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Allison flicks her gaze to me, then back to Sefton. "Isn't this Dax's room now? He's the Earl of Fallenmouth."
"There are no earls anymore," Sefton hisses. "No dukes, no viscounts, no fucking queen or king. There is only me. I rule over everyone and everything in both worlds, which means I decide which of you sleeps in this room. Do you understand?"
She nods, seeming to have decided speaking is a bad idea.
The best I can do is to partially restrain my anger. I thrust an arm between Allison and Sefton, thumping my palm on the door. "You will not sleep in the same room with her."
"He didn't say he wanted to," Allison tells me while she gently settles a hand on my outstretched arm. "Relax, huh? We're all wiped out. A good night's rest will make us feel better, and then we can have a nice talk in the morning. Okay?"
Nothing about this is okay, but I understand what Allison is really trying to communicate to me. She wants me to placate my mad-as-a-hatter brother so he won't hack off our arms and legs to stop us from escaping.
I lower my arm.
My brother opens the bedroom door. "Your room, Allison."
"Thank you," she says as she steps across the threshold.
"But it will be our room soon."
I glower at Sefton.
He feigns nonchalance fairly well, but the lines tightening around his eyes attest to his true state of mind. "Good night, Allison. You may lock the door if you wish."
He hands her a key.
The wanker had hoped to sleep with her tonight, hadn't he? Sefton changed his mind only when I let my displeasure show.
Allison shuts the door and locks it.
Sefton waves for me to follow him. "You will stay in your old room. The one you slept in until our parents died and you became lord of the manor strictly based on the accident of fate that pushed you out of Mother's arse before me."
"Don't talk about Mum that way. She loved you."
"But she loved you more. Everyone did. I was invisible, drowned out by the sparkling light of your brilliant personality." He stops at the door to my childhood room and hurls it open. "You always looked down on me."
"That's not true. I was proud of you. We might be twins, but I couldn't have hoped to be as clever and accomplished as you. Two PhDs? I didn't try for one." Maybe I'm desperately attempting to convince him that he wasn't invisible all our lives because I don't want my brother to be the maniac who destroyed the world. But since I can't rewind time and stop him from doing that, I lay a hand on his shoulder and try again. "I never hated you, Sef. I loved you. But I can't understand what you've done."
"Of course not. You don't have the vision to comprehend it."
"Sef—"
"I never loved you, Dax. I always despised you, and I always will."
He stalks off down the hall, his footfalls echoing in his wake.
Sefton and I might not have been best mates, but I thought we got on well enough. Now I find out he has always despised me. The dark energy he ingested to become powerful must have emboldened him to become a monster, but he clearly harbored those desires inside him for years, maybe all his life.
I want to go to Allison's room and lose myself inside her body, erase the pain with sex. But I won't use her that way, not anymore. Seeing my brother again, knowing what he has done, I feel like my entire life has been one long dream and now I've woken from it to discover the real world is a nightmare.
Shuffling into my room, I kick the door shut. I had slept in this room until I turned eighteen and went away to university. My parents died two months after my twentieth birthday, and I became the Earl of Fallenmouth. That's another thing Allison and I have in common—losing our parents at a relatively young age—though I had mates and lovers to help me through it while she had no one.
Allison has me now, but that's hardly a blessing.
I kick off my boots and toss my leather coat onto the chair in the corner. Then I drop onto the bed on my back, still clothed, and shut my eyes. Outside the window, far in the distance, creatures scream and shout, but eventually, I manage to sleep.
The sun is just rising when I wake up. Can't believe I slept at all, but exhaustion had overpowered me. I push up into a sitting position and swing my legs off the bed, yawning and stretching. I need to find Allison and make sure she's all right. I pull on my boots, then head for her room.
The door hangs open, and the room is empty.
