“You sourced this for Armin.” I make it a statement, not a question.
Bolan flinches. I’m still holding the ashes in the palm of my hand. He’s still helping me keep my arm aloft.
“Tell me.”
“I got some of the cut stuff from a mage with a potions specialization I buy regularly from. I … I’m always looking to suppress the wolf.”
“And Armin didn’t want any of it,” I say flatly, as if I’m simply reciting facts. “Any of the power that teemed within him. Or any of the responsibilities that came with it.”
“He just needed an occasional break, Mirth.”
“Don’t defend him right now,” I whisper without heat. “I … we … need to … survive this, don’t we? I need to know and to acknowledge the truth of it all.”
Bolan inhales shakily. “The stuff I sourced barely dampened Armin. His essence just … burned it off. I literally could feel heat coming off him moments after he took it.”
“The awry are immune to a certain extent to most essence-based spells or potions or …” I sigh. “But you know that.”
“Yeah, I buy from mages or other shifters, mostly. No point in bothering with human or null-made drugs, really. Except for a minor buzz.”
“Armin didn’t want a minor buzz.”
“No.”
“He got his hands on the medical-grade stuff,” I say quietly. “The uncut, human-made stuff.”
“Mirth …”
“And he took it during your ski trip.”
“I …” Bolan breathes in deeply, his arms tightening around me. “Yes, we took it that night. I … it honestly scared the absolute shit out of me. I do a lot to suppress the instincts of the wolf when necessary, but I felt … it was too much. Even for me.”
“But not for Armin.”
“I don’t know. All I know is I woke up late the next morning feeling like my heart had been ripped from my chest. Completely fucking incapacitated. I stumbled into Armin’s room, saw his empty, still-made bed. And I knew … some part of me knew. I tried to track him down, but I couldn’t even find his guards. I didn’t know what the fuck had happened. I convinced myself that he’d just taken off … even though he …”
“Left his luggage at the chalet.”
“Yeah. But … he’s done that once before, and I …” Bolan doesn’t finish the thought. Not because he doesn’t know what to say, but because he doesn’t really want to acknowledge it himself.
“There were no drugs on him,” I say, shading around the edges of Bolan’s recounting of that morning with everything else I already know. “Unless someone managed to hide them before I arrived to claim … him …” My voice cracks.
I felt hollow by that point, after also feeling like my heart had been inexplicably shredded within my chest. Just as Bolan described it. I felt hollow as I was ushered into that cold room to identify the corpse of my brother. “It would be a serious risk for one of his guards or even one of the paramedics to hide that kind of evidence from me, from my father. I suppose it could have been lost in the avalanche, or …”
“No. There were only three pills,” Bolan says. His tone isn’t devoid of emotion now. A bright, pulsating anger wars with his grief.
I can feel it battering against me, against all the shields I hadn’t quite realized I held between me … between me and everyone else. Beyond simply suppressing my own essence. This is an emotion-evoked shield that has only thickened, even hardened over, since that night with Oliver — that kiss and rejection and everything that happened after. Born from an overwhelming need, the belief that I had to control myself, myself and everything around me.
“We took two that night.”
I clear my throat, focused on anchoring myself in this moment. This is why I stole Armin’s ashes. I need this to move forward. But it … hurts.
It hurts to confirm what I already knew.
Armin made a choice.
“And?”
“And the container was empty the next morning. Armin took the last pill.”
