Page 226 of The Spider Queen
“Hunter had the purest heart of anyone I’ve ever known,” Thane admitted. “I never wanted this for him. You do know that, don’t you?”
I nodded. “I’ll carry his death with me forever. But I loveyou, Thane. I choseyou.”
I’d chosen him many times already, and I’d do it again if I had to in the coming years. But that was the kicker. We’d have years.
I didn’t tell him about the Queen Beyond the Veil. That I kept for myself.
“Tell me what it was like,” I said, echoing back his earlier words. “Tell me what it was like to kill your own brother.”
“Just as you will carry Hunter’s death with you, I’ll carry Xan’s.” He looked away, trying to compose himself.
“You didn’t want to kill him.”
“Of course not.” His tone was bleak, devastated. “I wish there had been another way. But the power and the magic corrupted him. By the end, he wasn’t the Xan I knew from our childhood. I couldn’t even detect who he used to be. That man was gone completely.”
Another goblet appeared on the ledge, this time within Thane’s reach.
“Wine?” I asked.
He flashed a pained grin. “Something stronger.” He grasped the goblet and took a healthy swallow.
I took another sip of wine from my glass. “So here we are. Two conflicted immortals.”
“We’re both alive,” he pointed out. “And we stopped the war.”
“This war,” I pointed out. “There will be another. There’s always another.”
“So we’ll deal with it when we have to.”
“How are the gates of Heaven?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Gabriel will tend to it, I believe.”
“Has he been welcomed back with open arms?”
“Perhaps.”
I fell silent, lost for a moment in my own thoughts. “Why didn’t you battle each other in your beast forms?”
“We wouldn’t do that. It had to be brother against brother, fighting as men. That’s always been our way.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “A dragon burned Xan’s body. Why?”
“Dragon fire can scatter an immortal’s essence.”
“What does that mean?”
“I killed Xan.” He swallowed. “I killed his body. But his essence was still alive. If Lucifer or an evil mage had gotten his hands on Xan’s body, he could’ve been restored. Dragon fire removed his essence from the fabric of immortals.”
“He’s gone,” I whispered. “Forever?”
“Forever.”
I felt Thane’s grief like a knife to my belly. I set my goblet aside and then waded my way toward him. I cozied up onto his lap and rested my head on his shoulder.
Thane set his goblet down, and then his arms came around me. We held each other until we’d cried all our tears, and we were left with nothing but our breaths.
Chapter 47
