The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(174)

The goal was to ensure plenty of airflow and a bright fire.

So that was the way they were going to do it—because none of them knew any other alternative, and although neither Trez nor Selena was a symphath, everybody figured it was best to go with something that had been proven to work rather than run the risk of a homegrown solution that failed.

Upshot was, Rhage was going to fell about sixy-five twenty-foot-plus trees. Then they were going to strip the branches and the bark using a combination of daggers, saws, and other tools, and set the whole thing up on the flat stretch of lawn to the west of the house.

As he worked, with the saw jumping at each and every cut like it was a wild animal barely leashed, he kept going back to his own past with his Mary.

He had been there, right there, where Trez had sat at the bedside of his beloved. He had known that frigid fear and disbelief that life, with all its endless permutations, had come to such a point. He had gone home and undressed and knelt on diamonds that had cut into his knees … and he had bowed his head to the only deity he had known and begged and pleaded for Mary to be saved.

And the Scribe Virgin had come unto him and provided him what he had asked for—but at a tremendous cost.

His Mary would be saved, but in exchange for the gift, she could not be with him. That was the payment for the incredible blessing, the balance to the miracle.

That pain had been a galaxy that had opened in his chest, an infinite wound that was so deep and of such a mortal nature, he had been surprised he had not started to bleed …

Rhage watched as another tree fell to the side in a dead faint to the cold ground.

He knew exactly what Trez was feeling right now.

The difference? At his nightfall, some two years ago, after he had sworn to give her up so she could be saved from her disease … his Mary had burst through his bedroom door alive and well, cured and saved, restored to health.

And able to unite with him.

It was the only sunshine he had known as an adult: Sure as if the roof above him had disappeared and the sun had risen just for him, warmth and light had shone down upon them both as he had held on to his female.

They had both been restored by the Scribe Virgin’s mercy in that moment.

Later, he had learned that because Mary had been rendered infertile due to her earlier cancer treatments, the Scribe Virgin had decided that that was enough to balance the gift of everlife.

And so Mary and he were together to this day.

Trez had not been granted such a miracle.

Selena had not been saved.

It was Tohr and Wellsie all over again.

Even though Rhage wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, he didn’t understand why he and his shellan had been spared. Especially given how the Scribe Virgin had cursed him with his beast earlier in his life for being so out of control.

And yet she had then seen fit to return his beloved to him.

Thanks to the mother of the race, his Mary was now free to exist without death until she chose differently—which would be when he went unto the Fade.

The fact that they had been spared … seemed just as random as why Tohr and Trez had been condemned.

At least his brother had managed to go on.

He could only hope the same for that Shadow.

“Take this,” iAm said to Fritz, “to my condo at the Commodore. Place it on the outside of the glass slider on the terrace.”

“My pleasure, sire,” the butler replied. Except then the doggen’s brows went up. “Is there aught else?”

“No.”

As Fritz just stood there outside the exam room, looking confused, iAm couldn’t figure out—

Oh. Right. He wasn’t letting go of the note.

Forcing his hand to release its hold, he stepped back. “Thanks, man.”

“If there is aught else you or your brother require, please call upon me. I would do anything to be of service, especially now.”

The butler bowed low and then headed down the corridor, disappearing through the office’s glass door.

iAm looked around even though he was still alone. His eyes just needed something to do, and in that regard, he understood why Rhage and the Brothers had been begging for a duty—also why the females of the house who were not out working in the forest had gone upstairs to help prepare a meal of ceremonial dishes traditionally served at mourning meals. And why the Chosen and the Primale had shut themselves into the gym to perform ancient rituals, the perfumed smoke from the sacred candles they were burning permeating the training center with a fragrance that was both dark and sweet.

It was such a hodgepodge of belief systems and traditions, all inter-mingling around the nucleus of grief.

His brother.

And so iAm waited here.

Sometime in the next three hours, the male was going to emerge, naked and dripping in his own blood.

The marking of a male mourner’s chest and abdomen was the very last part of the preparation ritual for a departed female mate.

And as the next of kin to the sufferer, iAm was the one who was going to seal the wounds with salt, making them a forever-in-the-flesh kind of thing.

He jogged the heavy black velvet bag that was full of Morton’s best in his hand. It was tied with a golden rope, and the weight was substantial.

In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help looking to the other side of all of this. To nightfall on the following eve.

To the end of the s’Hisbe’s mourning period.