Tragic Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #5)(2)

Instead of watching the two of them spar, I take the opportunity to slip away.

I’ve never been in this house before, but I’d spent the last few days practicing with my Gift as much as I could to prepare for this. I usually avoid the shadow creatures as much as possible, even more so after my mother’s death, but I knew that my time here would be limited.

I need to use every tool in my arsenal here.

I wait until I’m out in the hallway, and then I let out one of my shadow creatures, the nightmares of my community appearing beside me as a dog with a wide, snarling jaw of razor-sharp teeth and empty void eyes that somehow see right through you.

I would do anything to carve these things out of myself.

The creature stares up at me for a second, as though it’s judging my commitment and my ability to call it back into myself, like it’s trying to figure out if it can run through this house and kill everyone on sight without me being able to stop it.

It’s hard to lie to something that is a part of you.

Impossible really, but whatever it sees in me when I direct it to find my brother, whatever strength and limitations, it only hesitates for a second before it moves at my command. It moves so quickly that the edges of the form blur, looking more like smoke than beast, and I tuck myself into one of the nooks in the hallway to shut my eyes and see through the shadow creature’s eyes instead.

The house is just as dark and forbidding on the inside as it seems on the outside. The curtains are shut in all of the rooms on the first floor. There’s rotting food in the kitchen, plates and cups piled up in the sink, untouched, that have clearly been there for weeks, if not months. While I can’t smell anything through the connection with the shadow creature, the flies and maggots everywhere are both disgusting and telling.

Something is terribly wrong here.

I move the shadow creature out of the kitchen and up the stairs to work through the rooms until finally, it ends up in the large, dusty attic space.

Nox doesn’t flinch or react to the sight of my shadow creature.

He has one of his own sleeping at his feet, as though it’s nothing more than a docile pet.

I call the shadow creature back to me as I navigate my way over to him, wincing at the plumes of dust that spring up from my steps and the thick layers of filth on every surface. I put it all out of my mind until I get up to the attic and finally lay my eyes on my little brother after six years of living apart. Six years didn’t seem like such a long time until right now as I stare down at this little stranger who looks so much like me that there’s no mistaking that we’re brothers.

He’s so… small.

Unnaturally so, like he’s being underfed or is sickly. I don’t remember my father saying anything about health issues, but there’s no way that my brother is healthy right now. There’s no way this is acceptable. I’ve only been allowed to see him a handful of times since his mother moved him out of the Bonded Group manor, but he’d been perfectly fine then.

What is happening in this house?

I ease forward towards him, slowly and carefully, as though I’m approaching a skittish animal. The shadow creature sleeping by his feet lifts its head to stare at me with its empty but strangely knowing void eyes.

It’s too placid.

My own creatures are rabid beasts, vicious and out of control the moment they’re released, and to see one sitting there like a well trained lapdog is jarring in the worst way. How does he have that much control, and at such a young age? How does he have a better behaved creature than any of mine?

Something is wrong.

My bond, the voice in my head that I will never admit to having just in case someone locks me up in an institution or simply kills me for the anomaly, speaks to me in a stern voice, one that it doesn’t usually use. The type my father would use if I was acting up in my classes or threatening people with my void eyes just for the hell of it.

I don’t need the warning though; I’m well aware that something is wrong here. I’m well aware that no matter what our plan had been when we arrived here today, William and I will not be leaving without my brother.

This is no longer an opening to a negotiation.

This is a rescue… or an abduction, depending on which side of the interaction you’re standing on.

I aim for a calm and reassuring tone as I speak to my brother, but he doesn’t react to the sound of my voice at all. “Can I come sit with you, Nox? Is it okay if I just… sit with you?”

He shrugs, his eyes still down on the shadow creature at his feet. He stares at it as though in a trance and not at all like he’s waiting for it to savagely attack anyone else in the room.

That’s the way I stare at mine.

“I can stay over here if that would make you more comfortable. Do you remember me?”

Do you remember any of your family, other than your fucked-up mother who tore you away from us all? Except I can’t say that to him. It’s not fair, and it’s not right of me to try to drive a wedge between them. William had been clear on that, clear that I wasn’t to even say Emmaline’s name in Nox’s presence. We both knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the venom out of my tone.

I loathe the woman for leaving my father behind.

I hate her even more for taking my brother with her when she left, splitting our family up and being the first of the cracks that splintered everything apart.