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“Incredible,” Rayne whispers, and I have to agree.
For a guy I hated just a short time ago, he’s certainly grown on me. But maybe that has less to do with his personality changing than the fact that I’m no longer worried about him taking Ann from us. Now we’re on the same team, and it feels good, even now, to have that extra support.
Elder Auero opens his eyes.
I lean closer. “Elder?”
But he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t do anything, and Ann just keeps working, without pause. Trying to fix things in the old man that the rest of us can’t. Even Rayne. He might technically be a light fae, or at least he was before his ghost took the body of a shadow beast, but even he can’t do what she can.
Ann’s body jerks a little, then her hands move to his head.
“Prince,” he whispers, his gaze going to me. And nothing has ever made me so grateful as the sound of his voice, as this moment where he seems to be improving. It’s a moment of hope in a time when I believed all hope was lost.
The old man begins to shake so noticeably that I want to reach out and hold him. To stop him from hurting, even though I logically know it doesn’t work that way.
But it’s not me that reaches out, it’s him. He snags Ann’s wrist. “Enough.”
“But–” She looks confused and exhausted.
“I can’t be saved… but I need to tell you, tell you what the shadows said.”
Ann looks at me.
Slowly, I nod. One of the main powers of the elders is the ability to hear the shadows, to hear the whispers of the spirits who guide us. The spirits are everywhere: in the trees, the streams, and the air. But the most powerful ones are in the shadows, where we are born.
If the elder is saying this, I have to believe him.
But Ann doesn’t stop. If anything, she looks more determined.
The elder’s hand has fallen back down, so I lightly touch the top of her hand. “Enough. It’s his choice. And he knows more than we do. Please listen to him.”
Those big blue eyes of hers are begging me to do something different, but I don’t waiver.
“Ann,” Rayne whispers. “He deserves this respect at least.”
And something about his words breaks her. The golden glow fades from her hand, and she drops it into her lap, tears in her eyes.
Later, I’ll hold her. Later, I’ll help her through this loss. But right now? Right now, we need to hear the message from the shadows. We need to see how they can guide us from here, when hope seems lost. Because if we don’t, whatever the hell this man has been through, it’ll be for nothing.
“Prince Dusk,” he manages this time, and I hold my breath, waiting for what he’ll say next. But instead of saying more, I watch as his skin grows even paler and his wounds begin to flow with blood once more.
Fuck. Fucking hell. He’s not going to make it.
We can’t lose more people. We can’t lose our last elder.
He coughs out blood that paints his lips, but then his gaze locks with mine, showing more strength than I thought he had left. “Y-Your father… took P-Phantom because, together, you all have the… strength to defeat him.”
Of course, we did.Losing my older brother,technicallymy twin brother but older by just a few minutes, was a blow to not only our cause, but to our souls. When my father plunged that moon shard into his chest and changed him, made him his own little minion, the hell we were living in got worse.
I didn’t even know it could get worse.
“Prince Phantom is a good man,” he manages.
Yes, a good man. Unlike me.The idea that I had the chance to kill our father and stop all of this still burns within me. Then, I’d been too soft. People joked that I’d taken after my mother, and I had. I didn’t like war, or death, or fighting. And so, when I had the chance to kill him, I stupidly thought he could still be saved. I hesitated, and everything that came after was my own damn fault.
If only I’d been more like my brother, everything would have been different.
I picture Phantom. He resembles our father more than I do. His long black hair hangs past his massive shoulders in the same way our father wears his. But it’s more than that. The similarities extend to the green of his eyes, the span of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest.
