Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Tohr glanced back. “Is the elder Lyric comfortable?”
“Doc Jane has been great. Her pain’s under control, and she’s pretty lucid. For now, at least. I don’t know how much more time we have.”
“How’s Blay?”
“Braver than anybody else in the situation.” Qhuinn had to clear his throat to finish with: “Which is not a surprise.”
“You need to stop trying to be in two places at once. You should be home with all of them. I know that’s where your heart is.”
“With the King’s son gone, how could I not be downtown?”
As a tense silence bloomed between them, Tohr looked back at the corridor wall and Qhuinn studied the brother’s profile. After his brother’s shellan had been murdered by the Lessening Society, Tohr had disappeared for a time. When he’d come back, that lock of hair in the front had gone white and his dark blue eyes had been cold as graves. Word had it that if you committed suicide, you couldn’t get into the Fade and be reunited with those you loved, and it’d been clear that that cautionary legend was the only reason he’d still been alive.
His pregnant mate, the love of his life, shot in the face.
It was too horrific to comprehend. Just like a brother who walked out into the cold night to die alone, like a daughter nearly crushed in the street… like a son gone AWOL in the field of combat.
“So you know about these, huh.” As Tohr spoke abruptly, his stare shifted back over again. “The cracks in the concrete. How they were made.”
“I…”
“It’s okay.” The brother reached out once more, and this time, there was no shaking to his hand. “What you’ve heard is true. This is where they came to find me, after my Wellsie and our young inside her were… killed. I knew, when I saw my brothers all at once—I knew.”
“I can’t imagine what that was like.”
“Yeah, you can,” Tohr countered. “You’ve been there—in your own way.”
The ghost of Luchas seemed to drift between them, and for a second, Qhuinn could see his dead brother with painful clarity, his withered body, his butchered hands. They’d nursed him back to some level of health after they’d found him in that drum. But it hadn’t been all the way, not by a long shot.
Then again, even if his body had been whole, the mind and the soul had been destroyed.
He thought about L.W. and prayed—prayed—the hotheaded sonofabitch was somewhere safe.
Tohr took another draw from the mug’s lip. “I’m glad your Lyric was okay tonight. In the middle of that street.”
“So am I.” He closed his eyes. “It feels like death is everywhere right now.”
When he popped his lids back open, Tohr was in front of him. “That’s always the truth of things, though. We just can’t think about the reality all the time or we’d be paralyzed by how thin the divide between us and tragedy truly is. In a split second, everything can change… and in the end, everyone dies at some point.”
Qhuinn swallowed hard, knowing that his daughter had been saved by a fluke, and yet Tohr’s first shellan had been killed by one, too: Wrong places, wrong time. Wellsie hadn’t been a target; she’d just crossed paths with a lesser who’d had a gun. Meanwhile, Lyric had just crossed the street, at a particular moment, in a strong wind, when there had happened to be a billboard angled in just the right way.
Except tonight, his daughter had been spared by a quick-thinking stranger, while Tohr’s—
“Don’t do that to yourself.”
Qhuinn shook back to attention. “I-I’m sorry?”
The brother put his hand on Qhuinn’s shoulder. “It’s a good thing your daughter was spared. You don’t need to punish yourself just because luck was with your family tonight. I wouldn’t have it any other way. No matter what happened in my own past—and I’m sure Wrath feels the same about the present.”
Fuck, Qhuinn didn’t want to even imagine L.W. being dead.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “For the loss of your shellan and son, all those years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever said that to you before.”
Tohr’s head turned back to the cracks in the cement. “You don’t have to. We’re brothers, remember. And you’ve had more than your own fair share of tragedy. Some things don’t have to be spoken between survivors like us.”
All Qhuinn could do was nod. He didn’t trust his voice.
“On that note, your hellren needs you right now.” Tohr took a deep breath. “And when you see your father-in-law, tell Rocke that I’m here for him. Now and… afterward—”
“You asked me if I needed something.”
“Yes?”
Qhuinn rubbed his face. “I think I came here to find you and ask you for forgiveness. How fucked-up and unfair is that? I’m just grateful my daughter is okay and that feels wrong.”
The brother slowly nodded his head. “Survivor’s guilt is a pernicious kind of grief. I walk that path myself still. Time makes it better, but it never completely goes away.”