Chapter Text
Broken bits of metal caught the late evening sun and glittered as they exploded across the slope of the dune, the shell of the dark minion collapsing into the sand. My breath was ragged after taking on five enemies at once and my arm now sported several slashes. Blood dripped onto the grains at my feet and I sucked in a lungful of air before spinning on my heel.
Logan lifted his sword and deflected a blow from a spinning blade, sliding back on his heels to avoid the minion’s other hand swinging directly at his face. Sweat gleamed across my brother’s forehead and the fabric of his tunic had taken a slash across the front. I stared at the milk white of his chest as I rushed forward to aid his attack.
The metal beast charged Logan with another swing of its blades and I leaped off the ground, slicing my sword down into the shadows between the plates of its body. As the minion stumbled to the side from my blow, Logan took advantage of its momentary lapse.
His sword arced up across its belly and plunged into the swirling darkness between the chest plate and helmet. With a tremble, the minion collapsed into a pile of scrap that sank into the sand with a hiss.
Pain seared the wounds on my arm and I winced, sheathing my sword before pressing my palm into the open gashes. Logan, it seemed, had escaped relatively unscathed.
His dark gaze found me and instantly fell to where my fingers covered the cuts on my arm. Blood leaked through my fingers and I cursed beneath my breath as they slowly started to heal themselves. Another jacket ruined, though. Jasper would be cross at me for bringing yet another garment for him to mend.
“You’re losing your touch,” Logan teased as he slid his sword into the sheath at his hip. I snapped my head up and glared at him, hoping he felt the sharp sting behind it.
“I took on five to your two and managed to walk away with only a few scrapes. I wouldn’t call that losing my touch.”
He grinned and I felt as if he’d kicked me in the chest. Seeing him smile was such a rare occasion these days and to see him grin even more so. With the setting sun barely peeking over the dunes behind me, the light caught his pale face and his smile seemed so…warm.
Warmer than the desert sands beneath my feet.
How could he have been so miserable in Albion, in his home , yet here in this cursed desert filled with memories of darkness and death, he smiles? It didn’t make sense.
Before I could gather the courage to ask him why, he took two steps toward me and tilted his head down to assess the cuts on my arm. They were barely bleeding anymore but he still took hold of my elbow and inspected the wounds.
“Shall I kiss it and make it feel better?”
I wrenched my elbow out of his grip and spun away from him, hating and cursing the heat that scorched every inch of my face. Half of me wanted to disappear into the Sanctuary just to get away from him and his teasing remarks that he knew were affecting me. The other half was far too aware that minions weren’t the only thing lurking in this desert and if I abandoned him to hide with Jasper, Logan would surely die at the hands of minions and sentinels that marched through the dunes.
So instead, I stomped up the slope of the sand, muttering curses beneath my breath. I cursed the sand for shifting beneath my boots, cursed the minions for throwing us off path, cursed my brother for knowing exactly what to say to get under my skin.
As I crested the top of the dune, I found my pack once more and snatched it from the sand. The water in our canteen sloshed inside as I ducked beneath the strap and settled it against my hip. Logan climbed the dune and settled beside me, looking away from the sunset this time. Shadows carved the sharp features of his face and I had to force myself to look away from him.
Taking a deep breath, I looked out over the expanse of desert and cursed the beauty of it. The sand glittered like diamonds in the fading sunlight, bright against the pastel sky growing dark violet with each passing second.
I hated it here, so close to memories of death and darkness and horror. I hated that I felt closer to Walter here.
Mostly, I hated how this place reminded me of Logan.
Just like him, it was darkness and death hidden behind an otherworldly beauty. If I let it, it would steal my breath away and leave me in awe.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze and found my brother staring off into the distance, toward that wretched Shadelight Palace we both had escaped from. The place that called to us even now, even after we had destroyed the darkness plaguing it.
Logan’s brow was pinched and darkened his eyes and I found myself dropping my gaze to his mouth. The scar stretched right through them like a shard of ice and I wondered for the first time how he got it. Possibly here in this desert, fending off strange minions and dark shadows that sliced with invisible blades.
I tried not to imagine it, but the thoughts formed anyway.
I could see him in the dark dunes, trying his hardest to fight creatures that he’d never seen before, trying to save his men from an unfathomable terror. The thoughts felt like a blade right into the center of my chest and I quickly shook them from my head. It was dangerous thinking of him as anything other than a monster.
He’d walked into this desert as a human, as my brother, and something else crawled out of it in his place. It was a good idea to remember that.
“How much further?” I mumbled the question, opening my pack to snatch one of the canteens inside. The water had turned tepid but it tasted divine. It soothed the scratch of my throat after breathing in grains of sand through the past day. As I lowered the canteen and sucked in a breath, Logan glanced down at me.
For a moment, he was silent—just long enough to make me lift my gaze to meet his. When he spoke, his words were quiet and soft and my body reacted as if he had whispered them in my ear. “We’ll be there soon.”
I ignored the fall of chills down my spine and dropped the canteen back into my pack. “Be where soon? You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“There’s someone I need to see.”
I frowned. “Someone? Out here?”
“Yes.” Logan turned back to the dark swath of sky in the distance. “We should find a place to camp soon. The canyon could offer us some cover.”
A sigh slipped from my lips and I tilted my head back to stare up at the stars twinkling to life above us. “We could be in our beds back home, safe and warm. With lots of ale to keep us company.”
Logan took a step down the slope as he let out a small, bitter laugh. “Yes, back home where I am hated by everyone and you can’t even stand the sight of me. I’ll take my chances here.”
I watched him for a moment, stunned by his snarky words and acid tone. Did he honestly think he deserved anything but hatred after what he did? Though I knew better than to provoke him, I couldn’t help it. I stomped after him.
“Can you blame them? They watched you put their fathers and loved ones to death. You drove your people into poverty and doomed Aurora to a fate worse than that. You have no right to be bitter about the way they feel about you. You did this to yourself.”
As the last rays of golden light slipped over the horizon, Logan spun to face me. The darkness etched across his eyes made the shadows of Shadelight look bright in contrast and I couldn’t stop myself from taking a step back on my heels.
He closed the distance between us and snarled down at me with a hatred I hadn’t seen on his face since the day Walter and I took Albion back from him. My heart thundered and clenched and the knots I had only just unraveled in my stomach tightened painfully once again.
“I did what I had to! What I was told no one else could do to save Albion!”
“What you were told—”
“ Yes. Whispered words from a blind seer that fed me cryptic half-truths that I was the only one that could destroy this darkness. I was what stood between Albion and its downfall.” The words came out of his lips like blades and I flinched as if they had cut me. “Until you.”
My eyes narrowed on his face, searching his features through the darkness. Fury was written across his eyes and his scarred lip curled with a snarl. I blinked slowly and tilted my head, glancing from his lips back up to his gaze.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, brother . Jealous that I saved Albion and you got none of the glory. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re coming back here to find something to destroy, something to kill so you can be a hero?”
Logan took another step closer, towering over me and peering down at me through a black, icy glare. “You couldn’t be further from the truth, Isobel.”
The sound of my name on his tongue felt like a hand around my throat, clenching tight and cutting off any words I wanted to snap back at him. Though my breath shuddered as I sucked it in, though I could feel a familiar tendril of fear trembling my fingertips, I forced my voice out from its hiding place.
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Can you not feel it?” The feel of his hands on my arms pulled a breath from my lungs, his fingers cold despite the humid night air surrounding us. His grip tightened and the soft, torn fabric of his tunic in my hands startled me. I hadn’t realized I had even reached for him until my fingers curled around his shirt. “Don’t deny it, Isobel. I know you feel it. I know you’ve dreamt about it night after night.”
Dreams…
I closed my eyes tight and shook my head. I didn’t want to think about our dreams anymore. It was bad enough that we were powerless to stop them, that they grew worse and worse and more real every night.
I was so exhausted, so tired of feeling the ghost of Logan’s hand on my chest, his lips on mine, his words melting through me like molten lead every godsdamned night. For so long, I’d tried to ignore them, slaughtered balverines and sand furies and bandits, using carnage and battle to blind myself to the memories.
But I couldn’t hide from them anymore.
Not here.
Not when he was so close.
“They’re just dreams,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut as I held onto the denial for as long as I could. “They mean nothing except we both faced things no person should ever face.”
Logan released my arm and pressed his palm into the center of my chest, snapping my eyes open. “Tell me you feel it,” he urged, pushing against my breastbone. His fingers stretched across my flesh between the collar of my shirt. “I know you do.”
“Feel what?”
“It took a part of us,” he whispered, moving so close that he had to slip his hand free between our bodies. I felt the press of his forehead against the crown of my head, his breath warm against my face. “And replaced what it took from us with darkness.”
The darkness is no longer in the caves, Isobel. It’s in here.
Though I was wide awake, I could still feel Logan’s hand against my chest just like in my dreams, could see the stars blinking to life in the dark sky over his shoulder and strands of his hair brushing across my face. A tremble rolled through me, making my fingers tighten around their hold on his shirt.
He was right.
I didn’t want him to be.
But he was.
I thought that I could drown the darkness with whiskey and carnage, but I couldn’t. Not anymore. Not when there was nothing but the dark of night stretching around us, pushing us closer like a tangible thing blanketing our bodies.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight until spots of light danced through the black and ducked my head. My forehead touched his shoulder and I let out a shaking breath. “We destroyed the darkness, Logan. You were there. You saw—”
All at once, the heat of his body spreading over us disappeared and my eyes snapped open as I let out my breath. With the thousands of stars and half moon above us, there was enough light that I could see his silhouette and I watched him take a few steps away. He pushed a hand through his hair and I found myself wishing for the sun to return just so I could see the curve of his jaw and the pale scars on his lips.
Taking a deep breath, I swallowed and took a step toward him. “You saw it die. You were at my side as I drove my sword through its mouth.”
For a long moment, several beats of my heart that seemed to stretch longer and longer as I waited for his response, Logan remained silent and simply stared at the horizon as if he could still see the setting sun. His hands dropped to his side and he stood like a statue atop the dune. A sentinel cursed to guard the desert for eternity and the longer I stared at his face, the easier it was to convince myself that he had turned to stone.
When he moved, turning his head ever so slightly so his eyes could cut to me, I blinked in surprise and clenched my jaw tight until my teeth ached. The pain in my jaws kept me grounded, kept my mind off the sudden desire to reach for him twitching at my fingers. I refused to let it surface.
Though there was denying it, I refused to act on it.
“And what if that was only a piece of a larger monster?”
His question startled me. Ice shot through my veins like the crackle of lightning and I blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”
Logan’s face softened as he turned to me once again. I watched the light of the moon catch on the pale flesh of his hand seconds before he brushed his fingertips across my jaw. “Tell me you feel it.”
His voice cracked with desperation, fatigue, and worst of all—fear.
He was terrified.
Terrified that he was facing something dark all alone.
Scared that, for the second time in his life, there was something that couldn’t be defeated with strategy and years of military training on the horizon.
My lips parted around silent words that I couldn’t bring myself to utter. My voice was a coward, hiding deep in my throat, too afraid of the things I knew I had to say. Things I should confess. Not just to him but to myself as well.
“I—” The sound slipped off my tongue and I quickly swallowed, cutting my gaze away from him toward the canyons. His fingers slid to cup my face and he forced me to look up at him again. Even in the dark of night, I could see his gaze pleading with me to just be honest for once. No more lies. No more hiding. No more denial. A breath hitched in my chest as my head tipped up and down in a slow nod. “I feel it.”
He sighed as if he’d been coming apart at the seams and those three words stitched him back together. The warmth of his body swept over me with a single step and I leaned into his hand still pressed to my face. My lips brushed over the heel of his palm, tracing a scar that stretched to his thumb. I kissed it, scraped my teeth over it, and as Logan pulled me closer to him, a moan left my throat in a single breath.
Oh, yes. The truth was out now.
There was no taking it back.
I felt it.
Felt the darkness in both of our hearts that seemed to only be quelled by his touch. Here, with one hand at my side and the other tangling in my hair, with our chests rubbing together with every ragged breath, with his knee dipping between my thighs, the darkness didn’t suffocate me. It didn’t weigh me down and I didn’t want to drown myself in alcohol to convince myself it wasn’t there.
Here, so close to the monster I knew my brother was, the darkness felt alive. It was lightning and fire and ice all at once, freezing me one second, scorching me the next, and making my skin feel as if it was crackling with energy.
How wrong I had been for so long.
This darkness that I thought was only Logan’s, was mine as well.
And as he lowered his head and seared my lips with a kiss, he poured his darkness onto my tongue and I drank it in with greed.