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My brothers aren’t any happier than I am and instead of making our way through the forest silently, they're almost stomping, I can see it in the way their feet fall. We're looking for anything out of place. Looking for shards of the moonstone that will make it easier for their father to expand the Void into this world and claim it as his own domain, killing everything inside except the dark beasts he controls. It's something we've done more times than I can count, minus the stomping, minus the silence and the tension in the air. Mostly, we've done this patrol like soldiers in a battle that will never end.
Now, we're like soldiers in a battle that will never endafterknowing our mate fucked another man.
Awful doesn't begin to explain the way we feel right now.
Dusk nudges my shoulder and points ahead at a shard in the grass a few feet beyond the path we’re walking. Beneath the light of the moon, it just barely glints, and could've been easily missed. It's good that Dusk saw it. Moon shards have always been difficult to find... well, until Ann showed up and made it all seem simple.
Ann.I sigh and slowly move toward the shard.
Logically, she should be here with us. Finding the shards is easier when she’s with us—her light is drawn to them. Or their light is sharper for her. I don’t know the science of it, only the fact that she’s a beacon. But with our relationship in shambles, it seems easier to only spot what we can rather than walk next to a woman who has rejected us, who has decided that she isn't our mate, no matter how much this connection between us says her belief is a lie.
I kneel down and pick up the shard, placing it in the pouch at my belt. I'm about to stand back up when I notice that the turned ground is fresh. Which means that one of their father's minions was here recently. I motion for Dusk to have a look and he kneels too, then touches the dirt.
“Fresh.” When I nod, he continues. That they learned to sign for me is not something I take for granted. "Apparently, even after everything, he's still on his mission."
"Father could be half-dead and still send someone to hide a shard, just to make a point that we'll never defeat him," Phantom signs, his mouth moving with each word, which tells me he's speaking aloud too.
I sign, "Did you see her destroy that dragon? Did you see the shadow king falling to ash? Your father would have to have a hell of an ego to still be so confident." I mean, that moment was incredible, one for the history books. With everything that's happened, it took away from that moment a bit, but now it's on my mind.
“I knew when all of this started that we were going to lose,” Phantom signs with a tight smile. “I don’t know that anymore.”
Dusk nods, his hands moving quickly. “He’s not as strong as we thought.”
And it’s a comfort. For so long, the shadow king has been alive and unstoppable in my nightmares. I'd see him standing, his cloak billowing behind him, his sword out and ready to strike. I'd feel that tip slicing into my throat. The scene would play over and over again, and I'd wake, a scream on my lips, then touch my face and the scar by my ear and know that it wasn't so much a nightmare as a memory.
Too many mornings I'd lie awake after, heart pounding, replaying the events of that day, the day when everything fell apart. I didn't know at the time what had happened to me. For one second there was just an explosion of pain, then a ringing in my ears that wouldn't go away... and finally, nothing. Every sound from the world was simply gone.
I was afraid. Confused. When I stepped in the way to save Phantom, I'd expected to die. I'd known that I couldn't let my friend, or the future king of our world, fall because he didn't see the truth in time. Didn't realize just how dark his father's soul was. Death I was ready for. This? Not so much. Continuing to live, feeling broken, it's not something a warrior is ever prepared for.
The only thing that kept me going were my brothers, and the idea that there was no other choice. It wasn't that I thought we would win. I never thought that. The king was just too powerful. It was that I had no other place to be than at the side of Dusk and Phantom.
Being taken by the fae, kept as prisoners, tortured and forced to do unspeakable things... that was just another delay. Another chapter in this fight between father and sons. We were always going to come back here. But with Ann, maybe, just maybe, we could win.
Not that we get any say in the matter.
“The light from her hands…strong enough to take him?” Dusk mouths the words as he signs.
I nod. There was something blinding and beautiful about her light, like it came from the heart of her. I’ve never seen anything like it, never been so drawn to anything as I am to her. But as beautiful as it was, it was also dangerous. Capable of taking down a smoke dragon and possibly their father too. If she could learn to harness that light, if we could have her use it at the right moment, this war could be over and done with no more bloodshed.
Not that I think that will happen.
“Yes,” I sign. "If she's willing to."
We keep walking. The darkness seeming to stretch on forever. Phantom picks up another shard and puts it in his pack with the others then turns and leans back against a tree. I don't even have to wonder what he's thinking about. I know that look. He never thought it would turn out this way with their father.
“Until our mother died, he was different,” he signs slowly, his face an expression of disbelief.
I watched them interact. I might have been there for the part of their lives when they lost their mother, but it was never the same for me. She was their everything. Their light in the world. She made them smile and laugh. She simply had the kind of presence that filled a room. But to me, she was never anything more than a kind queen. Someone I was glad allowed me around.
But for them, she was their mother, and her passing was the end of their childhood.
Dusk moves closer to Phantom and his brows draw together. “Fucking grave trolls.” He shakes his head and drops a hand on Phantom’s shoulder.
I’ve heard the story before. Grave trolls and rot monkeys are much the same as predatory animals in this world. Sometimes, humans fall to them. But more often than not, they live almost in separate places. Grave trolls and rot monkeys stick to dark corners of the woods, places where no reasonable person would go. Their mother was nowhere near a dangerous place. Off for a stroll, I believe, yet somehow they got her.
After the attack, the boys had found her. Dying. They tried to save her. Tried to revive her. But it didn’t work out. They'd returned home with faces puffy and red from crying and hands covered in her blood. I'd gathered most of what I knew from the guards who found them, still trying to save their mother, even though she was already gone.
At the time, I'd cried alone in my room, then hid my emotions to be there for my friends. Even as a boy I understood that her passing was sad, but that it was more important to help them than to deal with my own confusing feelings about loss, and my own mother.
