Luminous

60 - Splinter

"—And you didn't need to, you idiot!"

Zier snapped, completely forgetting that there were others present in the vicinity. Heaving Coris upright, he grasped him by the shoulders and locked gazes with his brother, who was so stunned he had stopped crying,

"All it would have taken—was a simple sorry, Coris!"

Coris sat petrified but for his blinking eyes, staring dumbly as Zier's grip faltered and those hands slid lifelessly down to his elbows. The younger Hadrian bowed his head, burning tears splashing onto icy stone.

"The months after you returned from Crosset, you went out of your way to be kind to me. You became the brother I've always dreamt of having. You were so like Klythe, it was unnerving, Coris!"

Zier exploded. Having exhausted his strength, he fell, resting his head on his brother's narrow shoulder.

"I thought you'd cottoned on to what I was about to do. I thought you were trying to lure me back to Father's side. And when I was finally back safely in Hadrian's demesne, you'd sell me out for Father's praise. Just like you'd always did."

"All these years, even as we're deep in this crap together, I still can't shake this doubt, deep down. That all this was for The Axel. That you wouldn't have cared if I went over to Graye that night. If Gillian were to slit my throat on that hill. If I didn't so happen to have this dragon eyeball stuck somewhere in my guts!"

The dull, sickening sound of flesh impacting flesh rent the air. Zier had slammed a blow into his abdomen. Coris felt winded as he wrestled with his little brother, trying to stop him walloping himself to a hemorrhage.

"Why didn't you just ask?" He gasped, "Why haven't you said a thing?"

To his immense relief, Zier's struggle grew feeble and ebbed away. As he pressed his watering eyes flush against Coris's shoulder as if to cauterize them, his hoarse confession echoed in the still night.

"I couldn't bear to lose my brother now that I finally have one. I couldn't bear to hear the truth."

Then, without thinking, without planning, as Zier sank bodily into his embrace, for the first time in his life, Coris raised his arms to hold him. He was much broader, much stronger than he was, yet Coris tried his best to support, to protect, to comfort. For once, to be brother first and Hadrian second.

"I'm sorry, Zier. I'm so sorry for everything I've done to you." Through renewed tears, he mustered up his words and whispered them into Zier's ear, as they swayed and held onto one another.

"And I will not begrudge you, if you should withhold your forgiveness, until you feel I truly deserve it. Even if that may take more than my lifetime."

Zier felt it was over him to reply, to decide just now. It was all he could do to nod vigorously, to absorb the ghost of the warmth he had never received from his brother's clammy, shrunken chest. True to his word, Coris simply smoothed his hair in understanding.

"We won't force you to undergo the surgery, Zier. At least until the risk is negligible. You're not a coward for fearing it. Anyone would have been afraid. I would have been afraid."

This time, there was the tremors of a suppressed shiver in his voice. It convinced Zier that this wasn't him feigning empathy simply as a ploy to gain his trust, as he often did.

Yet, even as he was both relieved and grateful, he also felt he didn't deserve it. Yet again, Coris was abandoning the quickest route to justice and freedom for Greeneyes, because of Zier's selfish desire to stay alive. Prioritizing his brother's cowardice over the predicament of the woman he loved and her kind.

Zier couldn't help sneaking a glance over Coris's shoulder at the thought. To his horror, he found himself staring straight into a familiar pair of glowing green eyes (though, to be frank, it would have been a more worrisome matter had she somehow remained asleep through it all). A sudden thump followed by rigorous rustling of fabric from the foot of the bed implied Simon wasn't that heavy a sleeper as well.

Meya sat up, her silhouette backlit by the crackling fire in the hearth. Zier pulled away from the nonplussed Coris, and motioned for him to turn around.

Burnished silver and blazing emerald entwined in a silent, excruciating battle of wills, before Coris broke away and gingerly took his Lady's hand, his shivering words a reassurance to Zier as much as a plea for Meya's sympathy.

"We still have time. We still have much left to discover. We will find another way."

After a long, suffocating moment, Meya clasped Coris's hand in return, and the Hadrian brothers breathed once again. She remained wordless, however. Her downcast face draped in shadow, and her lips a grim line of cold fury, she withdrew her hand and turned her back on them, then slid soundlessly off the bed. She traipsed towards the side-door then disappeared behind it, for once actively seeking the company of trustworthy fellow women over the secretive brothers of Hadrian.

Meya may be magnanimous when it came to the fate of her kind, but convincing her to forgive Coris for his latest betrayal of her trust would not be as simple.

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