Coris may have been whisked from Fyr's raft in the nick of time, and yet, he was still not out of the beguilingly calm waters that could carry him to the dreaded Black Lake.
Bishop Riddell and Jaise's senior healers had warned that the young Lord Hadrian must be kept under constant vigil all through the night. As the laudanum had yet to be cleansed from his system, it could flare up and bring him under again once the effects of the antidote had subsided. At best, he would only suffer the fevers, aches and nausea of withdrawal. He would need to be kept cool, well hydrated, and well away from more laudanum.
Zier volunteered for first watch without the slightest of hesitation. His offer was undisputed. Being their cousin and closest kin, Simon naturally stepped up to take the next watch.
It was third hour by the time Meya finally drifted off to sleep with her hand around Coris's wrist. Her tears had dried, yet her nose was still rosy, and her breathing was loud and ragged. Simon had tucked in straight away to prepare for his dawn shift, and was snoring softly on his mattress at the foot of the bed.
By the light of the fireplace, Zier could see Coris's eyes still jittering restlessly under their sockets. Beads of sweat glistened on his wide forehead and peppered his receding hairline. Every once in a while, he would rub his head against his pillow, eyebrows furrowed in a frown as he struggled and failed to find his sweet spot. If Zier were to guess, he was aware that Meya had had her finger pressed up against his pulse, and had refrained from tossing and turning to his heart's fill, feigning an easy sleep to lull his Lady into allowing herself some rest.
Zier heaved a private sigh of weariness at the thought. As he watched Coris fidget in place as if tied down by invisible ropes, his shallow well of patience ran dry. He fished the towel out of the water basin, wrung it, then dabbed at Coris's forehead.
Coris wrenched his eyes open halfway. It took a moment as his faculties aroused themselves, before those silvery pupils slid to the side, settling on Zier.
Leaving the folded towel on his forehead, Zier flipped back the corner of his blanket. The taut skin of Coris's naked chest looked bone white, illuminated by the moonlight. He took his brother's clammy, bony hand and warmed it between his.
"Where does it hurt?"
Coris's chapped lips crinkled into a wan smile. He strained his feeble shoulder up for a minuscule shrug.
"Everywhere." He chuckled. His smile widened as he tilted his head, "If you were to leech me, you'd have to suck me dry."
Zier betrayed no flicker of humor, and Coris's smile sagged. He turned instead to his bedmate, staring long and still at her tearstained countenance, before gingerly pulling his arm out of her loosened grasp. It was so thin that it slid out without so much as a brush.
A trail of mucus seeped from Meya's nostril. Coris pulled the towel down from his forehead and dabbed gently at it, then tugged up the blanket to cloak her exposed shoulders.
It was an intriguing sight. Zier had never seen Coris tending to women. Usually, it was women—maids, nurses, Mother—tending to him, sickly as he was. And he couldn't help his curiosity,
"You love her?"
Coris froze with his hand halfway through a sheaf of Meya's hair. Tremors wracked his fingertips, before he withdrew soundlessly back to his side of the bed. Still, his gaze lingered upon her.
"I prefer not to ascertain." His soft voice barely traveled in the thick silence, "I don't have the right to, even if I did."
The truth was evident in the lie. Guilt and fear clashed within Zier. Yet, amidst the maelstrom, there was that waving splinter of denial. He hammered down on it, as he had always did, ignoring the dull pain as it sank back into its crevasse. The words of yesterday's argument beat a tattoo against his skull, and he clutched his numb hands together, head bowed as if in prayer.
"I'm sorry, Brother." He shook his head, "I just can't do it. I'm no knight. I've always been a coward. I'm scared of dying."
"That makes two of us, then." said Coris. Zier froze, then snorted.
"Don't try the empathy game. I know better. You've already accepted it. Fyr, you've been preparing for it for years."
"Doesn't mean I'm not scared, does it?"
Coris's voice remained soft, but there was a hint of ice in it. Zier glanced up. Coris was staring straight ahead. His gaunt face was masklike, void of color and emotion, but his gaze was bitter and morose.
Somehow, Zier felt the splinter in his heart stirring, battling to pull free, calling out to be acknowledged once and for all. It was as if it had found its fellow in his brother's eyes. And, for the first time, Zier asked Coris the one question he had neglected to for six years.
"Why did you do it, then? Why did you lie to Father about swallowing the Axel? Why have you sacrificed your future for me?"
Coris remained staring ahead into darkness and silence. Zier could see the strain of the battle within him in the thinning line of his lips, the tightening grip of his spider-like hands on his blanket. At long last, Coris glanced at his slumbering mistress, then took a deep, shuddering breath,
"I hadn't set out to do that, Zier." He closed his eyes as he exhaled, sinking limply deeper into his pillow.
"You know as well I do that Father would never harm us for The Axel. I'm his heir, and you're my spare. We're the future of Hadrian. He couldn't bear to lose us."
Zier could only stare unblinking at his brother's tortured expression, dreading, anticipating. A part of him felt like it already knew what was coming, that this would turn out to be just one of Coris's mind games.
"If only The Axel had come out of you, none of this would have ensued. How in the three lands could I have foreseen all this happening to me?"
Coris shielded his eyes with a jittery hand. His voice choked with sobs died halfway out of his throat. Zier's heart lurched at the sight of crystal-clear teardrops plummeting down his protruding cheekbones. But he couldn't retreat now. He must know now. This talk of theirs was long overdue.
"Why did you do it, then?" He demanded once more. He planted his hand on the mattress, his nails digging into the supple down as he loomed over his weeping brother,
"Just a show of brotherly love, is that it?" He sneered, even as his voice shook with suppressed tears, "You think you could stop me from bringing The Axel to Graye with one kind gesture, after all those years of making my life hell? You think you could hang Father's love over me to scare me into behaving?"
Coris laid another hand over his face, curling in on himself in shame. He flipped to the side and made as if to burrow and hide in his pillow, but Zier grasped his shoulder before he could flee.
"Why didn't you confess?" He peeled back those pale fingers with his, revealing silvery eyes wide in terror,
"Three days and nights, you let that hag poison you half-dead. Turns out that wasn't to protect me from Father? Then what for?! Why did you have to do all that?"
Zier shook those bony wrists in frustration. Coris panted, breathless from swallowing back his tears.
"Because I didn't—I still don't know, to this day—how to convince you—" He choked out in between breaths, then buried his face into his pillow, further muffling his words,
"—That I've changed—That I'm trying to be—the brother I've never been for you. That I'm learning to love and protect and guide you—the way I should've done from the start—"
"—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 exceedingly magnanimous when it came to the fate of her kind, but it was clear that convincing her to forgive Coris for his latest betrayal of her trust would not be as simple.
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