Is every life that isn’t there
Therion Ashborne has learnedthat rest is a luxury other people afford themselves. Vigilance is his inheritance, following him like a silent, endless sentry. Like a shadow he cannot outrun—watchful, unsleeping, patient. The moment he relaxes, the past finds him. Mistakes. Gaps. The faces of those he failed to protect.
So he watches.Always.
Even now, standing in the corner of Rubi’s workroom in the back of the Elarion library, his back to the wall, eyes tracking movement before thought can intervene.
Teddy notices the bottle before he notices the time.
It sits open on the worktable beside Rubi’s mortar, the glass already sweating despite the chill that seeps through the limestone walls. The smell hits him next—sharp spirits cutting through bitter herbs and iron—wrong in a room meant for precision.
Rubi doesn’t look drunk. That’s the problem.
“You know, Teddy, I can feel your judgment from here,” Rubi says, voice irreverent and unperturbed. She lifts her eyes from her workbench to her brother, settling her gaze on him, and takes a long, exaggerated pull from her flask. “Fortunately, I judge myself more than anyone else ever could, so it affects me less than you might hope.”
Her eyes stay pinned on him, imbuing them with a flare of defiance. But his stomach clenches. She may cover her pain in pranks and cheek, but he knows she’s only averting everyone’s gaze from the cracks that’ll never mend.
Teddy pushes off the wall, stepping toward her. “I’m not judging you, Rubes. I’m worried.”
She stands steady at the table, sleeves rolled to the elbow, sandy-blond hair twisted back in a knot that’s come loose in places. Her hands move with practiced care as she grinds dried leaves into powder, the pestle turning slow and deliberate, like she’s pacing herself through something that refuses to be rushed.
“Well, you needn’t be. Drink comforts me when the world cannot,” she says with levity and a flourish of her hand.
He’s heard that before—just phrased differently. Different bottles. Different nights. Because the world never comforts Rubi, only reminds her of how much she hurts.
Teddy leans against the wall next to her and watches. “Ican comfort you,” he says, keeping his tone neutral.
Rubi doesn’t look up. “I won’t take comfort from someone I failed, Teddy.”
He knows it isn’t the drink she reaches for—it’s the silence it gives her.
The pestle scrapes harder against the bowl.
He draws back, just slightly. “Rubinia,” he admonishes, his tone darkening. “You are paying penance for something that you did not do.”
That makes her stop. Her eyes drag up from her work toward her brother. She bares her teeth, but he doesn’t miss the way her hand trembles around the pestle.
“Exactly. I didnothing,” she snarls. “I got high and laid while your fucking wife was slain by a monster.”
He’s learned that “nothing” is the word people use when they can’t survive the truth of what happened.
Her breath comes in short, fractured pants, rasping between her teeth.
“Or did you forget? That your baby girl didn’t live because I chose to fuck the flutist that played at the solstice celebration?” She hurls the words at her brother like she’s wielding a weapon.
Maybe she is.
She says it like confession, like punishment—but he knows she’s been saying it long before he walked into the room.
The words hang between them, ugly and irrevocable.
But Rubi doesn’t stop.
“I let the lure of her beautiful eyes and pretty smile take me away from the honor of protecting your wife and daughter, Teddy. You should hold nothing but hatred in your heart for me,” she snarls, voice thick with disdain.
“You do enough of that for the both of us,” he murmurs so low she doesn’t hear.
He closes his eyes, trying desperately to keep ghosts of the past from his mind. “Rubi,” he breathes. “There is only one crime they committed that led to their deaths.”
