But when he finally sat beside his brother on the rocky ledge and the acrid air burned through his lungs and all the world vanished beneath his feet in that dead, smoking hole, Gabriel could no more find the words to speak than he could the courage to meet his brother’s eyes.
Instead, nodding toward the blade in Malcolm’s hands, he said only, “I thought it was destroyed.”
Malcolm laughed, turning it over in his hand. A bit of bone char still clung to the handle, and he rubbed it away with his thumb. “Sorry, Frodo. Not the kind of thing you simply toss into the fiery inferno from whence it came.”
“It needs to be obliterated, Mac. We can’t risk it falling into demon hands. Not in my realmorthis one. Not anywhere.”
“It’s indestructible.”
“But when I killed Azerius, everything—”
“Went nuclear. Yes, I felt it. Halfway across the realms, I felt it.”
“How the fuck did you find the thing?”
“This blade is connected to me. Eternally.” He lifted his shirt, revealing a black, fist-sized wound just below his sternum, weeping with blood and infection. Tiny black fissures spiderwebbed out from the center, the skin around them blistered and cracked.
“Fucking hell,” Gabriel whispered. “Tell me I didn’t do that when I stabbed Azerius.”
“You didn’t. That was Dorian’s handiwork. I felt it when you stabbed the bastard, though. Straight through the heart. You always did know how to deliver those fatal blows, brother.”
Gabriel gasped. “If I’d known about the connection, I—”
“Oh, don’t give me the wounded puppy eyes. It’s not as bad as it looks.” Malcolm quickly pulled his shirt back into place, wincing as his knuckles scraped the raw skin.
Gabriel pretended not to notice, but the pain slicing through his brother’s eyes was hard to miss.
For a long moment, they sat in silence. An hour? A month? The passage of time was impossible to comprehend in hell.
Then Malcolm sighed and said, “Since you’re here, there’s something I want you to know.”
Gabriel nodded, sensing where this was going. From the moment they’d found each other here—hell, maybe even from the moment they’d found each other back in New York, fifty years after their previous encounter—it was always leading back to this.
The betrayal. The confessions. The deep, dark river of secrets and lies that’d been running beneath the foundations of their family for centuries, slowly poisoning them.
“I wouldneverbetray Dorian,” he said, so soft Gabriel had to lean in close to catch it. “I’d never betray any of you. Everything that happened was by design.Mydesign.”
He told Gabriel the story—how he’d feigned his desires for an alliance with Duchanes, pushing Dorian at every turn. How he’d embedded himself deep in enemy territory, befriending the low-level vampires that had served Chernikov and Duchanes, acting as one of them—fiendish and depraved. Criminal. How he’d pretended to despise his brothers—his blood—just to keep them safe.
“Our enemies believed our family was fractured,” he continued. “That Father’s death had left us all so scattered and confused, we’d never be able to claw our way back to stability, let alone power. It didn’t take much acting on my part to convince them the rumors were true.”
“But why convince them at all?” Gabriel asked. “We’rebrothers, Mac. Despite what Father would have us believe, we were supposed to stick together. To back Dorian as the rightful king and decide how to deal with our enemies from a position of strength and unity. All our skirmishes, all our family drama... It should’ve stayed within the walls of Ravenswood.”
“We were outnumbered and outmaneuvered. You know that, Gabriel. Infiltrating the other camp as one of their own… It was the only way.”
“You should’ve trusted me. I could’ve helped you. Together, we might’ve—”
“The only way to convince our enemies of my treason was to first convince my family. Iwasbacking Dorian—but first, I needed to force his hand.” Malcolm shook his head and sighed. “You saw him. You know what he was like after Father’s death. He didn’t want to be king any more than he wanted to be that monster’s son.”
Gabriel looked out across the pit, feeling the weight of his brother’s confession—the weight of their Father’s tainted legacy—deep in his bones.
“And summoning Azerius?” he asked. “Was that to force Dorian’s hand as well?”
Malcolm nodded, his hand tightening on the bone handle of the blade.
“I watched you punch a hole in Charlotte’s torso,” Gabriel said. “You had her heart clutched in your fist, one breath—one bloodytwitch—from turning her into ash.”
“Azerius had a claim on Charlotte’s soul. Dorian may have been slow to act against our political enemies, but when it came to that woman? You know as well as I—he would’ve stormed the very gates of hell and waged his war until every last demon was obliterated.”
