But first, you need to tell him, Blay thought. You need to tell him what you did when you spoke to Luchas.

With a burst of strength, Qhuinn got to his feet. But then he seemed to stall out.

Instead of leaving, he ended up putting the cover down on the toilet and sitting in a way that was angled toward the exit. Like part of him was running down to the training center—and the other part was frozen out of fear of what he would find.

“What if it’s my fault?” he whispered.

Blay cleared his throat. “Actually, I think it was mine.”

Qhuinn rolled his eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I saw him the night before the storm, too.”

As his mate looked over sharply, Blay wished he could change places with Layla and be the one who’d brought the kids down. No, wait. Then Layla would have said what he had—and he wouldn’t want her to carry that burden.

“You were in the OR.” Blay was aware of his heart starting to beat even harder, and also that the bathroom, which had previously seemed just fine for temperature, had turned into a sauna. “He was coming from the pool. He stopped and asked how you were doing.”

“You giving him a medical update would hardly freak him out—”

“He didn’t know you’d been elevated to the King’s personal guard.” As Qhuinn stiffened, Blay put his palms out. “I never would have divulged the information, but I wasn’t aware you hadn’t told him. I mean, I just . . . I can understand why you’d keep that to yourself given everything that was going on with him, but . . . I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

Qhuinn opened his mouth. Closed it. Then rubbed his thighs. “Yeah, I thought I had mentioned to you to keep it on the down low. I just didn’t want to pile on. You know the glymera. A brother who’s a Brother? That would be hard on anyone, but where Luchas was at? And then add on the personal guard shit?”

“I’m really sorry. It’s killing me.”

“No, listen, it’s okay.” Qhuinn cleared his throat. “Was he . . . bothered by it?”

“I’ll be honest. He was surprised.”

Oh, God, Blay thought. As he did the math, it was possible that he was one of the last people who had interacted with Luchas.

The idea that Qhuinn’s brother might have been an afterthought for everyone in the house broke Blay’s heart. And on some level, he knew that wasn’t true. The male had been a part of the community, and yet . . . everybody had their own lives, lives with mates and young, lives within the war with the Lessening Society and now whatever new threat had come to Caldwell. There had always been injuries and nightly stressors, changes of seasons, problems with cars, supplies that needed reordering, guns to clean, daggers to sharpen.

Life. With all its multi-faceted layers.

And Luchas had had his own. Such as it was.

Had he felt left behind? And why hadn’t someone asked him if that had been true?

“I just want to take it back,” Blay said in a voice that cracked. “I don’t want to have been responsible in any way for . . .”

Qhuinn shook his head. “You aren’t. There are so many reasons without that.”

The words were the right ones—and some part of Qhuinn must have believed them. His voice was steady and not condemning in any way.

But that mismatched stare was elsewhere, not meeting Blay’s eyes.

“I have to go down there.” Qhuinn got to his feet. “I need to see the note.”

“I’ll take care of the kids.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Justlikethat, Qhuinn was gone, the door to the bathroom opening and closing, a chill entering the warm, humid space.

Or maybe the waft of cold was just how Blay was feeling.

Qhuinn wasn’t an unfair male, and the love between them wasn’t something Blay questioned. But sometimes there were things you couldn’t come back from in relationships. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to work past them, or weren’t willing to try.

But the reality that your mate had contributed to the death of your brother, even if it was inadvertently, was a tough one.

Any way you looked at it.

As Qhuinn stood just inside his brother’s fifteen-by-fifteen-foot patient room, his brain fired up with an electric storm of shoulda/coulda/woulda’s. Maybe if they’d decorated this place? Like, wallpapered things and added a nice rug, hung oil paintings and thrown some expensive sheets on the hospital bed, maybe it would have—

“Shut the fuck up,” he muttered as he looked over at the rolling table.

And there it was. The letter.

Blay was right. With the envelope that white color, it blended completely into the tray. And of course, Luchas had taken care to make sure it was perfectly flush with the corner, arranged with care.

From across the way, the precise lettering, done with a narrow-tipped blue pen, in Luchas’s perfect penmanship, gave Qhuinn the chills.

Somehow, even with all his injuries, he’d managed to write beautifully.

Brother Mine.

Qhuinn went over with the intention of picking the letter up, taking out whatever was inside, and absorbing the words that had been left for him. But he ultimately didn’t touch the thing, and it took him a minute to figure out why. Then it came to him . . . as soon as he read whatever had been written, it was truly done. His brother was truly gone.

The finality of the death, the shocking, binary nature of finding Luchas’s frozen body out in the forest, had been transferred to the missive: As long as he didn’t read what was in there, his brother was still alive, in a way. They were both still in the in-between, something still left to be discovered, considered, reflected upon.

Well . . . and then there was his terror about whatever the message was.

Luchas had never been mean, but reality could be devastating.

After all, Qhuinn knew exactly what it was like to be less than, through circumstances completely beyond your control. He hadn’t chosen his mismatched eyes; his brother hadn’t chosen to be abducted by Lash and tortured. So, yes, the last thing Qhuinn would ever do was rub Luchas’s nose in the very obvious reality that there had been a reversal of fortune for them both.

Looking around, Qhuinn focused on the armchair. Usually when he’d come into this room, he’d find his brother there, a book open in his lap, a cup of tea on that table by the lamp. Because Luchas had always been dressed in clean things, and his hair freshly washed, and that cane set aside . . . it had been simpler to believe all was well. Or at least, all was improving, even if it was just at a snail’s pace.

Qhuinn went over to the little table and picked up what his brother had been reading. Because it was easier than touching that last missive’s envelope.

Ah, yes. A little light diversion before bed: The leather-bound volume was in the Old Language, something that was, given the current status of Qhuinn’s head, wholly foreign and totally unreadable to him as he flipped through the pages.

When he got to where a satin ribbon marked Luchas’s pause, he felt sick with sadness.

This journey of letters and words and sentences and paragraphs would never be completed, the eyes that had traced the symbols that had been written now closed forever.

With a sad capitulation, Qhuinn lowered himself into the chair his brother had spent so many hours in. He kept hold of the book, closing it up and cradling it in his hands. As he stared across at the empty bed, he pictured Layla with the twins and wondered exactly where the visit had occurred. It would help him picture it if he knew whether they’d been over there on the bed or here on the chair and ottoman.

He would ask her for the details later.

He wanted to hold on to the memory, even if it was one he had to create on his own.

And maybe it was better that way. He wanted a picture-perfect, happy, imagined storyline of Layla coming down with the young and Luchas sitting in this chair with both of them in his lap. A poignant, final goodbye—

Had Luchas had his plan already set? Or had it been later?

As Qhuinn let his head fall back, he tried to stop his mind from spinning. When that failed miserably, he considered getting a bottle of Herradura. Then he upgraded that plan to asking Manny for some knockout drops in the form of nice, little white pills that would help him exit this miserable train at the REM Sleep Station.

Surrounded by his brother’s few things, he thought back to an evening in his own timeline, one that he had never told Luchas about. One that only Blay really knew of.

Because Blay had been the one who saved him from his own suicide attempt.

And it was because of that that Qhuinn couldn’t blame his mate for what he’d said to Luchas. That one comment about the private guard was not the reason for it all—and besides, Blay had already proven himself and his loyalty and his compassion over and over again, throughout his life.

There had been a lot of reasons why Luchas had chosen to walk out into that storm. So many reasons, all of which were tragic, none of which were a mystery.

A news flash about the King’s private guard? Drop in the bucket.

Qhuinn’s eyes returned to the rolling table. From his current angle, he couldn’t see the envelope, couldn’t read those two words that had been written upon it, couldn’t reach for the thing if he’d wanted to.

And, he realized, he didn’t want to.

He didn’t want to read whatever was in there. He’d rather have unfinished business forever . . .

. . . as opposed to confirmation that maybe, just maybe, it was his fault because he’d been too busy, too negligent, too self-centered to take care of his own blood and make sure that Luchas was getting not just the medical care he needed, but the psychological counseling that was just as important to health and well-being.

Maybe more important.

One week later, Blay opened the door to his bedroom suite’s bathroom and leaned out. Across the way, the light in the walk-in closet was glowing, the illumination spilling onto the Persian carpet, making the jewel tones even brighter. He hesitated. Then retreated back and shut the door again.