Page 38 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
"I will share her with you," Taveth said quietly, his voice muffled against my shoulder. "As brother-mates. She will need protection when I am gone, and I can see that you love her truly."
It should have been a victory. Permission to be with Livia, to claim her openly instead of fighting for her in shadows. But all I could think about was the cost—losing a brother I had only just found.
"There has to be another way," I said desperately. "Some treatment, some way to slow the process—"
"There isn't." Taveth's voice was final, accepting. "This is the fate of all shadow mages. We burn bright and brief, and then we are gone."
Malachar cleared his throat, drawing our attention back to the wider council. "This is... unprecedented," he said. "We will need time to discuss the implications."
"Sirrax will be returned to his quarters for now," Aytara said, her voice carrying clear authority. "Tarshi, your status here has obviously changed with these revelations."
As guards moved to escort Sirrax away, he looked directly at Taveth. "Treat her well," he said simply. "She has been through enough."
After Sirrax was led away, I turned back to my brother. The council was already beginning to disperse, their voices low with discussion about what they had witnessed.
"Will you take me to see her?" I asked.
13
Isat in Taveth's chambers, perched on the edge of his bed with my hands clasped so tightly in my lap that my knuckles had gone white. The afternoon light filtering through the carved window seemed too bright, too cheerful for the darkness that had settled in my chest after what I'd witnessed in the depths below.
The sound of footsteps in the corridor made me look up, and relief flooded through me when I heard Taveth's familiar tread. I rose quickly, already moving toward the door before it opened, ready to throw myself into his arms and find comfort in his presence.
But when the door swung open, I froze mid-step.
Taveth stood in the doorway, but behind him was another figure that made my heart stop beating entirely. The same height, the same build, the same face—but with black eyes instead of white.
"Tarshi," I whispered, his name barely audible.
Seeing them side by side made the resemblance even more shocking. It wasn't just similarity—they were identical, as if carved from the same stone by the same master sculptor.
Before I could fully process what I was seeing, Tarshi stepped around Taveth and crossed the room in three quick strides. His arms came around me, warm and familiar and safe, and I collapsed against his chest as months of fear and longing crashed over me like a wave.
"You're alive," I sobbed against his chest, my fingers clutching at the familiar fabric of his tunic as if he might disappear if I let go. "You're alive, you're here, you're real."
His arms tightened around me, and I felt the mate bond surge back to life between us—warm and golden and filled with such overwhelming love and relief that it nearly brought me to my knees. Through that connection, I could feel Sirrax too, somewhere close by, alive and whole and desperate to reach me.
"Shh," Tarshi murmured against my hair, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm here. We're here. We found you."
I pulled back just enough to look up at his face, needing to see his eyes, to confirm this wasn't some cruel dream conjured by my desperate longing. His black eyes were bright with unshed tears, and when he cupped my face in his hands, his touch was exactly as I remembered—gentle but sure, protective without being possessive.
"How?" I managed through my tears. "How did you find me? I thought—when I saw Sirrax fall during the battle, I thought you were both dead."
"It took us weeks to track you," he said, his thumbs brushing away the tears on my cheeks. "Marcus and the others are here too. We've been searching for you since the moment you disappeared."
He moved toward the large carved chair near the window, settling into it and pulling me into his lap. I curled against himlike a child, my face buried in the crook of his neck as he rubbed soothing circles on my back.
"We all came for you," he said quietly. "Marcus, Sirrax, Antonius, Septimus, Jalend, myself—we never stopped looking. We're all safe, though we're being held prisoner for now while the Talfen decide what to do with us."
Relief so intense it was painful flooded through me. They were alive. All of them were alive and here.
Finally, I managed to pull back enough to look at his face, drinking in the sight of those familiar black eyes. But movement in my peripheral vision reminded me that we weren't alone, and I turned to see Taveth still standing near the door, his expression unreadable.
"What's going on?" I asked, looking between them. "How…”
Tarshi's hand stilled on my back, and I felt tension ripple through him. "Brothers," he said quietly, his eyes never leaving Taveth's face. "We're twin brothers."
My mind reeled as I tried to process this information. Brothers. Twins. It explained the identical faces but raised so many other questions that I didn't know where to begin.
