Page 82 of The Brotherhood

That empty nowhere place circled him like a vulture as he grinned. “You did,” he said, hope lighting her face like a brand-new dawn.

“How?” she wondered, her joy like a siren call. Luring him to commit any sin just to bring it, touch it, hold on to it.

“I learned the difference between wanting something and needing it.”

He felt her eyes on him but didn’t look at her, sure she’d see everything he could never show her.

“You didn’t…know that before?” she asked, sad and troubled.

He shook his head, grinning as he pushed the black tar of his forgotten past behind him. “I never wanted, only needed,” he explained, simply. “Everything I’ve done was driven by necessity.”

She tucked her hands under the side of her head, eyeing him. “I thought you meant the opposite. That you didn’t know need.”

He’d never known need either, not the kind he had with her.

“What do you want now? That you didn’t before?”

Her cluelessness plunged through him like a hot blade. He stood and made his way to the single window in the room, theair in his lungs heavy. “Something that’s already taken. But I did experience it. That counts.”

Realization filled the pockets of silence till the room screamed with it.

“Sinrik.”

Her sorrow and thick regret flayed him.

“You can want again,” she soothed with angelic assurance.

“That is correct,” he lied easily, not planning to die the same death twice.

“If it makes you feel better, had we met—”

“It doesn’t,” he assured, the words sharp as the blade in his gut. “But don’t flatter yourself, Swampy. You’re not the first rejection.” He didn’t recall another, but he was sure one existed in that pit of forgotten memories.

“It’s not my fault I’m married, Sinrik!” she pled.

“Which is why I won’t kill you for it.”

She laughed outright. “Why do you do that? Pretend you’re so mean when we both know you’re not. I have the perfect solution,” she said, her voice smiling. “You can be my big brother.”

She sucked him in with her angelic powers and he realized he had nothing within himself to stop from fulfilling whatever she asked or needed of him. “Is that an order?” he asked softly, some part of him needing it to be. And wanting.

She choked on syllables before blurting, “God, no! I would never want to force that.”

So, an unspoken order. Good enough. “Then I accept,” he said.

“Really?”

He kicked her doubt aside and embraced the hope in her voice. “Really. As long as you remember what a big brother does.”

“What?” He didn’t see it but her voice said her face glowed with joy.

“To make sure nobody…” he stressed with every ounce of his being “…ever hurts you.”

“Does this mean you’re giving up Ever-Fallen and coming back home to the swamps with me?”

She teased and yet didn’t and that did strange and cruel things to him.

“Ever-Fallen needs me right now. But I may make unexpected visits.”

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