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Wrath was still the same good, righteous man I knew before he had died. But how? I didn’t have the slightest damn clue.
The veil changed me. I couldn’t deny that. But Wrath? There was nothing dark about him. The shadows did not cloud his consciousness the same way they clouded mine. They did not threaten to pull him under; they did not wake him from his dreamless sleeps and remind him of the death that would be waiting for him every passing second.
And they certainly did not whisper to him to drink the blood of the one who saved him.
“Why is it that I’m stuck with this curse, then, and you seem to be handling it perfectly?” I asked snidely.
Wrath’s features finally softened. “I don’t know why it has to be this way, brother, but I assure you I would trade places with you if I could.”
I scoffed. “Maybe death over the last few years would have been easier than running the Night Ravens with him.” Our father.
The words were ridiculous, but part of me just wanted Wrath off my back. I was tired of people wanting me to be good. It was exhausting and impossible.
His eyes widened. “Don’t say that,” he argued. “I’m the one running the Ravens now. Things are turning around.”
I raised a tentative brow. “Are they? Because I don’t recall being tied to the darkness part of my life before the veil.”
“We’ll figure this out.”
“I don’t need fixing,” I pushed. “I told you I’m fine.”
“You’re stubborn as always,” Wrath sighed, exasperated, but then his lips curled upwards slightly. “It’s nice to see not everything changes over time.”
That pulled a smile from me. “You both need to recognize me for who I really am, brother. I am not the child who got you killed when we were younger. I’m me. I’m swarming in darkness and barely keeping my head above the water. I ruin everything that gets close to me.”
“And her?” Wrath asked. “You’ll really allow yourself to fall so far when she has come all this way to be with you? You turn her life upside down and now you walk away as if nothing happened? That’s not the brother I knew,” he pushed, stepping closer to me. “The brother I knew would have done anything for the people he loved. He would have sacrificed anything, whatever it took. So tell me, why are you giving up now? Why are you making it so hard?”
I took a few seconds to process his words.
Wrath was right. The old me would have never put Lyra in danger, would have never been so weak as to not realize what was right, what was good.
I had forgotten who I was. Who she was.
Light and dark did not belong together.
“I should have left her a long time ago,” I mumbled glumly. “I can’t control myself when she’s near. She’s in more trouble here than out there.”
“And where is she to go?” Wrath was yelling in a hushed voice now, quiet enough not to wake the others but loud enough to show that rare crack in his emotions. “She has nothing, Alek! She has no apartment anymore, no home. This is her life. You are her life. For fuck’s sake, brother. You should have seen the way she was utterly devastated before. She came back through that veil and she needed you, but you ran!”
“Because I am weak!” I hissed.
“Because you are lying to yourself!”
I flinched. Wrath was my older brother, yes, but I had grown accustomed to life over the last few years with him gone.
Nobody talked to me the way he did. Nobody blatantly told me I was wrong. No one besides Lyra, anyway.
“She’s safer here with you,” I added quietly.
Wrath took a few breaths and leaned back, resting against the kitchen counter again and regaining his lost composure. “You cannot just leave her here,” he said, lips twisted in sympathy. “You shared blood. She bonded with you, and you with her.”
“Trust me, I’m aware.” Painfully so.
“You know what that means,” Wrath pushed. “You’ll have to tell her, you know. Or she’ll figure it out on her own and she’ll be even angrier that you kept it from her.”
“I can’t tell her,” I protested. “Not like this, not while I’m—”
“You need help. Something happened to you on the other side of that veil and you're trying to hide it. Why is it so hard for you to admit that? What are you hiding, Alek?”
