Page 135 of A Soul to Guide

She curled her hands into tight fists. “It is far more likely that they will destroy you. I am telling you this to protect you.”

“No,” he said as he refolded his arms. “You are doing this to protect him, and yourself, and all that power you gained from him. This has nothing to do with my life.”

“And what if you go there and find out I’m right?”

Merikh tilted his head to one side. “I think I would gladly accept my death if it resulted in both your destructions.”

“Neither one of us deserves this much hatred from you,” she bit out.

“You and I both know that’s not true,” he said with humour, happy to see her all riled up.

“What happened was not my fault!” she yelled, throwing her hands forward before brushing one of them over her hair. She turned her head away from him inshameand in hurt. “I was thrown into this just as much as you were. I had no idea what I was doing back then, how to take care of you. I had been alive for what? Fifty years? I still considered myself a human. How was I supposed to know everything? I have never been all-knowing.”

“It doesn’t matter. I was still the one that suffered. I wasn’t the one who asked to be born into this world, and not by a mother who did not want me.”

“I have never said that.” Her eyes twinkled with tears, but she quickly stemmed them.

“No? Your actions were enough.”

“I tried everything I could to take care of you to the best of my abilities. I thought you were indestructible. If you were hurt by a Demon, I tried to give you aid or heal you. I watched over your skull until you grew back. I fed you when I realised that helped you to grow. What more could I have done? You didn’t want to be in my home, preferring to wander the forest by yourself.”

“Quit defending yourself,” Merikh snapped. “You only birthed us for your own selfish gain.Hewanted children, and you accepted to keep your magic. That was not want, that was you obediently following your master. Well, guess what? I won’t bark and bite for him like you, not after everything.”

“You know that was only in the beginning. It didn’t take me long to grow to care for you.”

“It was still too long.” Then Merikh’s orbs shifted to blue, and he wished he could stop the way his heart turned to ash in sorrow. “And it was too late.” Her lips tightened, reflecting his own pain. “Then you turned your back on me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she muttered as she turned her head to the side. “I was just upset and grew afraid of you. I know it was unfair on you, but I’ve tried everything I can since then to help you, show you I’m sorry. I’ve watched over you, tried to share as much information as I can with you, even when you wouldn’t speak to me. I even begged Weldir to find a way to give you a glamour so you could travel with the humans when I could see you wanted to fit in somehow.”

“That doesn’t bring him back. You blamed me for it, and yet all that blame rests on your shoulders.”

Merikh’s heart pumped unsteadily, fluctuating between hurt and anger, slow and painful, fast and anxious. Not once had they ever broached this subject, both of them avoiding it over hundreds of years.

He’d always wanted to. He’d wanted to cruelly shove it in her face and see her regret, to hurt her. Yet, even in the few times they’d spoken, especially since she fed him information and he listened before turning away from her, not once had he brought it up.

He didn’t want to speak of the past, not when he’d rather forget.

Her eyes narrowed in rage. “You can’t cast that on me, just as I shouldn’t have done to you. How was I supposed to know that would happen?”

His orbs flashed orange before they burst into crimson red.

“Because you could have asked him!” Merikh was so close to reaching out and swiping at her – even knowing she was quick with her Phantom abilities. “You could have asked Weldir about us, who and what we were. Instead, you avoided him as much as possible!”

“Because his magic was weak! He could only call for me when he had enough souls to risk bringing me to Tenebris.”

It was an excuse, one he thought could be true. However, she still would have had ample time to ask Weldir.

Merikh absentmindedly clawed at his own chest.

“Why did it have to be me?” he roared, stomping a foot forward so he could tower over her. “Why did I have to be the experiment? If you had taken the time to ask how one of us dies, I wouldn’t have been the one to find out!”

His skin crawled as he covered his skull, considering obliterating it into dust with his own hands.I killed my own fucking brother!

Not a day had passed that he’d not regretted it, wished he could forget it, wanting nothing more than to take it back.

It hadn’t even been on purpose.

And then she, his damn mother, had grown frightened of him. At his confused rampage, at his agony-filled roars, at his panic. She’d blamed him for it, hated him for it, and it was too late to forgive her when she finally accepted that it had been an accident. He had no way of knowing he was about to kill his own brother, because how could he?

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