A Warm Heart in Winter(55)

As a wave of emotion swamped Qhuinn, he knew he couldn’t stay in neutral. He had to deal with this.

And that was when he saw Vishous out of the corner of his eye.

Well, not all of the male.

Specifically his gloved hand.

When Qhuinn looked up into the diamond-hard stare of the brother, V’s expression was remote. “You sure you want to do that, son?”

“He chose this place. He . . . picked this. I’m just trying to think of what he’d want.” Qhuinn shook his head. “And although I don’t know much, I’m sure that tearing him up to get him off this ground is not what he would have wished for his remains.”

“I’ll do whatever you want.” V lifted his curse. “But there’s no going back.”

“There’s no going back already.”

“Fair enough.”

Qhuinn blindly reached for Blay, and as always, his mate was right there, clasping that which had been outstretched.

V dropped to his knees. The brother took his time removing his lead-lined glove, tugging the insulation off his fingers one by one. It was as if he were giving Qhuinn all kinds of opportunity to change his mind.

Qhuinn simply watched as the brilliant glow was unsheathed. The energy in V’s palm was so strong, it burned the eye, but he did not look away.

This was all so terrible. All of it.

And something told him the worst was yet to come.

“Tell me when,” V whispered.

“Now,” Qhuinn heard himself say.

“You need to get back.”

“No. I’m not leaving him.”

“You’re going to move back a foot, son, or I’m not going any closer to him with this thing.”

There was a subtle pull on his shoulder, and Qhuinn followed Blay’s gentle pressure, easing over so he was on his butt, instead of his knees.

And that was when something truly awful occurred to him.

“He’s already in the Fade, right?” Qhuinn looked at V. “He got there okay, didn’t he?”

There was that rumor about suicide, that whispered, so-called rule that if you took your own life, you were barred from the Fade. But surely . . .

“Vishous. He’s there, right.”

V’s eyes lowered. “He was a right and just male, horribly treated by fate.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“That’s the best I can do.”

Qhuinn rubbed his face. “Let’s just do this.”

If he got caught up in the unfairness of it all right now, he was going to fucking explode.

Vishous, birthed son of the Scribe Virgin, nodded. And then he slowly lowered the terrifying power that somehow resided within his flesh.

Just before contact was made, Qhuinn had a spasm of doubt, of panic. He almost called it all off—but what had changed? Where else would they take Luchas?

“Oh, God . . .” Qhuinn breathed. “Oh, God, oh—”

The flare of light was intense, the release of energy so great that Qhuinn was thrown into Blay, the pair of them landing in the snow on a sprawl. And he had expected the final act of his blooded brother’s life to last awhile, but it was over . . . within seconds. Or at least that’s what it seemed.

There wasn’t even a scent. He’d braced himself to smell burning flesh and hair, but there was nothing of that sort and not because the wind had changed directions.

As the illumination started to fade, Qhuinn lifted his arm from the shield it had become over his face—he hadn’t even been aware of raising it.

There was nothing left.

In the spot where Luchas had lain, there was no robe, no cane, no prosthesis. There was no frozen body, no face or hands or foot. There was not a torso or a lower body.

Gone, gone, gone.

In the place of his brother, there was a precise outline of the position Luchas had died in, the exact contours of the limbs and the head and the robe represented in a bare spot with no snow or pine needles, even.

Just bald dirt.

Qhuinn extended his trembling hand over the place where the immolation had occurred. Curls of smoke rose up, riding currents of heat that dissipated quickly.

Until it was all stone cold.





Blay had never seen anything like it. V’s glowing hand had extended downward, and then a nuclear-bright flash had lanced through the night, so intense and far-reaching that the entire mountain had lit up like noontime. Or at least that was what it had seemed. And in the aftermath? It was an artist’s drawing of the body’s position on a strip of barren, snowless ground, wisps of smoke rising for a moment.

Followed by only dark stillness.

It was as if the whole world had stopped spinning: No movement among the forest fauna, no deer careful-footing it through the leafless underbrush or owls calling to each other. No snaps of sticks or quiet moans of a breeze through pine branches. Certainly nothing from the Brothers and fighters, who were as statues in and among the trees.

Meanwhile, Qhuinn was fixated on where his brother had been, his big body shuddering. Then the labored breathing came next, heavy, loud. Finally, the male rolled off to the side and propped himself up on bowed arms. The retching went on and on, but nothing came up and out of his throat.

With utter helplessness, Blay stayed beside his mate, his hand on that heaving back, his own eyes watering. As all that pent-up emotion was released, Blay kept looking back and forth between the bare spot and his one true love.