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Chapter 11

Brothers VI

~ARRIK~

Well, it worked. Looks like they’re still tethered. Confirmed by the fact that golden boy just anchored himself to her like it was nothing. Which means it’s a magical impossibility that I’m bonded to her.

So why does it still feel like I’m this close to her soul? Why does it feel like her hair is in my face?

With my shoulders against the bars of the cage, I slide to the ground, feeling nothing. Or maybe it’s too many things canceling each other out. I understand now why Mother wanted to spare us from this—her twisted kindness, trying to protect us from the mental wear of being raised by a sociopathic grandfather and uncle, with a father too focused on his son from his second marriage to notice.

He left us stranded on an island we each tried to escape.

And then I landed on a buoy occupied by the one brother who actually had a chance of making it out on his own.

I must have been a fucking mass murderer in my last life.

As I think through the events and magical rules that brought us to this point, I feel it again.

That pain in my chest is mine .

Hope is a small, deadly emotion and one that feels like a gamble.

I hate it.

I hate what comes after it.

I don’t want to feel it again.

And yet, I revel in it. It’s self-torment, and I stew in it, holding the small, deadly warmth of it close to my chest. There is a chance.

There’s a chance that those things I felt ticking somewhere quiet, deep, and lost the first time I saw her under the endless stars... There’s a reason I’m like a moth, unable to reorient myself from her light. Sometimes, I’m not sure if I fell in love with her or if I just fell in love with tormenting myself.

I toss the cigarette butt onto the velvet floor and grind it under my boot.

“All right, sweetheart. Let’s see what happens.”