A Warm Heart in Winter

by J. R. Ward

  “No, she didn’t say how he seemed.” Qhuinn took a deep breath. “Other than, as usual, the young made him smile.”

  Rhamp took the pitcher and played with it, slamming the water’s surface with the base. His sister found this incredibly entertaining and clapped for him, and as she grinned and flashed her four white teeth, Blay pictured her sitting at the end of Luchas’s hospital bed.

  “I know I said it before, but I just… I wish I could have helped him.” Qhuinn shook his head. “I didn’t know he’d reached his limit with things. He seemed so fine—I mean, not fine, fine. But the same. And maybe that was the thing. He clearly didn’t feel like he was getting any better and he didn’t want to go on where he was. I really wish I—”

  “He left you a note.”

  Qhuinn’s head snapped around. “What?”

  “In his room.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “The envelope is on the rolling tray, but it’s hard to notice.” Blay put up his palm. “And don’t worry, Manny’s making sure no one goes in there but you. So when you’re ready, go—and if it’s now, I’ll take care of these guys.”

  But first, you need to tell him, Blay thought. You need to tell him what you did when you spoke to Luchas.

  With a burst of strength, Qhuinn got to his feet. But then he seemed to stall out.

  Instead of leaving, he ended up putting the cover down on the toilet and sitting in a way that was angled toward the exit. Like part of him was running down to the training center—and the other part was frozen out of fear of what he would find.

  “What if it’s my fault?” he whispered.

  Blay cleared his throat. “Actually, I think it was mine.”

  Qhuinn rolled his eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I saw him the night before the storm, too.”

  As his mate looked over sharply, Blay wished he could change places with Layla and be the one who’d brought the kids down. No, wait. Then Layla would have said what he had—and he wouldn’t want her to carry that burden.

  “You were in the OR.” Blay was aware of his heart starting to beat even harder, and also that the bathroom, which had previously seemed just fine for temperature, had turned into a sauna. “He was coming from the pool. He stopped and asked how you were doing.”

  “You giving him a medical update would hardly freak him out—”

  “He didn’t know you’d been elevated to the King’s personal guard.” As Qhuinn stiffened, Blay put his palms out. “I never would have divulged the information, but I wasn’t aware you hadn’t told him. I mean, I just… I can understand why you’d keep that to yourself given everything that was going on with him, but… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Qhuinn opened his mouth. Closed it. Then rubbed his thighs. “Yeah, I thought I had mentioned to you to keep it on the down low. I just didn’t want to pile on. You know the glymera. A brother who’s a Brother? That would be hard on anyone, but where Luchas was at? And then add on the personal guard shit?”

  “I’m really sorry. It’s killing me.”

  “No, listen, it’s okay.” Qhuinn cleared his throat. “Was he… bothered by it?”

  “I’ll be honest. He was surprised.”

  Oh, God, Blay thought. As he did the math, it was possible that he was one of the last people who had interacted with Luchas.

  The idea that Qhuinn’s brother might have been an afterthought for everyone in the house broke Blay’s heart. And on some level, he knew that wasn’t true. The male had been a part of the community, and yet… everybody had their own lives, lives with mates and young, lives within the war with the Lessening Society and now whatever new threat had come to Caldwell. There had always been injuries and nightly stressors, changes of seasons, problems with cars, supplies that needed reordering, guns to clean, daggers to sharpen.

  Life. With all its multi-faceted layers.

  And Luchas had had his own. Such as it was.

  Had he felt left behind? And why hadn’t someone asked him if that had been true?

  “I just want to take it back,” Blay said in a voice that cracked. “I don’t want to have been responsible in any way for…”

  Qhuinn shook his head. “You aren’t. There are so many reasons without that.”

  The words were the right ones—and some part of Qhuinn must have believed them. His voice was steady and not condemning in any way.

  But that mismatched stare was elsewhere, not meeting Blay’s eyes.

  “I have to go down there.” Qhuinn got to his feet. “I need to see the note.”

  “I’ll take care of the kids.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  Justlikethat, Qhuinn was gone, the door to the bathroom opening and closing, a chill entering the warm, humid space.

  Or maybe the waft of cold was just how Blay was feeling.

  Qhuinn wasn’t an unfair male, and the love between them wasn’t something Blay questioned. But sometimes there were things you couldn’t come back from in relationships. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to work past them, or weren’t willing to try.

  But the reality that your mate had contributed to the death of your brother, even if it was inadvertently, was a tough one.

  Any way you looked at it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  As Qhuinn stood just inside his brother’s fifteen-by-fifteen-foot patient room, his brain fired up with an electric storm of shoulda/coulda/woulda’s. Maybe if they’d decorated this place? Like, wallpapered things and added a nice rug, hung oil paintings and thrown some expensive sheets on the hospital bed, maybe it would have—

  “Shut the fuck up,” he muttered as he looked over at the rolling table.

  And there it was. The letter.

  Blay was right. With the envelope that white color, it blended completely into the tray. And of course, Luchas had taken care to make sure it was perfectly flush with the corner, arranged with care.

  From across the way, the precise lettering, done with a narrow-tipped blue pen, in Luchas’s perfect penmanship, gave Qhuinn the chills.

  Somehow, even with all his injuries, he’d managed to write beautifully.

  Brother Mine.

  Qhuinn went over with the intention of picking the letter up, taking out whatever was inside, and absorbing the words that had been left for him. But he ultimately didn’t touch the thing, and it took him a minute to figure out why. Then it came to him… as soon as he read whatever had been written, it was truly done. His brother was truly gone.

  The finality of the death, the shocking, binary nature of finding Luchas’s frozen body out in the forest, had been transferred to the missive: As long as he didn’t read what was in there, his brother was still alive, in a way. They were both still in the in-between, something still left to be discovered, considered, reflected upon.

  Well… and then there was his terror about whatever the message was.

  Luchas had never been mean, but reality could be devastating.

  After all, Qhuinn knew exactly what it was like to be less than, through circumstances completely beyond your control. He hadn’t chosen his mismatched eyes; his brother hadn’t chosen to be abducted by Lash and tortured. So, yes, the last thing Qhuinn would ever do was rub Luchas’s nose in the very obvious reality that there had been a reversal of fortune for them both.

  Looking around, Qhuinn focused on the armchair. Usually when he’d come into this room, he’d find his brother there, a book open in his lap, a cup of tea on that table by the lamp. Because Luchas had always been dressed in clean things, and his hair freshly washed, and that cane set aside… it had been simpler to believe all was well. Or at least, all was improving, even if it was just at a snail’s pace.

  Qhuinn went over to the little table and picked up what his brother had been reading. Because it was easier than touching that last missive’s envelope.

  Ah, yes. A little light diversion before bed: The leather-bound volume was in the Old Language, something that was, giv
en the current status of Qhuinn’s head, wholly foreign and totally unreadable to him as he flipped through the pages.

  When he got to where a satin ribbon marked Luchas’s pause, he felt sick with sadness.

  This journey of letters and words and sentences and paragraphs would never be completed, the eyes that had traced the symbols that had been written now closed forever.

  With a sad capitulation, Qhuinn lowered himself into the chair his brother had spent so many hours in. He kept hold of the book, closing it up and cradling it in his hands. As he stared across at the empty bed, he pictured Layla with the twins and wondered exactly where the visit had occurred. It would help him picture it if he knew whether they’d been over there on the bed or here on the chair and ottoman.

  He would ask her for the details later.

  He wanted to hold on to the memory, even if it was one he had to create on his own.

  And maybe it was better that way. He wanted a picture-perfect, happy, imagined storyline of Layla coming down with the young and Luchas sitting in this chair with both of them in his lap. A poignant, final goodbye—

  Had Luchas had his plan already set? Or had it been later?

  As Qhuinn let his head fall back, he tried to stop his mind from spinning. When that failed miserably, he considered getting a bottle of Herradura. Then he upgraded that plan to asking Manny for some knockout drops in the form of nice, little white pills that would help him exit this miserable train at the REM Sleep Station.

  Surrounded by his brother’s few things, he thought back to an evening in his own timeline, one that he had never told Luchas about. One that only Blay really knew of.

  Because Blay had been the one who saved him from his own suicide attempt.

  And it was because of that that Qhuinn couldn’t blame his mate for what he’d said to Luchas. That one comment about the private guard was not the reason for it all—and besides, Blay had already proven himself and his loyalty and his compassion over and over again, throughout his life.

  There had been a lot of reasons why Luchas had chosen to walk out into that storm. So many reasons, all of which were tragic, none of which were a mystery.

  A news flash about the King’s private guard? Drop in the bucket.

  Qhuinn’s eyes returned to the rolling table. From his current angle, he couldn’t see the envelope, couldn’t read those two words that had been written upon it, couldn’t reach for the thing if he’d wanted to.

  And, he realized, he didn’t want to.

  He didn’t want to read whatever was in there. He’d rather have unfinished business forever…

  … as opposed to confirmation that maybe, just maybe, it was his fault because he’d been too busy, too negligent, too self-centered to take care of his own blood and make sure that Luchas was getting not just the medical care he needed, but the psychological counseling that was just as important to health and well-being.

  Maybe more important.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  One week later, Blay opened the door to his bedroom suite’s bathroom and leaned out. Across the way, the light in the walk-in closet was glowing, the illumination spilling onto the Persian carpet, making the jewel tones even brighter. He hesitated. Then retreated back and shut the door again.

  Looking around, he saw that everything was the same in the loo. The toothbrushes by the pair of sinks were in their separate holders and the pair of paste tubes, one Crest, the other Colgate, were teamed with their appropriate Oral-B partners. The Waterpik on one side was Qhuinn’s.

  It had been likewise in the shower, the shampoo and conditioner bottles where they had always been. The bar of soap was just a single in a dish, as they both used Ivory.

  Because it was ninety-nine percent pure. Whatever the hell that meant.

  At a loss, Blay lowered the toilet seat, rewrapped the bath towel around his body, and sat down. For some reason, it seemed vitally important to cover himself even though no one was in with him—and he remembered Qhuinn sitting in the same place during that bath time right after Luchas had been found.

  That was as close as he and his mate had been for the last seven nights.

  Oh, physically it had been largely the same, the two of them still sleeping side by side during the day and eating next to each other during meals. And then Blay had stayed on rotation, even as Qhuinn was not cleared to go back into the field yet. He was off until he passed a psych eval.

  Which, no surprise, no one had brought up and Qhuinn hadn’t volunteered for.

  Through the door, a muffled voice: “I’m going to go work out.”

  Blay cleared his throat and spoke louder than normal. “You’re skipping First Meal?”

  “I already ate. See you soon.”

  A moment later, there was a click of the door out into the hallway shutting.

  Blay dropped his head in defeat. At this point, he’d almost have preferred a slam, a stomp, a loud word. Instead, there was just this eerie politeness, an autopilot composure that had as much to do with the Qhuinn he knew as a muffler on a Shelby Mustang: His mate had retreated somewhere deep inside his own mind, his body all that remained. He had been like a ghost, floating around the house, skipping meals, working out, spending time alone in Luchas’s room.

  He hadn’t said what was in the letter.

  Which scared Blay and made him replay his self-blame game. Again and again and again.

  Getting to his feet, he walked out of the loo. His intention was to go and get dressed, but he ended up standing at the base of their bed. Both sets of pillows had indents on them and both sides of the sheets and covers had been halved back, the whole thing a tidy mirror image of itself. Usually, their bed was a mess: things on the floor, sheets tangled, duvet backwards or hanging off the headboard. In contrast, this disciplined disorder looked like a Sleep Number bed commercial, a stage set created to suggest that two people, a loving couple, had spent the night together.

  And that was accurate, he supposed. He and his mate had been on that mattress together, although he didn’t think either one of them had actually found any REM cycles. Blay certainly hadn’t.

  Pivoting to the walk-in closet, he went across and stood among their clothes. As with the pillows and sheets outside, there was a strict division, a his/his demarcation, the left all Blay’s, the right all Qhuinn’s.

  It was the same with the bed. Left was his, right was Qhuinn’s.

  The arrangement in here hadn’t been a particularly conscious thing, just a yours-and-mine that had made sense. They were pretty close in size, but the styles? Not a thing in common.

  He’d have been surprised if the guy had ever worn a loafer in his life. Okay, fine, maybe when Qhuinn had been younger and in his parents’ house.

  With duct tape to keep them on, no doubt.

  Blay went for his fighting clothes, taking a set of leathers off the hooks that were screwed into the wall. But then he remembered. He was off rotation tonight. Frankly, ever since Luchas’s death, he’d been surprised that he’d been allowed to go out at all, and he supposed that the continued a-okay meant he was doing a good job hiding everything he was feeling.

  As a corollary, he was also surprised Qhuinn hadn’t brought up his suspension from the field yet. The fact that there was no fight to get back on rotation from him was scary. Just like his weight loss, and his listless disinterest in anything but the kids. Seriously, thank God for the twins. It was clear that Rhamp and Lyric were keeping their father going, the nightly jobs of giving them baths and changing their clothes and feeding them seeming to consume all of Qhuinn’s attention and focus.

  Trying to stop the mind spins, Blay got dressed, pulling on a random button-down, a random set of slacks, the closest sweater. He was putting on socks when he realized he’d decided to leave the house.

  So he put on boots, instead of loafers, and then grabbed his North Face jacket and a pair of puffy gloves.

  Leaving his room—their room—he headed for the back stairs, and bottomed out
in the kitchen. First Meal had been served about twenty minutes before, so doggen were refilling platters with extra eggs and bagels for service. Blay waved to all of them casually, and tried to appear what he very much was not: He was screaming inside.

  As he exited through the garage, he remembered himself and his mate putting on all that snow gear to go out and take care of the shutters. Then he recalled Qhuinn being up on the ladder and stopping to look over his shoulder to the forest—as if he’d sensed something. But there was no way he could have caught the scent of his brother. The wind had been hitting the front of the house. Anything in the trees, especially from that kind of distance? Wouldn’t have carried to them.

  Strange.

  Blay took the back door out into garden, and as he emerged, he glanced over at the shutters they’d fixed. Then he closed his eyes. It was a while before he was able to dematerialize.

  When he re-formed, it was on the front steps of his parents’ house, and he realized that he hadn’t texted them that he was visiting on purpose. The last time he and Qhuinn had had problems, he’d come here—and his return tonight suggested they were back in the soup, as the saying went.

  No reason to shine a bright light on that possibility.

  Or… reality was more like it.

  He did get out his phone now, though. It took him three tries to get the breezy, conversational tone right. Then he pressed send, pocketed the Samsung, and rang the—

  “Son!” Rocke said as he whipped the door open. “You know you can just walk in.”

  His sire was just the same as always, wearing his favorite cardigan, khaki pants, and worn leather slippers. With his pipe in one hand and reading glasses on his nose, he looked like he could have been ordered out of the Dad Catalog.

  Blay smiled. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m just paying bills in the den, and mahmen is making bread.” Rocke laughed. “We sound like something in a Hallmark movie. From the fifties.”

  Blay tried to imagine he and Qhuinn after the child-rearing was done, the two of them rattling around a big house in a happy decline that was going to take a lot of time, living for visits from the grandkids.