Page 34 of The Ascended
I almost laughed. "You could say I'm very concerned. Hence, the drink." I held out the bottle again. "You look like you need one too."
This time he took it, but his hands shook so badly I was afraid he'd drop it. He didn't drink.
"I don't understand what happened," he said finally. "I was in pain and then..." He trailed off, staring at nothing again.
"Well, clearly you're not powerless after all."
"How is this possible? What kind of power doesthat?"
The alcohol had started burning away some of the sharp edges of panic. "On the bright side, at least it didn't manifest while we were still in Saltcrest. That could have been a mess."
The dark humor felt wrong even as I said it, but I needed something to pull him back from whatever ledge he was standing on.
"Thais."
"And no one will miss that bastard." I shrugged.
"Please be serious right now."
The devastation bleeding through our bond hit me like a whip. I pulled his arm until we were both sitting on the small couch.
"We're going to figure it out," I said quietly. "We're still alive."
"And you don't think they'll kill us for what I did?"
I chewed my lower lip, unable to give him an immediate answer. The truth was, I didn't know. No one knew how the Aesymar would respond to a power like his. A single thought, and Drakor had simply... ceased to exist.
"I think if they were going to kill us, they would have done it out there. Why wait?"
But even as I said it, I knew I was lying to myself. There were no stories of a mortal ever killing a god. Only fully ascended Aesymar had any chance of taking down one of their own, and even then, the stories of gods fighting gods spoke of catastrophic battles that lasted days.
"You never felt anything like that before?" I asked. "You're sure?"
"Never." He stared at the floor. "And I don't feel it now. It's just... gone."
I didn't understand that, but I didn't press. Not yet.
"If you're not going to drink that," I said, taking the bottle back and draining another mouthful.
"I don't know how you're drinking right now. I feel like I could retch at any moment."
I looked at the blood dried on his neck and face, grabbed a cloth from the table, and began cleaning him up.
"We need to figure out what we're doing next," I said, working at a particularly stubborn streak near his temple.
He nodded but continued staring at nothing.
I turned his face toward mine, forcing him to meet my eyes. "Thatcher, I need you to snap out of this. You can fall apart later. Right now, we need to talk."
"There's no plan we can make, Thais." His voice was flat, defeated. "We're at the whims of the Aesymar. At some point, they'll separate us. And then they'll kill us, or we'll die in the Trials."
A grave finality crossed his features, and I realized he'd already given up. Already accepted that we wouldn't make it out of this alive.
I sighed, looking around the sterile room. Because part of me thought he was right.
We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of everything that had happened settling over us like a shroud. The blood, the death, the impossible power that had torn through my brother like an avalanche.
And then, I realized we hadn't even talked about?—
