“I really don’t know, damn you,” the old woman said. “They didn’t tell me.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Feledias said, offering her a grin. “It’s only that, now that I think on it, a roll with a farm girl might be just the thing. Unless, that is, you decide to be a touch more cooperative.”
He turned back to her and saw that she was no longer studying him but instead was looking over his shoulder, something like relief and pleasure in her gaze. “Can’t tell you where they were going,” the old woman said, “but I think probably I can tell you where they are.”
“Oh?” Feledias asked, not liking the sudden confidence in the woman’s tone, for he did not understand it, and he never liked things he did not understand. “And where is that?”
The woman smiled. “Behind you.”
Feledias grunted. “A pathetic ruse, and one which will serve you no purpose,” he said, turning, “for if you do not—”
The words were gone. Torn from him by a shock that thrummed through his entire body as if he’d been struck by lightning, a shock which was greater than any he had ever felt or thought to feel. He had hunted his brother for years, ever since his betrayal, and he had known that he would find him one day, that he would make him suffer. Now it seemed, that day, that moment, had come. But in all his fantasies, in all the dreams he’d had of this moment, his brother had cowered before him, weak and broken and afraid, begging for his life.
But he did not look weak now, nor broken, and he did not beg. He only stood, regarding Feledias over the intervening distance between where he stood beside a house wall. Stood as big and imposing—perhaps even more imposing than he remembered—and seeing him standing there, in the ruddy, flickering torchlight, Feledias felt a shock of surprise and something else. Something very close to fear.
“Hello, brother,” the hulking figure said, the words like two great boulders shifting against each other.
Feledias’s mouth was suddenly unaccountably dry, and despite the many dreams of this moment he’d had, imaginings in which he had cut his brother down with words before he began the cutting in truth, he found that now that the moment had come, he could remember none of the phrases he’d used, and he was left only to stare at his brother.
“It’s been a long time,” his brother said. “Now, if you have questions, ask me. Not them,” he said, glancing past Feledias at the innkeeper and the girl, both of which he had dismissed in his surprise.
Questions. That word struck a chord in him, bringing him out of the stupor of surprise and back to himself. “Questions,” he sneered, feeling the shock which had clouded his mind departing, vanishing like mist in the sunlight. “Only one, brother. The same one that I have carried for fifteen years. Why?”
His brother’s features twisted in something like grief, which Feledias knew could not be right, for his brother, the Crimson Prince felt neither compassion nor grief. “Feledias…I am sorry—”
“Why?” Feledias asked again, this time aware that he was screaming but unable to stop himself. “Why did you take her from me?”
His brother winced. “I was a fool, Fell,” he said softly. “A selfish fool. And…and I loved her.”
“Love,” Feledias spat. “What does the Crimson Prince know of love? You betrayed me, brother. I, who was willing to do anything for you, I who was always pleased to be the lesser prince, to watch you accept all the glory and the praise and the love of the common folk. I wanted nothing, asked for nothing, except…” He swallowed hard, his mouth dry. “Except her.”
“I know,” his brother said, so quietly he almost thought he’d imagined it.
“I loved her,” Feledias said. “And she loved me. I would have been okay with you having the world, brother. I did not mind that you were the famous one, the one everyone looked up to. I was proud of you. But her…”
“I’m sorry,” he said. And what’s more, it seemed that he meant it.
That took Feledias back even more than his brother appearing seemingly out of nowhere had. He had known Bernard his entire life, had followed him around like a lost puppy for most of it. He had seen Bernard angry, had seen him curse and yell and scream and spit with rage, had seen every variation of fury on his face. But in all that time, in all the many years in which he had known him, in which he had followed him, he had never known his brother to apologize.
He would have said, if asked, that the man didn’t know how and that he had no interest in learning it. Hearing the words come from his mouth was like hearing thunder from clear skies or as if a dog had opened its mouth but, instead of barking, demonstrated that it had learned to speak instead. But as amazing as it was, as shocking as it was, it would not bring her back, would not fix what had been broken. Nothing would. “You’re sorry,” he said.
“Yes.”
Feledias had never expected to hear such a thing from his brother, had always thought of him as someone larger than life, not a person, not really, but some force of nature disguised as one, a devil, likely, one sent to the world with one mission and one mission only—death. But now, looking at him, at the hair on his temples that had begun to go white, at the haggard lines in his face where time had scarred him, he realized something. His brother was not a force of nature, not half-god as he had sometimes suspected. He was not like a plague to be avoided, or a mythical figure to be feared.
He was only a man. He was
