Page 46 of Possess Me at Midnight (Doomsday Brethren #4)
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ice
S abelle’s words and tears stab my heart until it bleeds. Let her go? Never hold or touch her again? Watch my princess mate with a wizard who neither loves nor appreciates her?
That will be the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done.
I press my lips together. Her sense of fairness and purpose are some of what I love most about her, but this self-sacrifice for the greater good? I hate it, even as my admiration for her grows.
“Princess…”
“Don’t make this harder. Please.” More tears run down her cheeks. I’m humbled that she would bother crying for me, yet I hate to see her sob. Before I can brush the hot drops from her cheeks, she swipes an angry hand across her face.
Damn Bram for putting Sabelle in this position.
“Will you do that for me?” she whispers.
Honestly, I’m not certain I can. Having her believe the worst of me shreds my guts, yet the thought of never holding her again—and knowing that MacTavish will—is every bit as painful.
Either way, I lose her. I could continue to fight like hell…but that only serves to make me look either more bent on revenge or so self-centered that she’ll lose all respect for me. Bugger!
An ominous gonging interrupts me.
Shit. That’s Bram’s magical calling card. I don’t need the wanker here…
“How did my brother find us so quickly?”
Because he’s never forgotten where I live.
With a thick curse and dread multiplying, I flick my wrist and open the magical barriers around my place.
Bram barrels inside moments later, fury wrapped around him like a force field.
His signature is fractured, muddled with the remnants of Mathias’s spell.
Something isn’t right with my former friend…
I’m beginning to wonder if he’s suffering from some form of demonic possession. At the moment, I hope so. That will give me a reason other than fury to separate Bram’s body from his head and end Sabelle’s responsibility to him.
Then again, if I harm her brother, she’ll hate me forever.
Rion stampedes in, rampage on his face. “If you ever steal my sister away again to put your filthy hands on her, I’ll fucking end you.”
“Bram!” Sabelle looks horrified.
“All right,” he grumbles, looking moments from violence. “I’ll rephrase. Don’t ever touch her without my permission again.”
“Why don’t you fuck off?”
Sabelle glares Bram’s way. “I’m no longer ten, and I hardly need you to conduct my personal affairs. Ice and I sought privacy to discuss our future.”
“If you think you have any sort of future with this manipulative piece of shit, then you definitely need me.”
The way he’s talking to my princess sends my temper soaring.
“Asking a supposed friend for a favor? That’s a huge manipulation, all right.” I don’t even try to hide my snark. “I’d rather be accused of crossing the line than stabbing someone in the back. Stupid of me to think you cared that my innocent sister had been tortured and murdered by a madman.”
“Oh, spare me. Did you forget the part where I helped you bury her, then held you when you sobbed.”
Sabelle’s sharp intake of breath cuts through my rage. She’s seeing another piece of my history—one that makes her brother’s current cruelty even more incomprehensible.
“I even stuck my neck out to start an inquisition into her death,” Bram goes on. “But I couldn’t let sentiment cloud my judgment, and I didn’t have the goddamn power to grant you a Council seat.”
“I merely asked you for a nomination,” I growl. “I would have explained my rationale, my qualifications?—”
“Everyone knew you were too young. Twenty, untransitioned, and from the wrong side of magickind. Even if I could have gotten you nominated, you would have been a laughingstock. And I would have lost all credibility.”
“Your precious reputation was worth more to you than my friendship. You made that quite clear.”
“What good is a Councilman no one will heed? I’d been there for barely a decade. I was the most junior member. The others treated me more like a snot-nosed kid than an equal. For you to insist on a nomination when you were not only a child, but Deprived… You asked for the impossible.”
“The Council was contemplating a change to the Social Order and balancing the Council with a Deprived. We talked more than once about the fact I’d be a bloody good candidate, since my grandfather sat on the Council before the laws changed.”
Bram laughed bitterly. “You really believed that would come to pass? That the Council would be the purveyors of change? Grow the fuck up.”
He’s doing everything possible to get under my skin. “Now I know better, but at the same time?—”
“You were a stupid, idealistic fool—totally ill-equipped to sit on the Council.”
“Bram!” Sabelle looks horrified by her brother’s outburst. “Stop belittling him—and everyone. What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know! I’m so goddamn angry. I feel like a bomb with a fucking lit fuse,” he snarls. “I want to scream. And I’m itching to kill him.” He gestures to Ice. “This…agitation. It’s un-fucking-acceptable. It’s all I feel. I goddamn hate it.”
I stare at Bram, pieces clicking into place.
The dark healer pulled him back from the brink of death, but she didn’t fully heal him.
Was she unable to banish the “insidious shadow” he claimed lurks inside him?
Whatever Mathias planted in him is still there, festering, turning Sabelle’s usually diplomatic brother into a volatile stranger.
No wonder he’s been so vicious—he’s fighting a war inside his own soul.
But he’s still destroying Sabelle. Spell or no spell, I won’t let him break her without a fight.
“Why didn’t you just tell me you thought I wasn’t ready to govern? In hindsight, you were probably right. But you simply refused me, then turned your back. You were my last fucking friend. My only—” I choke, clenching my fists.
God, we haven’t discussed this in two centuries, and the first thing I do? Open my mouth and vomit out my feelings. During the dark days after Bram abandoned me, I felt so fucking alone. More than once, I wondered what I had to live for. And now, what must Sabelle be thinking?
“You issued me an ultimatum,” Bram snarls.
“Nominate you or stop being my friend. What was I to do? I couldn’t give you what you sought.
You would have tried to direct all Council business into settling your vendetta against Mathias.
He needed to be dealt with, yes. But magickind had other problems you didn’t give two shits about.
Nominating you would have been impossible and irresponsible. ”
Perhaps Bram is right. Likely, even. But he never asked if the rest of the Council would accept my nomination. He simply said no.
“It’s done. None of this matters now. Leave my dwelling. I’ll return your sister as soon as we’ve finished talking. Joining the Doomsday Brethren was a mistake. Consider my involvement at an end.”
“Damn it!” Bram looks ready to hit me. “Don’t quit again because you’re not getting your way.”
I want to punch him as well, but Sabelle jumps in. “Ice… The Doomsday Brethren need you.”
“Yeah, your brother needs slave labor, just as he did during his early Council days.” I glare at Bram. “I’ll bet you never told anyone I did most of your research or wrote a great many of your speeches.”
Bram curses. Surprise transforms Sabelle’s face. Score .
“I’m good enough to break my back for you, but not good enough to be beside you in politics or family. Nice.”
“No, it’s not nice. But it’s reality.” Bram huffs.
“Stop being idealistic. The Council would have laughed at your nomination two hundred years ago. Today, magickind will benefit from Sabelle mating to Lucan so he can ascend. We cannot allow Mathias on the Council. But we need your useful muscle. I freely admit you’re our most prolific killer.
I need you for your ability to spill blood, not your political acumen.
And definitely not your insistence on fucking my sister. ”
I clench my fists. It’s all I can do not to pummel the fucking prat.
Sabelle whirls on him. “I don’t know what the devil is wrong with you, but if you say one more cruel word to him, I’ll throw you out myself.”
Anger tightens Bram’s face. He looks ready to lash out at Sabelle when I step between them. “I value your sister above all others. If you’re talking to her like that, you clearly don’t.”
“Fine. You want me to lick your arse so you’ll stay. You’re the most fearless warrior we have. The fucking best. Happy?”
“Shut up!” She explodes at her brother. Then she turns to me, clasping my shoulder, her expression full of soft regret. “Please… Don’t abandon the cause. We need you. If you hadn’t been with me these past few days…”
She would be dead.
Fuck, the pair of them ask too much of me. Stay where I am not wanted but needed? Remain for the good of the bloody cause, where I’ll be forced to watch the witch I love mate with another?
But if they all die because I turned them away…
“What would Gailene have wanted?” Sabelle murmurs.
It’s a brutal question, but the answer is easy: for me to do the right thing.
Gailene, bless her, always had an unbending moral compass.
She did what was right, regardless of the pain or personal sacrifice.
Her sense of rightness, of fairness, always amazed me, especially since our father showed her no such example.
Thoughts still race through my head when several more gongs sound.
MacTavish, Lucan and Caden. A Wolvsey ring follows.
What the hell? I’m being invaded. Clearly, all the warriors followed Bram.
It was humiliating enough to reveal the painful plainness of my home to Sabelle.
But to have every other Privileged warrior here as well? Give them a reason to forever mock me?
“Go the fuck away, all of you!” I storm from the room, down the hall, to the back of the cave, seeking the secret exit that leads to the vast expanse of lake and forest, not to mention blessed privacy.