Not once did he stop looking at her with pain. With betrayed hurt. His body healed faster than she could break him, than she could avenge her two friends.
She threw down her binder and punched him. Her enhanced fist slammed into the purple energy binding about his head. The force shattered it and broke his nose. Blood spurted. It splashed hot across her face as she cocked back her arm. She screamed out in pure pain and grief, vision blurred by hot tears spilling down her cheeks.
Her fist crashed into his face again and again. Green light streaked across her vision, blurred by the ferocity of her blows. She felt his cheekbones crumple. His jaw broke. He spat out bloody teeth. He sobbed, snot bubbling from his nose and staining her earthen gauntlet. Pain swam in his eyes.
“Stop staring at me like you’re Bran!” she screeched, her voice echoing. “You’re not him! You murdered him!”
His eye socket cracked, skin tearing across his temple.
He healed. His skin went white and molded faster than she could slam her fist in him a second time. A third. Fourth. New teeth grew to replace the ones she’d broken. She couldn’t hurt him. Couldn’t kill the thing that had stolen away two of her friends.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and stared at him. “Why! Why Bran? He was a sweet boy! Why did you murder him?”
The impostor Bran hiccuped through his sobs as she swayed before him. Then he jerked out of her grasp and ran for the doorway, his torso gripped by the bands of amethyst energy. Her knees buckled as he fled into the darkness of the ruins.
She collapsed.
Fingers caught her. His strong arms swept around her and pulled her into his chest. She couldn’t stop the grief from gushing out of her. She could finally release the anguish for Smiles she’d buried deep in her soul. It mixed with horror for poor Bran. Fingers rocked her. She turned and pressed her face into his broad chest, her entire body shaking from the force of her grief.
He stroked her hair with a large hand and whispered soothing words. No different from a father comforting his child.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Miguil shook Ōbhin awake.
His eyes snapped open. Miguil’s normally handsome face looked grayed and wearied, bags weighing beneath his eyes. Ōbhin groaned as he sat up. His ankle throbbed, though the pain didn’t feel as bad. He was mending.
“My watch?” Ōbhin groaned.
Miguil nodded. “Been a few hours. I think. He’s no help.”
Ōbhin glanced over to see Dualayn at a window of ruby. The man sat in a crystallized chair, once padded and comfortable. She stared at the transformed glass as though he could see any detail through the translucent gemstone to the city of Koilon beyond.
“Wouldn’t trust him if he was,” Ōbhin said. “Okay, I’ll take over. Get some sleep.”
Miguil nodded. He stretched out on the gemstone floor near Dajouth. The younger man lay on his side. His arm was out of the splint. Though the healer had run out of energy, it had mended his bone. They were good at repairing simple things. It was the complex injuries, delicate work, that they were not so good at.
How many people did you kill to figure that out? wondered Ōbhin as he took his post by the door. He was only a cubit or so from Dualayn.
“I am glad we didn’t go deeper into the ruins last time,” Dualayn abruptly said. He leaned back in the chair. “I would have gotten her killed.”
Ōbhin’s spine stiffened. “Don’t pretend that you care about Avena. You cut out her brain!”
“I had to experiment,” Dualayn said. “I had to know it worked on others. I had refined my procedure to the point I was certain it would do no harm to her.”
“And Kaylin?” Ōbhin asked. Everyone spoke of the cook as a lively woman before her husband’s death when her mind was sound. Now she was confused about everything. Only while cooking did she have any focus. “Were you certain she wouldn’t have been harmed?”
“Certainly,” Dualayn said. “Another failure, I am sad to say. But I had the opportunity to use her. She came to me needing something to help her sleep after Dyain’s death. It would have been a disservice to my experiments not to study her.”
Disgust roiled through Ōbhin like the hurtling of snow down the mountainside. An avalanche of offended rage. “Why do you even need to cut out their brains? It makes no sense . . .” Ōbhin shuddered as a horrifying thought struck him. “You want to give your wife a younger body. You already learned from Avena that you could regenerate Bravine’s damaged mind, but that wouldn’t undo what the years have afflicted upon her body.”
Dualayn glanced back to the ruby window.
“Maybe you would have stolen a younger body for yourself, right? Niszeh’s Black Tone, that was what you were going to do. You just needed someone to perform the operation. Someone you thought would understand. Someone like Avena.”
“She should understand,” Dualayn said, anger thick on his tongue. “She’ll be immortal. So long as the jewelchines are not disturbed around her mind. When her body wears out, she’ll just have to find another. Young. Strong. Healthy.”
Bile rose in Ōbhin’s throat. It wasn’t just horrified disgust he had for Dualayn, but that the man had worked with Avena all these years and didn’t understand who she was. “You think Avena could do that? Could steal another person’s life for her own?”
“Some people are better than others.” Dualayn lifted his head. “A natural nobility, not
