Staring down at the body, Qhuinn became obsessed with details he would never know. Had Luchas fallen a couple of times and gotten himself back up? Or had he just collapsed here? What had he thought of as he had stared out across the snowy ground? Had there been pain? There must have been. Freezing to death was painful . . . right?

Or had he been so consumed with ending his suffering that the process of dying had been an afterthought?

Qhuinn would never know. The only thing he was sure of was that Luchas had chosen this. After so much agony, after Lash’s torture, after the months and years since the raids . . . the male had decided to close the door on hope. On love. On the future.

As a wave of emotion swamped Qhuinn, he knew he couldn’t stay in neutral. He had to deal with this.

And that was when he saw Vishous out of the corner of his eye.

Well, not all of the male.

Specifically his gloved hand.

When Qhuinn looked up into the diamond-hard stare of the brother, V’s expression was remote. “You sure you want to do that, son?”

“He chose this place. He . . . picked this. I’m just trying to think of what he’d want.” Qhuinn shook his head. “And although I don’t know much, I’m sure that tearing him up to get him off this ground is not what he would have wished for his remains.”

“I’ll do whatever you want.” V lifted his curse. “But there’s no going back.”

“There’s no going back already.”

“Fair enough.”

Qhuinn blindly reached for Blay, and as always, his mate was right there, clasping that which had been outstretched.

V dropped to his knees. The brother took his time removing his lead-lined glove, tugging the insulation off his fingers one by one. It was as if he were giving Qhuinn all kinds of opportunity to change his mind.

Qhuinn simply watched as the brilliant glow was unsheathed. The energy in V’s palm was so strong, it burned the eye, but he did not look away.

This was all so terrible. All of it.

And something told him the worst was yet to come.

“Tell me when,” V whispered.

“Now,” Qhuinn heard himself say.

“You need to get back.”

“No. I’m not leaving him.”

“You’re going to move back a foot, son, or I’m not going any closer to him with this thing.”

There was a subtle pull on his shoulder, and Qhuinn followed Blay’s gentle pressure, easing over so he was on his butt, instead of his knees.

And that was when something truly awful occurred to him.

“He’s already in the Fade, right?” Qhuinn looked at V. “He got there okay, didn’t he?”

There was that rumor about suicide, that whispered, so-called rule that if you took your own life, you were barred from the Fade. But surely . . .

“Vishous. He’s there, right.”

V’s eyes lowered. “He was a right and just male, horribly treated by fate.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“That’s the best I can do.”

Qhuinn rubbed his face. “Let’s just do this.”

If he got caught up in the unfairness of it all right now, he was going to fucking explode.

Vishous, birthed son of the Scribe Virgin, nodded. And then he slowly lowered the terrifying power that somehow resided within his flesh.

Just before contact was made, Qhuinn had a spasm of doubt, of panic. He almost called it all off—but what had changed? Where else would they take Luchas?

“Oh, God . . .” Qhuinn breathed. “Oh, God, oh—”

The flare of light was intense, the release of energy so great that Qhuinn was thrown into Blay, the pair of them landing in the snow on a sprawl. And he had expected the final act of his blooded brother’s life to last awhile, but it was over . . . within seconds. Or at least that’s what it seemed.

There wasn’t even a scent. He’d braced himself to smell burning flesh and hair, but there was nothing of that sort and not because the wind had changed directions.

As the illumination started to fade, Qhuinn lifted his arm from the shield it had become over his face—he hadn’t even been aware of raising it.

There was nothing left.

In the spot where Luchas had lain, there was no robe, no cane, no prosthesis. There was no frozen body, no face or hands or foot. There was not a torso or a lower body.

Gone, gone, gone.

In the place of his brother, there was a precise outline of the position Luchas had died in, the exact contours of the limbs and the head and the robe represented in a bare spot with no snow or pine needles, even.

Just bald dirt.

Qhuinn extended his trembling hand over the place where the immolation had occurred. Curls of smoke rose up, riding currents of heat that dissipated quickly.

Until it was all stone cold.

Blay had never seen anything like it. V’s glowing hand had extended downward, and then a nuclear-bright flash had lanced through the night, so intense and far-reaching that the entire mountain had lit up like noontime. Or at least that was what it had seemed. And in the aftermath? It was an artist’s drawing of the body’s position on a strip of barren, snowless ground, wisps of smoke rising for a moment.

Followed by only dark stillness.

It was as if the whole world had stopped spinning: No movement among the forest fauna, no deer careful-footing it through the leafless underbrush or owls calling to each other. No snaps of sticks or quiet moans of a breeze through pine branches. Certainly nothing from the Brothers and fighters, who were as statues in and among the trees.

Meanwhile, Qhuinn was fixated on where his brother had been, his big body shuddering. Then the labored breathing came next, heavy, loud. Finally, the male rolled off to the side and propped himself up on bowed arms. The retching went on and on, but nothing came up and out of his throat.

With utter helplessness, Blay stayed beside his mate, his hand on that heaving back, his own eyes watering. As all that pent-up emotion was released, Blay kept looking back and forth between the bare spot and his one true love.

And then, when there was finally an easing of the pain to his bereaved male, he spoke up.

“Come on, let’s go back inside. It’s cold out here.”

As he helped Qhuinn to his feet, he wasn’t sure the guy had any clue where he was. Like a zombie, Qhuinn allowed himself to be led away from where his brother had died, his sneakers taking the path they had forged out here into the forest, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes focused in front of him. There was no telling what was going through his mind.

No, that was a lie.

Blay could guess and all of it was bad.

And that was why he was so compelled to get his mate back inside. There was nothing he could do to help with the maelstrom in Qhuinn’s heart and head, but at least he could get him warm and dry.

As they came up to the Tahoe, V materialized in their path from out of thin air and nodded to the SUV. Blay shook his head. Like the Brother had said, they were only a hundred yards out. That was as far as Luchas had made it. Besides, Qhuinn didn’t stop walking, his trudging stride unbroken as he zeroed in on the camouflaged entry to the cave.

When it was time, Blay jumped ahead and held the drape back, and Qhuinn ducked in. Only to stop dead, like he had no clue where to go next.

“Follow me.” Blay hitched an arm through Qhuinn’s and started walking again. “Not much farther.”

The hatch was closed tight, and Blay entered the code and opened things so Qhuinn could keep going. Then he checked over his shoulder. The Brotherhood had closed ranks, but they were holding back, just looking around the draping, not yet venturing in. This was good. Space was good.

Into the tunnel. Pause by the gear, where Blay stripped the parka off Qhuinn and hung it up.

As Qhuinn looked around with seemingly blind eyes, his face was ruddy from the dry heaves, from the cold, maybe from V’s flash of light. He looked utterly lost, a young in the body of an adult.

“I didn’t want him to go.”

“Of course you didn’t—”

“Oh, God, Blay, what if he knew, what if he knew . . .”

“Knew what?”

Qhuinn rubbed his eyes and then stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else. “What if he’d read my mind. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of times I sat at his bedside and thought to myself . . . what kind of life is this for him? How does he keep going? I couldn’t fathom how he handled it. They were hacking parts of him off to keep him alive. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t work his hands. He was down there in that patient room, all by himself.” Those mismatched eyes shifted over. “What if he read my mind? And knew . . .”

“It was not your fault,” Blay said through a tight throat. “You are not responsible for this.”

“But I am. I was the one who told them to take his leg. I was the one . . . maybe I could have done more, helped more.” Qhuinn dropped his face into his palms. “I thought I had more time with him. He was medically stable, so I thought there was time to talk. Time to help. Oh, fuck, this hurts.”

Blay didn’t know what to say. So he reached out and pulled his mate against him. As Qhuinn’s arms came around him and held on, he took that as a good sign. At least the connection between them was still there.

He had a feeling they were going to need it.

The next thing Qhuinn knew, he was in the mansion’s foyer. He didn’t remember the trip back to the grand, formal space, but he sure as shit hadn’t dematerialized his way here—and he was certain about this because: 1) too much steel to get through; and 2) no way he could have concentrated well enough to ghost out.

At this point, he wasn’t sure he could concentrate well enough to take a piss.

With a numb disassociation, he looked around and recognized the malachite columns, the staircase that rose with such great majesty to the second story, the sconces, the ceiling high above with its warriors and steeds. And beneath his feet? The mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom was just as it was supposed to be.