Now that two years had passed and their friendship had thoroughly disintegrated, Draven could admit Staatvelter was mildly attractive in a certain light, like the light of the fire that was playing across the long, sloping angles of his face. Artysaedra didn’t have terrible taste in men, he supposed. Staatvelter had removed his borrowed armour to cook and was sitting in an unlaced buff coat, bare chest peeking through it, the shine of scars crisscrossing his skin.
The sight was still nothing compared to Kinrae, though, who stole Draven’s attention the second he reentered the clearing alongside Artysaedra, both with a wide bundle of sticks underneath each of their arms. Kinrae’s slim torso, encapsulated by intricately smithed steel, made Draven swallow against his dry mouth for the hundredth time that day. His brother looked like some ancient general who’d stepped out of the musty pages of an epic. His long hair was bound high on his head, his cheekbones sharp in a way that somehow suited his delicate eyelashes. The firelight caught his silver eyes and made them gleam like his armour. The whole ensemble had wormed its way into Draven’s fantasies from the moment Kinrae had spun in a slow circle in his chambers and in a self-conscious voice asked Draven if he looked foolish or not.
Draven had never wanted his brother to bend him over and press him into the dirt more than he did now. It had been a long time since he’d had sex, and he wanted nothing more now than to feel the bite of those gauntlets into his hips, his brother’s heated breath puff at the back of his neck, his brother’s cock—
He deliberately forced his thoughts elsewhere before his prick could stir any more in his leggings. He hoped the scent of the stew and the pungent, earthy landscape around them covered any scent of his arousal.
Stars. Now is not the time, he yelled at himself internally. You just saw a heaping pile of dead people and Kinrae almost choked on his own tongue out of panic until you talked him down from it. Your screwed up, incestuous fantasies can wait.
“Hey, guys?” Artysaedra said, dropping a pile of sticks. Everyone looked at her. “Has anyone else noticed that shit keeps disappearing?”
Reflexively, Draven said, “I had noticed you’d left, yes.”
Artysaedra picked up a stick and threw it at him with what had to have been all of her demonic strength. It shot through the air like an arrow. Draven barely had time to throw his arm up to block it. The stick shattered against his vambrace.
He lowered his arm to gape at her. “You could have killed me with that!”
“Whoops,” she deadpanned.
Across the camp, Kinrae set his rattling bundles of sticks down next to Staatvelter and paused to give Beaker a pat as she circled his legs. “Do you need assistance with dinner preparations, Guardian Staatvelter?”
Staatvelter pointed blindly over his shoulder with the wooden spoon, wiggling it. “Grab the bowls from the pack. Stew’s almost done.”
Supper was distributed among the group without conversation. Draven was given his by Kinrae, who failed to meet anyone’s gaze and sat next to Staatvelter afterward. It made Draven feel terrible. After supper, he decided: after supper, he would try to get Kinrae to talk to him about what had happened.
With a quiet sigh, Draven tilted the lip of the wooden bowl to his mouth and slurped at his stew with gusto. His tongue healed as quickly as it burned, and an array of flavours burst across his palette. There was the smooth, bland taste of the beans, the heartiness of the potatoes, and the watery acidity of the mushy chunks of tomato. Even Draven had to admit the chili powder helped the stew, and the peppers gave it an edge of added sweetness. It wasn’t bad for slaves’ grub.
When everyone was finished and the silence of the forest was sufficiently creepy in Draven’s humble opinion, Artysaedra started unbuckling and untying her armour. She shed it across the bed of leaves and small shrubs they’d made their temporary home—a snake shimmying out of her old skin. Then she gave a sprawling stretch, ears and tail twitching. “So are we going to talk about the vanishing shit now?”
“Vanishing as in petty penny tricks vanishing?” Draven asked. He nestled his empty bowl in the leaves next to his crossed legs. “Or vanishing as in your sense of propriety under the influence of alcohol vanishing?”
“Vanishing as in real magic vanishing, you cock. It took Kinrae and I half an hour to find that wood. Half of the shit we touched just—poof—right in our hands. Not a trace left.”
“I noticed it back in the moorland, too,” Kinrae said, quiet, meeting no one’s eyes. “There was a bush of bell heather that was there and… Then it was not, as though I’d imagined it.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my life,” Artysaedra said, “but I’ve never seen something like this. Not even when I ate those weird mushrooms on accident.”
“On accident,” Staatvelter parroted with air quotes and a roll of his eyes.
Lips pursed, Artysaedra stuck up three of her fingers at him in a gesture Draven didn’t recognize and then ruffled her messy black bob and flattened her ears. “Are things falling into the ether? Is that what this is?”
Staatvelter said, “That seems—”
“I wonder, could it be instead that they’re falling out of existence entirely?” Kinrae asked, and everyone looked at him. A beat of silence passed through the camp, and Kinrae shifted. His gaze slipped toward the river. “I…only mean to suggest that Realms appear fully created every day. Is there anything suggesting they cannot perform the reverse function?”
“You think this Realm is just going up in smoke?” Artysaedra asked, her tone edged with facetiousness. “Millions of years, but this Realm is the first of them all that decides, oh, I fancy I’ll just kill myself today.”
Kinrae visibly deflated and picked at the edge of his empty bowl with his thumb. “No. Forgive me. It was an outlandish suggestion.”
The sight of his brother hunched over and quiet had Draven glaring at his sister. “It’s good suggestion, Saedra. Patterns always begin with an anomaly. Just because a Realm’s never vanished before doesn’t mean one couldn’t. Hell, maybe one already has. How would we know?”
Staatvelter nodded from where he was feeding sticks to the snapping fire. “I’m not one to readily agree with Draven, but I think he’s right. It is a possibility. The real question is what triggered this—”
“The real question is why there’s a massacre going on here,” Artysaedra cut in. “No Realm tossed up its proverbial hands and killed all of these people. Hollowsouls—an army of them by the number of tracks we saw—hunted them down and slaughtered them. That’s the real threat here.”
“And we’ll continuing tracking the hollowsouls,” Staatvelter argued. “But if something is wrong with the fabric of this Realm, we’re obligated to look into the event, in case this isn’t a one-time occurrence.”
“We’re here on my grandmother’s orders. To figure out what here connects to the fucking Guardian murders, and look what we found—more murders. Tracking the culprit is what’s important, and it’s what’ll lead us to the citizens we need to help, too, not some fanciful expedition through the dead flora and fauna to figure out why this Realm is committing suicide.”
“Fine, Artysaedra,” Staatvelter snapped, and it was the angriest Draven had heard him sound all night. He rubbed at his eyes. “I wasn’t suggesting any different, but there are too many things we don’t know right now. Stars forbid we take it in stride, assess our findings, and make a plan.”
“This again,” Artysaedra said snidely. Her lip curled up enough that the light of the fire glimmered off her fangs. “I’m not some fucking nance who’s going to sit around while people die, but if that’s what you want, then fine. That’s what we’ll do, Staatvelter.”
“You’ll run off during your watch the second we’re all asleep. I know exactly how you work. I want your word you’ll stay here.”
“Oh, fuck you. You really think I’d—”
“I do.” The two of them locked eyes for several long seconds. Draven felt distinctly awkward sitting th
ere. “Can I trust you?”
“Will we head out before dawn?”
“Yes.”
“Then yeah.” She got to her feet and turned on her heels in the leaves, but it wasn’t quick enough for Draven to miss the sheer anger dripping from her face. “I’ll take first watch. You can take the last, Staatvelter, since you’ve gone through more time changes than the rest of us today combined.”
With that, she went to walk the perimeter.
“Do you maybe want to be a little less brutal with my sister next time, Staatvelter?” Draven asked even though he knew Artysaedra was still in earshot.
“You want me to be nicer to her now?” Staatvelter asked. “I thought you didn’t want me touching her with a ten-foot pole.”
“We both know your cock’s not quite that long.”
Staatvelter gave a tired smile, which he wiped away with a swipe of his hand. “Trust me, Your Highness. You don’t have anything to worry about. I won’t be laying a hand on anyone.” Before Draven could say anything, Staatvelter laid down in the leaves and turned over so that the long line of his back was on display. He pillowed his head on his arm.
After that, the camp was quiet. The fire continued to burn. Beaker—the traitor—curled up behind Staatvelter and went to sleep on her back with her paws in the air. Kinrae went down to the river to wash out the pot and bowls. Realizing his own bowl was still sitting next to him, Draven snatched it up. This was his opportunity to talk to Kinrae about what was going on with him, and Draven was going to take it.
He clutched his bowl between his gauntlets and stood. With each step toward the river, his hands grew sweatier inside their sheepskin lining. If Kinrae heard the crunch of leaves and shift of sand and bank rock, he made no indication. He continued sloshing water around inside of the empty pot, knelt on the wide riverbank. The campfire glinted off the steel of his backplate, the only thing save for the splash of water that gave away his position in the dark. Above them, the moonlight was hidden behind a veil of clouds. Night was a death shroud over them.
Draven’s heart was in his throat by the time he closed the distance between them. Floundering, he shifted from foot to foot in the sand and laboured over what to say. Eventually, he decided on, “You… Ah, you missed a bowl.” The words made him cringe even as he said them.
Wordlessly, Kinrae held out his hand for the bowl. It was an awkward moment for Draven as he decided whether to hand the bowl over or to start the conversation again.
I should have practiced this.
“Here,” Draven said, and passed his bowl to his brother. With nothing to occupy his hands now, he tugged at the lobe of his ear. The steel of his gauntlet was cold, just like the freezing front of air that had swept in with the night and was rolling off the river. It gnawed through the laced seams of Draven’s leggings. “Can… Can we talk, Brother? About what happened between you and Saedra.”
Kinrae said nothing. He only continued cleaning.
Say something, Brother, Draven thought at him, but the silence grew. The distance between them stretched and stretched with every second of continued quiet. Draven felt marooned in it.
He watched his brother slosh water in the pot before setting it aside, taking up a bowl. He wanted to say something, but Kinrae was unreachable. He was flesh wrapped over some uncharted universe. There were depths to him Draven would have sold his soul to have breached. It drove him mad—to be so close to his brother and so incapable of knowing the thoughts and emotions underneath his skin. He flexed his jaw as Kinrae set to cleaning another bowl. Watching his brother’s hands work, all Draven could think was that the water had to have been like ice against them, the kind of cold that burned until it felt like nothing. Draven wanted to fold his own hands over his brother’s and feel warmth bloom in Kinrae’s fingertips—feel Kinrae leach Draven’s heat and make it his own.
Look at me, Draven thought. Please just acknowledge I’m here for you. Let me in. Let me help you.
Desperate, Draven went down on his knees and stilled his brother’s motions with a hand to his forearm. Steel clicked against steel. “Please, Kinrae. Talk to me. I’m worried about you. What you said back there—”
“I don’t wish to discuss what I said,” Kinrae said. “It was nothing. Please forget it.”
“I can’t.” You’re hurt, he wanted to say. You’re hurt, and it breaks me. But the wrong words came out. “If you don’t want to be the Saeinfinae, you need to tell Father that when we get home,” Draven said, but the second he did, Kinrae stood up, pulling away. “Kinrae—”
“You know I cannot do that.”
“There’s nothing stopping you.”
“There’s everything stopping me, Brother,” Kinrae said, and he looked lost, so lost. He turned toward the camp, the distant firelight playing off his face, then turned back. He opened his mouth several times before closing it again. “I can’t,” he said finally. “I can’t.”
He just needed a push, Draven thought. One push and he’d see how easy it was—to cast off obligation, to be happy, to be free. Draven knew it. It was the same push that he’d needed, back when he’d been cowed by his parents, when he’d let his mother’s tongue lash him raw, into submission, when he’d let butlers knot his throat with jabots, when he’d let tutors bruise his knuckles without protesting, when he’d watched the servants haul away his test tubes and beakers, when they’d stripped his pantry of every ingredient he’d worked hard to gather, when they’d torn every finery from his room the first time he’d protested taking chaperoned outings with potential wives, when he’d been a scared child, convinced that if he stepped a toe out of line he’d be beaten or thrown into Lutana’s streets with the vagrants. It never happened. The only thing that had was his prolonged misery.
Draven stood up. “They can’t do anything to hurt you, you know? Not in any way that matters.”
“That’s not what I worry about,” Kinrae said, and sighed. “Draven, if it were only that, this would not be insurmountable. I was born to lead our people, and our people’s people, and I have spent my entire life learning to do so. I cannot abandon our people out of egotism.”
Draven shook his head. “Brother, you know you don’t owe your life to strangers, nor do you owe it to our parents. No duty is worth your suffering. No stranger’s life is worth your pain. Our parents have ruled for two million years. Let them rule another two million—”
“You find that feasible?”
“—or if they want to, let them produce another heir.” Draven sighed. “If you think you’re trapped, it is because they’ve made you believe that.”
Kinrae pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I believe nothing but the truth. We are in times of tribulation now, if what we’ve seen and what our grandmother has told us are to be believed. There are not millennia to spare while another prince is reared. It is now that the people need us, and I will not squander my title—nor will I abandon my station—not when I am needed. If I run, why shouldn’t they?”
“You really think the Infinity is short of glorious demons in power whom the people can admire? There are always others, Kinrae. Our family didn’t fall apart when I stopped attending lessons. The Infinity won’t collapse if you don’t lay claim to it.”
“Draven, you don’t understand—”
“I understand that you’re miserable. I understand that this hurts you,” Draven said. He stepped forward and tenderly butted his fist against his brother’s breastplate. “You aren’t their slave, Kinrae. Stop acting like it.”
“I am their heir,” Kinrae said, and all the frustration left his voice. He looked like a man put upon, defeated. His shoulders sagged, and Draven’s heart sank with them. “It is no different.”
“No. Please, Kinrae, enough of this self-sacrificing tirade they’ve forced down your throat,” Draven begged, his voice little more than a whisper lost to the wind and the rush of the river. “You are more than an heir. You are more than you believe. A poet, a poor excuse for a mu
sician, my brother. You are so much. You have a choice. You can choose your own future.”
Kinrae closed his eyes, closed himself off. “I cannot.”
“Kinrae—please. You have to stand up for yourself. You have to— Look at me. Please.” When his brother didn’t, Draven’s patience snapped. He grabbed his brother’s head and pulled it toward him, and Kinrae’s eyes shot open as Draven’s voice pierced the dead night: “Don’t let them decide what you can and can’t have in this life. What you want isn’t unreasonable. It isn’t wrong.”
At that, Kinrae’s eyes went wide, and then even the river grew silent. The world narrowed down to the two of them, staring at one another, noses almost grazing. It narrowed to breath and blood, the two of them standing there. It was only after a small eternity that Draven realized how close they truly were, what line he’d just crossed. In his hands, Kinrae’s jaw was cold, but his breath was warm against Draven’s lips. Time crawled to a halt while their eyes locked, but in the end, Draven couldn’t keep his from wandering, not in this proximity to his brother. His gaze flitted down toward Kinrae’s mouth. His stomach dropped. He wanted. He wanted. Before he could apologize, his brother’s lips parted, and then—
And then Kinrae was shoving Draven back harshly. Draven tripped over the detritus and sand of the riverbank until he finally managed to catch his balance. When he stood upright and steady once more, he found himself panicking. He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have been so careless. What if Kinrae suspected him now? What if he’d seen the truth? “I’m— Kinrae, I’m—”
“What I want does not matter. I cannot have it.” Kinrae’s words were cold, sharp, like the edge of a sword. Stunned at his tone alone, Draven froze. “Please do neither of us the disservice of pretending otherwise and leave me be, Draven.”
Draven reached out. “Kinrae, I—”
“Do not touch me again.”
Without another word, Kinrae abandoned Draven and the dishes on the riverbank. Draven watched him go, unable to find his mental footing. He could smell the river, the forest bed, a hint of salt, and his brother: the sharpness of lightning—but instead of the wild smell of an approaching storm, this time the storm was dissipating, rolling into the distance, dying away.
A Shard of Sea and Bone Page 27
