowing eyes.
“You always did carry other people’s pain,” he said.
“Even when we were kids. Remember when Dean first showed up? Feral and furious, lashing out at anyone who got close. I was the one who sat up with him at night, but you were the one who cried for him. Who felt everything he was feeling and took it on as your own.”
I remembered. I’d been so young, and Dean’s pain had been so vast, and I hadn’t understood why no one else seemed to be drowning in it the way I was.
“This is the same thing,” Damon continued. “You’re carrying Rhidian’s death because you feel like someone should. Like if you don’t grieve for him hard enough, it won’t count.”
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe. Definitely.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “You always were the heart of us, little brother. The one who felt everything so the rest of us didn’t have to.”
The tears spilled over then, and I didn’t bother wiping them away. There was no point pretending with Damon. He’d always seen through me.
“I need you back,” I said, and the words came out raw and desperate.
“I need you to accept the bite, Damon. I can’t do this without you.
You were always the one I came to when everything fell apart, and everything is falling apart.
If this is the only chance we have to get you free, then you have to take it. ”
Damon’s expression flickered with something painful.
“I know you’d rather die than stay like this,” I pressed on. “Dean told us. And I understand that, I do. But I can’t lose you. I won’t survive it. Not after watching Rhidian die. Especially not you. Please.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them again, they were bright with emotion he was trying to contain.
“You always did know exactly what to say to make it impossible to refuse you,” he said softly. “Even when we were kids. I could never say no to you, Maddox. I would have torn apart worlds to keep you safe.”
“Then do it one more time. Step up and fight for us.”
“I will.” The certainty in his voice caught me off guard. “But not the bite. Not as the first option.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alyssa.” His voice dropped lower, almost reverent.
“When she touched me, when her magic reached inside my head, the nightmare vanished. Completely. Just for a moment, but it was real silence, Maddox. The first time in months that my mind was my own.” He leaned forward, his chains clinking softly.
“She can do it. I think she can destroy this thing or lock it away. The nightmare is afraid of her. I felt it flinch when her magic touched it. Actually flinch.”
Hope surged through me so fast it was dizzying. “You really believe that?”
“I know it. The bite as a last resort, if she can’t do it. But I want to give her the chance first. I think she’s meant to...”
He trailed off, but I understood. I’d felt it too. That pull between them, faint but undeniable. The bond that was waiting to be completed.
“I know,” I said simply.
“Does that bother you?”
I almost laughed. “Damon, nothing would make me happier than having you be part of this. Part of us. You belong with her. You belong with all of us.”
Something shifted in his expression. Relief, maybe. Or the closest thing to it that he could manage with a monster living inside his head.
“She’s special, Maddox. She can…”
Then his face changed.
It wasn’t the smooth, seamless takeover I’d seen before.
Not the slithering transition where one moment it was Damon and the next it was that thing wearing his face.
This time, I could see him fighting. His jaw clenched.
Veins stood out on his neck. His hands spasmed, fingers clawing at the floor as he waged a war inside his own skull.
A strangled sound escaped his throat. Not a scream. Something worse. The sound of someone being dragged underwater.
His whole body convulsed. Once. Twice. His head cracked back against the wall, and when his eyes opened again, they weren’t my brother’s anymore.
The nightmare laughed.
“Well, well. The little murderer comes to visit.” Its voice was Damon’s mouth forming words that weren’t his, and the wrongness of it made my skin crawl. “Come to confess your sins to the only person who can’t run away? How touching.”
“Let him go.”
“Oh, but I know all about what you did.” The nightmare leaned forward, Damon’s chains rattling as it moved.
“He shows me everything, he thinks he can play me into becoming his puppet. My icy master. He enjoyed watching you destroy a part of yourself. I could practically taste the satisfaction it gave him. That delicious guilt he knew you’d forever carry.
He’s been marinating in it for days, you know.
Replaying the moment over and over. The way the blade slid in.
The sound your pretty prince made when his lungs stopped working.
” It inhaled deeply, savouring something only it could sense.
“Murder is such a strong word, isn’t it?
But that’s what it was. No matter how you dress it up in talk of sacrifice and duty.
You killed a man who trusted you. And I bet you liked it. ”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” The nightmare grinned with Damon’s mouth, and the expression was obscene on my brother’s face. “Embrace it, Maddox. That’s what the lion wants. He’s a predator and so are you. We’re more alike than you realise, you and I. We both take what we want and justify it afterwards.”