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I want to pull her back into my arms, but I’m torn, pulled by my family’s distress.
Either she’s thinking the same thing. . . or she is eager to say goodbye because she takes a step back from me. “I should let you go.” But then her eyes get watery as they lift. “Goodbye.”
She nods repeatedly, her head bobbing up and down quickly, and the tears spill down her cheeks.
I want to say more words. About how she has become the most important thing in the world to me though I have known her so short a time. About how she has shown me, who is so acquainted with death, what it means to truly live. About how I wish I could spend all of my life with her, my beloved.
Instead, I bow, all my arms at my side to keep from grabbing her back up again, then turn and sprint away.
I run for many, many hours without ceasing. I must make up the distance the train brought us plus the two days Ksenia and I walked and ran. It is much faster going on my own, but as quickly as I can move, I am no winged creature.
The sun crests in the sky and falls again. I run up the side of one mountain, down, and up and down another.
I am finally beginning to feel fatigue set in when I recognize the landscape itself, no longer navigating only by the stars. I am close to home. But what will I find after the many hours I’ve been out of contact with my family?
I approach the castle slowly.
Nothing appears amiss. There’s no war of angel runes crashing or battle that I can observe. And yet it all feels very, very wrong as well, in a way I cannot put my finger on.
And then I see it—or at least something.
There’s a broken window in the dining hall. I step into shadow and lope up to the window for a better view.
All the breath leaves my lungs as soon as I look inside.
My brothers, Abaddon and Remus/Romulus, are bound, hissing and spitting as they fight the chains they are tied with. Hannah, as well, is bound tightly to a chair. I do not see the baby, but now that I’m close, I can hear her crying from a nearby room.
And there, in the center of all of them, is something I can believe even less.
It is Layden, towering over them.
The brother we thought long dead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
KHARON
“Let us go, brother!” Abaddon shouts as I watch in shadow through the window. “We did not know you lived!”
But Layden, the one I remember to be the kindest and tenderest of us, only turns on him with his face set in a mask of fury. “You did not check very hard.”
“We waited a week before burying you!”
“And yet, as our Father tortured me, tearing the wings from my back, what did you do? What did you do as I sat there, begging you all for help? Nothing!” Layden shouts right in Abaddon’s face. “When he poured scorching, searing, burning liquid hell-metal straight from the forge over my back to ensure my wings would never grow again, what did you do?”
“Nothing!” Abaddon shouts back. “We did nothing because he beat us into dogs who obeyed even as he did the worst things to us. You were the only one courageous enough to fight back. I’m sorry, brother, you’ll never know how sorry—”
My hand slams to the window sill as my brother spills the apology I wish was coming from my lips.
But Layden is having none of it.
“So sorry that you then leaped to my rescue? No. Still, you stood by as he lifted the sword and stopped my beating heart.”
“I slayed him moments later in vengeance.”
“And you think that matters?” Layden shouts. “I had already become this.” He gestures wildly at his wingless back. “And then you buried me in the cold ground.”
“I tried to revive you. I spent hours at your side pouring my healing into you. We thought you were dead. That the hell metal sword had—”
“It did not. But you were so quick to dispose of me that I spent the next year in the earth, and when my spark finally restarted my heart, I found I’d been buried alive.”
“I’m so sorry, brother—”
“Do not call me that!” Layden cries. “We were never brothers. We were monstrous mistakes, borne of a madman and a thief. And tonight, I will rectify it all. I will fix what has always been broken. Our entire existence.”
Remus cackles from where he’s chained to the chair beside Abaddon as Layden bends down to draw something on the stone floor in chalk.
“What do you mean. Bro—” Abaddon stops himself. “Layden. What does that mean?”
Layden lifts his head from where he’s bent in front of them, pausing his drawing for a moment to answer. “It means that we were never meant to be in this realm. I learned much after I finally clawed my way out of the ground. Our ancestors were only one of many parasites that found this plane of existence. Most of them eventually found the grace and conscience to realize their mistake in coming here and return to where they came from. Except for, of course, the one who created us and called himself our father. But I can fix it. I can send us all back there. Back to the Great Hall.”
