Bereft: Foretold

24 | A Monster's Fate

I hadn't meant to repeat the last words of my sane brother to the witch and huntress, but once they left my mouth, I couldn't help but remember Sethan, that flat outside Ingolstadt, and our parting argument. The parallels between my current departure and my brother's exit from that summer-clad patio were not lost on me. 

The Sin of Wrath vanished that night, and I spent the ensuing sixty years dogging Balthazar's every step, killing his hosts by any means necessary, determined to rip him limb from limb to rescue my brother—but I'd failed. For six decades, I'd played a dangerous game and Balthazar laughed all the while, bidding his time, and when I was at my weakest, he'd struck, and so escalated my life's downward spiral.

Unlike Sethan, I had always been alone.

I walked along the open-air platform of the empty train station, bag in hand and my gaze fixed on the boarding schedule. The arriving and departing trains were lit up in red and ever rotating, but I couldn't figure out which would lead me to Itheria. I'd been on trains before—most recently in England, fleeing cross-country with Sara to Crow's End, but for whatever reason these schedules eluded my understanding.

I must be tired, I told myself as I sank onto one of the sagging benches and brushed loam off the seat. To be thinking of my brother and to be so confused, there is no other excuse.

Rubbing at my eyes, I tried to imagine what Sethan would have done in my situation. If he'd been told by our dark father to stop the mages and our estranged Absolian brother, would he have been able to decipher a solution? Would he have been able to bring back Sara without the aid of a black mage?

Perhaps, but above all else, Sethan had been a bull-headed coward. My brother had had specific ideas and conceptions of this world, never listening to reason when it challenged his beliefs. For much of his life as a Sin, I'd acted as his conscience—as laughable as the concept was—and I'd guided him through his mistakes, his trials, his horrid decisions. The moment I forced him to abide by his choice without me as a safety net, he'd gone ahead with his foolhardy experiment and had gotten himself captured. 

My guilt would be eternal, but it was his fault. His fault! 

I dropped my hands as I leaned against the pylon at my back, eyes lifting to the caged lights set in the overhang's termite-ridden rafters. I felt like one of those dim-witted and guileless moths flinging themselves into the hot bulbs over and over again, chasing an elusive goal they'd never reach. Their wings were singed and burnt, but they never stopped trying, and they were all the more stupid for it. 

Was I stupid? Was I an expendable insect chasing an impossible light, hope forever sequestered behind a wall of glass I kept slamming my head against? Was I burning my wings in my pursuit?

"You lost your wings a long time ago, Darius," I whispered with a pained chuckle, drawing my feet onto the bench so I could perch on its lip. A lone train pulled by the station, its horn letting out a single echoing cry as it hesitated, then moved on. I stared at its wide windows and saw nothing but rows and rows of empty seats.

In the private sanctum of my exhausted mind, I asked what I should do now, but the words only resounded in long black halls and responded to my call with mimicked questions. There was no answer to be found. 

Light, timid footsteps jerked my head upright.

Saule froze when my gaze connected with hers, clutching her chest as if terrified her heart would leap from its cage and make a run for it. She looked uncertain—but the witch swallowed her fear and continued to approach until she could take a seat on the bench at my side.