Iscariot

Another day and you've had your fill of sinking.

She doesn't want us.

No. She doesn't want magic and she doesn't want you. Erik clenched his fists staring at the carpet as he walked. And you had to push her even further away.

Zecaeru's signature was now branded upon Mika's body, stronger than Raestrao's. It was the last thing Erik had expected to find when he helped Sam lay her on the bed in her room. He could smell his younger brother on her, saw how low her energy had been drained. She had been with Matthew, intimately. Sam had to have noticed and didn't say a word about it.

Erik's incubus side flared with hunger. His jealousy demanded he erase it and take her but he pushed the beast away once more, hating himself.

Matthew, James, and Damien were fighting the devils while Sam brought Mika to him. His brother hadn't been to the mansion the entire time Erik watched over her. He hadn't had the impression she was that close to Matthew. Mika wasn't one to lose her heart so swiftly after Andrew but she wasn't showing any signs of coercion, either.

Zacaeru isn't Raestrao. At least, he hoped Matthew wasn't.

Erik returned to find Sam slouched in a chair before the fireplace. The dishes from their meal were cleared away and the brute had bathed and found a bottle from somewhere.

"Sam?" Erik entered cautiously, seeing the thin line of his mouth. "She's alright." His brother shook his head, his eyes looking away before taking a sip.

"No, she isn't." Sam ran a hand through his damp hair, leaving it spiked up in all directions.

"I don't think she heard."

"Great. Then I still have to tell her." He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, rolling the bottle between his palms.

"Not yet." Erik dropped down on a bench beside him, propping his feet up against the armrest and staring at the flames as well. "You still don't know what really happened."

"I know what happened to Andrew." Sam took a swig and looked over at the incubus, passing the bottle. Erik hesitated at the smell of the hard liquor but took a swig himself, the brute giving him a half-smile as he coughed and handed the bottle back.

"We need to know," Erik wheezed, blinking tears out of his eyes. Whiskey wasn't his first or even tenth choice for getting drunk and this bottle was rough, servant grade if he was any judge of it.

"Do any of us ever know what's really happening?" Sam sighed and drank again. The alcohol was curbing the pain in his back well enough. "She's getting her magic back, but it's been strange."

"She was drugged," Erik admitted, seeing Sam's eyes flare with anger as his head whipped back to him.

"Drugged? By who?" Sam tried to get up, appalled, but Erik put an arm out to stop him.

"I'm not sure. Maybe your watcher? I've removed it from her system and healed the addiction but even taking that into account, what's happening isn't normal."

"What do you think it is?"

Do you take or give? Remember your legacy.

Ezaeur. No. No way.

"I don't know." He wouldn't consider it. He wanted to teach Mika magic, to become her friend, to have her in his life for real. He wanted to go back to before, to the human world and do it all over again, to erase the past three decades as if they'd never happened.

Part of his wish had already come true.

"Aomaris?"

"Hmmm?" Sam looked back at him to see the emotion flooding his brother's eyes.