Page 15 of A Bond of Ice and Glass (Crowned By Wings #2)

NOBLE

I lean on the brick wall and watch my brother step out of Maelena’s room.

I can’t help but wonder when Loch began to change into the man he is now.

For most of my life, and the little contact I had with him, I’ve pretended the half-witch side to Loch wasn’t real.

We have the same mother, and it’s easy enough to only see my mother in him.

He looks like her for the most part, whereas I look like my father. I don’t know who Loch’s father is.

It’s always been a secret my parents kept and took to their graves.

But now when I look at Loch, I see the witch side I’ve tried to forget.

Witches are tricky creatures, and more than once, I’ve wished my brother wasn’t tainted by their stain. Now I’m beginning to see Loch for what he is, and I don’t like it. He’s becoming a liability.

He pauses at the door, tightening his gloves and smoothing his hands down his clothes. For the first time in months, I really look at my half-brother. It hurts to see how much he’s changed for this war.

How much the war has already begun to shape us all—breed us into something darker and unrelatable.

Loch has always been strange, even as a boy, but I assumed he grew out of it while he was away.

He didn’t. He’s dived into the strangeness; he might as well be drowning in it.

My father called him “the bastard-born waste” anytime Loch was brought up, but I defended him.

Even if it cost me a beating. I have always defended Loch, and I bet I will to my grave, but…

These last few weeks have brewed something new in me.

Something I never thought I’d feel about my brother.

Doubt. And doubt can plant the worst kind of seeds in you because they don’t just grow. They fester.

I tilt my head at him, keeping to the shadows. He’s taking this too far. He’s messing with Maelena too much. I’m worried he’s going to break her mind and soul, never mind just her heart, before she can help us.

My father said there were no lines to cross in a war, but my mother taught me that lines of the heart and mind should never be crossed.

Loch is using magic—he always has done—to twist the lines over each other.

It’s changing him. I don’t know how magic works for the witches, but I’m certain that whatever Loch is using is hurting him.

And it’s hurting Maelena, too. I can’t let that happen.

Hurting her was never part of the plan.

I look at his hair. I swear it’s a shade darker, and he stands a bit straighter now too, with a presence he’s never had before. It’s surprising, and the brother I knew is gone now. I have to accept that and stop seeing the weak, pale boy in my mind. Even my men are answering to him now.

They never took him seriously before.

His gloves make a noise as he clenches his hand, and I’m tempted to rip them off. He never takes them off anymore, and I’m growing suspicious.

What’s my brother trying to hide?

He wears leather all the way up to his neck, covering every inch of his body, and a heavy cloak covering the rest of him.

Whereas it might be an unusual fashion choice, it seems intentional.

I think I know why, but the truth of it lingers in the back of my throat.

Because if it’s true, and he’s really crossed that line, then I don’t know how any of us are going to come back from that.

I watch as Loch’s eyes slowly find mine, which are definitely a shade darker, none of the light that mimicked my mother’s eyes.

I hardly see her in him right now, and I hate it.

Loch is the closest living thing I have left of my mother.

He’s my only flesh and blood. I wonder if he knows that I suspect something’s amiss with him or if he thinks I’m an idiot that never reads any of the books that are littered in the library below that warn about two sides of magic. Two sides of the ether they use.

“We need to talk,” I tell him.

Loch adjusts his gloves, his eyes lowered to them. “What’s wrong?” he asks, voice calm, bored even.

“Alone,” I command him.

I nod my head down the corridor for him to follow, and walk away before he can make up an excuse to avoid me.

He has been doing that far too much recently, and he needs to remember that this is my home.

I’m the ruler and not him. We go to my room in silence, only our boots hitting the stone, and several servants drop their gaze the moment they see Loch behind me.

They all hate him. Or they fear him. I’m not sure which is worse.

I go and stand by the window, crossing my arms and watch him come in.

“Shut my door, Loch.”

He does, the slam echoing in the silent living room.

This room was our mother’s before I took it as mine, and it still has her things lying about.

The red couch with white flowers printed up the sides, the wooden carved dragons and horses that line the stone fireplace, and my favourite thing she ever made—the glass statue of the witch goddess by the drink cabinet.

If Loch knows they were our mother’s, he doesn’t show it by looking at them.

Instead, he pours himself a drink of very expensive whiskey and quietly sips on it as he waits for me.

Part of me hoped he would apologise for what he did yesterday, that he would come to me first and tell me he went too far.

We have all done that once or twice, gone too far when the pressure of the situation is burning down our throats.

I’ve made so many mistakes, but I always admit when I’ve fucked up.

It’s the right thing to do. I’ve never heard Loch apologise for anything he’s done.

Yet… as his brother, I still hoped.

I make sure he is looking into my eyes before I begin.

“You weren’t supposed to kill the prisoners.

That wasn’t part of the plan. What the fuck happened yesterday?

We needed information!” I blow out an angry breath.

“We need to know exactly what Erax is doing and what his plans are to get Mae back, to fight the rebellions we have funded in the cities. I spent years building those rebellions and making sure Erax never got to them. That army is my making, and now they are threatened because of our lack of information. Do you know how many people died to get us those soldiers? They were royal fucking soldiers! By killing them, you’re…

Well, we’ll have to find others, and I bet Erax wouldn’t let the same thing happen again.

There’s no point in what you did yesterday other than to show off to Mae and be cruel. ”

Loch shrugs his shoulders like it’s nothing. He shrugs a fucking shoulder at me. There is no empathy in his eyes, no regret, just nothing but a cold smugness that chills me to the bone. I clench my hands to keep from punching him.

“You know what you did crossed a line.”

It definitely crossed a fucking line.

I’m all for brutality. I’m all for using my dragon to win, to battle, to do everything that we need to ensure victory, but yesterday, that was different, almost evil. I know how to get any reaction from him. One name. One girl that seems to be tearing this world apart.

“Mae saw it all. Including your magic. She looked scared of you, Loch. Was that what you wanted?”

He pours himself another drink and downs it once before slamming the glass on the cabinet.

“My relationship with Lena is none of your concern. She wasn’t scared of me, she was scared of how much she loved seeing that side of me. I watched her with that bastard king… she likes men that scare her. She likes it hard and brutal.”

No, no, she doesn’t. Erax is many things, but he never hurt her. I saw enough to know that wasn’t why they fell in love. Love doesn’t exist in abuse. It’s the opposite of it.

“When you told me that you were using spells to control Mae, to make sure that she doesn’t remember, what kind of spells are they?”

This makes him really look at me, and he stares. I don’t lower my challenging gaze, either. That makes him lose the casual, smug grin that seems to be layered on his face. He doesn’t answer me, though.

“Loch, you’re a guest in my home, you realise that?

Everyone else told me not to bring you back.

You’re bastard-born and you cause nothing but trouble…

but I convinced everyone that you could be trusted.

That you’re my family and blood means something in this world.

Many people loved our mother, and they accepted you here because of her.

What we are doing here is for the ones we have lost?—”

“I don’t remember our mother, and from what I’ve heard, she was too soft for the war.”

So cold, so callous. About our own fucking mother!

I’m so tempted to punch him until he snaps out of this shit.

“She wasn’t soft,” I growl at him. “She was fierce and kind… Fuck, Loch—you’re my brother.”

He lifts his chin, sneering at me. “Didn’t you call Erax your brother right before you stabbed him in the back?

” I wince at that, trying not to show he’s getting at me.

“Yeah, so really, hearing the word brother from you should be more of a threat than a compliment. Should I watch my back now, brother ?”

I grit my teeth. Betraying Erax was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had to do it and I still didn’t do it right. I could have shot him in the head, in the neck, the heart—anything so he bled out—but I went for his chest. I went for somewhere I knew he might survive, and I fucked up.

Erax recovered within days, from what I’ve heard, and the first thing he did was call the dragons out to fight for him.

Every rider, in every direction, looking for their queen.

The reward for her is ridiculous, as is the threat of what will happen if she isn’t found alive.

I fully believe Erax will burn the realms to ash before killing himself to join her in the afterlife.

Erax is chaos, and chaos should never be able to rule.

He needs to be dethroned and his dragon killed.