Page 106 of This Blood That Breaks Us

“That isn’t true.”

“It is. I want Her to love me. I just want this to not hurt so much. Why do you hate me?”

“Sit up.” He pulled me up by my shirt but held my shoulders to steady me. “Look at me.”

“Everything is moving.”

“Stop complaining and open your eyes.”

Sirius was close to me. “I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you. It’s impossible.”

“It’s not real,” I said. I meant the bond and the blood didn’t matter. It was all fake.

“The queen does care about you. I know it feels different than what She has with Luke, but you’re special to Her. You test Her. It’s different but equally as cared for. If you jumped off the cliff, I’d come after you.”

“Because you have to.”

“No, because I care about you. You’re important to our family.”

I was shivering and hadn’t noticed. It was the drugs in the wine, but Sirius handed me his jacket and wrapped it over my shoulders.

“I’m sorry about what happened in the atrium. It was over the line. I was shocked to see how far your bond had progressed. It’s extraordinary. I just don’t want to see you making the same mistakes me and my brother did.”

“You never talk about your brother.”

“None of us do. None of us fully remember him. We traded our memories of him for peace. Not all of them. Just the good ones, which includes much of my childhood and memories before this place. My brother and I disguised ourselves as crew on a merchant ship in the late 1600s, but we were marauders. She was hidden in the monastery at the time, and we came to ‘take from Her extravagant beauty.’ Instead, we found Her. You think you and your brother are the only ones who struggled with the bond. But all of us did, aside from Akira. It’s different for us all. She told me Akira appeared one day, that he felt he needed to be somewhere, and he found Her on that feeling alone. My brother and I were different. I felt the pull much stronger than he did. We spent too long agonizing and holding onto our own bondthat it tore us apart. I fear that’s the reason we failed and another pairing for Her was chosen by the stars.”

“Because of you and your brother?”

“Yes. Because we could not let go. Once we reached Ascension, we separated. We couldn’t care for each other and Her at the same time. And we barely talked after. It was never the same. I think things could have been different if we’d learned how to do both without it killing us. I think you and Luke can do that.”

The stars danced in the sky. The light and dark mixed into orbs and shapes that morphed into faces.

“What do the star gods want with me? I don’t get it.”

Sirius nudged my chest. “The Divine craves connection. It’s always looking for the strongest bond . . .Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.”

“Are you speaking in tongue now?”

Mom’s church used to. It scared me as a kid, and I thought it sounded like gibberish.

“It means the stars incline us, but they don’t bind us. The Divine guides us and gives us gifts, but it cannot control the bonds we forge. If the stars gave a gift—a woman that could cure all longing and join the lost, one that heals and gives abundantly more than we could ever hope to have as humans—wouldn’t they want us to protect it? That is what this is. A gift and an opportunity, and you are chosen because there is something in you that not everyone has in this world, something that cannot be fabricated even by the stars. Connection.”

I nodded, and my eyelids grew heavier. I was busy concentrating on not falling over into grass that seemed to whisper my name, but I felt the comfort of his words. My brother loved me, and I loved him, and for some reason, that made us special.

I moved my fingers to the warmth of my face, and it was wet with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

“I . . . miss my brother.”

Sirius smiled. “We’ll find him. I’ll help you to your room.”

I was talking about Luke, of course. Even with the world turned upside down, I wanted to see him happy and safe next to me, but I missed all my brothers. I missed Presley being my partner in crime and making me laugh. I even missed Aaron and all his golden boy, goody-two-shoes energy. My happiest moments were of all of us together. It hurt that it couldn’t be like that again.

Sirius reached for me.

“I can’t walk.”