He’s right—it’s not a bowl. It’s a human skull.
I’m holding the top half of a human skull. And it’s as old as the river itself.
Realization grips me hard, stealing my breath.
“The Chalice of Blood and Sorrow,” I whisper.
The boy finally looks up and meets my eyes, the sight of him stopping my heart cold.
Xavier.
Chalice forgotten, I drop it into the mud as my deceased brother rises to his feet. He transforms before my eyes, aging from a boy to a teenager in an instant. When he finally turns to face me full on, the sight of him is so horrible, so devastating, I stumble back, desperate to get away.
His skull is collapsed on one side, red-black blood spilling from the massive wound, gushing like the river itself. It leaks into his mouth, down his chin, staining his shirt. His eyes remain fixed on mine, glassy and dark and lifeless.
It’s precisely how I found him, shot dead by his own hand.
Driven to it by mine.
Decades collapse in a heartbeat. The bones in my body are no longer capable of holding my weight. I fall to my knees, mud soaking through my pants, as thick and wet as the blood I knelt in the night my baby brother took his final breath in my arms.
“Xavier…” The pain in my voice is so raw, so close, I barely recognize it.
“Why did you do it?” he asks plainly, blood bubbling out between his lips.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, Goddess, I’m so sorry.” I say it again and again, a dozen times, a hundred, but I can’t alter this outcome now any more than I could twenty years ago, bargaining my own soul away on the bloody garage floor.
I’m sinking into the earth, letting it swallow me. Consume me. Mud, blood, guilt, memory, I can no longer tell the difference. My body shudders uncontrollably, the sharp bite of copper filling my senses and making me retch.
Xavier crouches before me, his blood soaking the earth between us. All around us, black dahlias bloom, a cruel reminder of my betrayal, my worst crime, my darkest shame.
With a trembling hand I reach for his face, stopping just short of touching his cheek. “I’m—”
“Sorry, I know,” he says. “You’re always sorry.”
“I… I don’t know what else to… If I could bring you back, I…”
“I don’t want to come back.”
Behind him, a massive white shape takes form, descending onto a rocky perch. I blink rapidly, trying to focus, trying to remember the word for such a magnificent creature…
Owl. It’s a snowy owl.
“Stevie,” I whisper, my eyes drifting closed. The sweet scent of honeysuckle floats on the night air, tugging at another memory, more recent, more real…
Doc, come back to me…
I hold my breath, trying to zero in on the sound. Is it the breeze? The soft rush of the river? My own pulse thudding in my ears?
Doc, listen to me… It isn’t real… He’s twisting your memories…
“It isn’t real,” I repeat, clinging to the idea like a life raft. “He’s twisting them… he’s twisting them…”
“But he isn’t, that’s the thing,” Xavier whispers. “You should’ve told her the rest of it, Cass.”
Shame burns through me, and I open my eyes, searching for Xavier’s in the darkness. He frowns at me, and once again, I watch helplessly as the life drains from his eyes.
I reach for him again, but just as my fingers brush his blood-soaked shirt, he slips away and falls into the river, the current carrying him faster and farther than I could ever hope to follow, taking my heart with him.
