Grey eyes imploring in the shadows, Kasse was beyond his breaking, but he remained, Eo’s bond too strong to violate.
“Please, start a life with me. I love you. Please.”
Eoran’s willpower had always been a flimsy ruse. How could he turn Kasse down when the question of his love and commitment to that boy was being tested? To deny him would mean denying those things he also wanted—he could live quietly, on the edge, and be perfectly happy; he’d confessed as much days ago. But what truly were the repercussions from making that choice? Would they always been on the heels of Amstead’s territorial gluttony? Would they just be hiding from a bad decision when the fighting had claimed Lasandet and continued further northward?
The boy with house and home was chipped away at, whittled by his inability to keep telling that guttersnipe now grown no. His heart was too full to allow his head the clarity needed to do any sort of cost risk analyzing on this potential future…
So he sought distant help, in the form of a rude wake up call.
“I need you to do me a favor.” Eoran reclaimed at least one of his hands and pointed to his right eye. “Punch me.”
“If it’s not what you want, just fucking tell me—and I’ll stop. I’ll stop fucking asking. But I’m not gonna fucking punch you.” Kasse was a roiling energy, nervous and reduced.
“It’s just a means to an end, don’t get so offended,” Eoran slumped against the rock. “I do want this, Kasse. You don’t understand. I’m trying to work with you here. I wanted to wake up my brother, see what he thought. I don’t know if we can communicate this far apart. But maybe that doesn’t matter; I guess it comes along with disappearing, huh.” He slid down, sat on the ground.
“What if the war comes to Tareija? What if it comes to the northern shores? How is Ossa any safer, when we soak its sand in blood with our invasion?”
“Stand up,” the ghost said, still somewhat avoidant despite his resignation. At least he understood now that Eoran wasn’t picking a fight—just trying to activate a line to the outside. “The right one?”
“Yeah.” Eoran did as told, steadied his line of sight on the other.
The boy, still with all his doubt, withheld his pacing steps and stacked them up till they crowded his lungs. Then, with a snap, he lashed out at his lover with a wince, knocking Eoran into the sand with his left hook.
“Sorry—” Kasse was immediate on the apology but didn’t try to help Eoran up, only kneeling next to him. He didn’t want to interrupt his… ocucall? Opticomm? Eyeball radio?
A wobbly palm encouraged Kasse to not worry, offered some reassurance that he’d be fine when the carmine supernova that came with the blow had ebbed. For now, his head recoiled in orotund pain, bone and eye throbbing under the cover of his other hand. The boy sat up, folded in on himself, knees to chest, forehead to knees. Such an extreme provocation would not be required on a normal day, but Eoran aimed to grab attention through force—aimed to impart how important this meeting was in a single, easy to understand strike spreading impossible distances in an instant.
But pain wasn’t the only transmittal through the shared bindings of meat and blood, the younger Toriet’s voice came across too, screaming like a pious hallucination come to demand a brutal crusade.
KADEN
“FUCK.”
A world away, Kaden Toriet was jolted from sleep, tumbling from the cot onto the solitary cement floor of his isolated prison cell.
Alone for what felt like forever, that bloodcaller disgraced was sure he’d just fucking snapped. He wasn’t sure if that was Eoran in his head or if he was just hearing his brother’s voice to feel alive, to feel human,
to feel anything at all.
Six months in the hole for not signing the Legathien offer that would see him, in some ways, free.
But the cost,
the cost,
the fucking
cost.
Picking himself up off the floor, Kaden dumped himself back on the cot, back to the wall with his eyes tracing repetitive lines into the cinder blocks.
If it was Eoran, he needed to tell him—
tell him everything.
Gods, the Toriet line was fucked.
“…Eo?” The syllables were tentative. He would never actually get used to this.
That’s right
Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you—
just wanted to be sure you were listening.
Just wanted to be sure that I’d reach you.
Silent in sound but raucous in thought, the boy picked his chin up and scanned the darkness beyond him and Kasse without really seeing it. He was peering through the window in his mind’s eye, face an unimpressed grimace at his brother’s drab surroundings.
Where are you, your dorm?
Look around, I want to see.
“Eo…” Kaden was so ashamed that this was where his brother had found him—
caged.
“Eo, I’m in prison. Port Haven thinks I murdered someone—they convicted me for a murder I didn’t commit. Where are you? I’ve written you letters, so many fucking letters, Eoran. But I guess it makes sense that you haven’t gotten anything. Did I really think that letters would get to leave this fucking place?”
“What?!” A yelp into the night. Eoran briefly sat up straight, but then slumped back down.
I’m in Ossa. I got—
Well, look… it doesn’t really matter.
How long have you been in prison?
When’s the last time you saw mom & dad?
Are they allowed to visit?
Kaden—they’re not going to execute you, are they?
Who died?
Do you know who killed them?
Kasse jumped a little, having already settled into his impromptu watch shift. His gaze shifted between Eoran’s unseeing trance state and the wilderness around them.
The phantom soldier and all his winding thoughts, unwelcoming staircases that shifted trajectories to nowhere in his mind, hoped Eoran was getting the answers he needed.
Across the distance, locked away, Kaden had his head in his hands—still speaking aloud despite his brother’s presence in his head.
“A professor Augustine—I haven’t seen them since the trial. They won’t let visitors in. Eo, I think…”
The elder of the Toriet boys swallowed, forced himself into silence.
I haven’t seen them since the trial, Mom just looked so heartbroken—
like I was being mutilated right in front of her, publicly executed in her arms .
She was wringing her hands the way she always did when one of us was out past curfew,
frightened but ready to raze the city to the ground if we didn’t walk through the door.
Dad was just… somewhere else.
When we spoke, he said that the gift runs in the blood and that Amstead knows it,
Port Haven knows it. He told me he was gonna take Mom somewhere so they could stay safe .
I’m so fucking scared Eo, I don’t know where they are or if they’re safe or if they’re even alive.
The only visitors I get are from Reva Corp and I’ve refused their sponsorship offer so many times
I think they’re leaving me to rot in solitary till I die or they suppress me or they decide to
execute me or I don’t know what the fucktodoVaronianfuckingtakemealready.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here.
Every day is the same. Cement walls.
No daylight. No dark.
I’m going to die here, Eoran.
Eoran’s heart was either still in the process of breaking, or the pieces were coming to settle in the pit of his chest. He couldn’t tell which hurt from what enough to make sense of his feelings. The boy in the wilderness drank in the landscape after catching Kasse in his briefly distracted sights.
Take a deep breath, Kaden.
Get out of your head and into mine—
Look through me and see the stars scattered across the sky, the moon a gentle valley in the infinite night, open spaces and an eternal expanse of light-flecked shadow. Come outside while you can.
… My combat pay was going to mom and dad, but I don’t know what the status of that is since I’ve been MIA. Maybe they’re okay… I hope they are. I don’t have any way of checking right now, but I’ll try to get some answers in time, so hold on for me. Will you?
Kaden, what’s this sponsorship about?
Eyes still closed, legs crossed, Kaden almost seemed meditative in that tiny cell and it’s tally marked walls.
I don’t know what they want. But it’s not good, Eo,
Reva Corp make weapons. They own the Trenchants.
If they are offering me something, it is not worth taking—
and if they’re offering it now
it’s because they put me here.
In their coalescing mindscape, Kaden was right there
right fucking there
so close to freedom, so close to contact that it made his body back in solitary dry heave at the taunting.
It was so beautiful,
so cruel,
so…
But Eo, I’m not going anywhere.
What do you mean MIA?
Why are you out here?
What happened?
The cast shadow hollow of Kaden inspected the theoretical Eoran, his mimic hands a millimeter away from comforting his little brother so far from everything in that wide open desert.
Who are you with?
“That’s Kasse. I’m in love with him.” Eo found his lover again, stared at him with eyes that held the weight of a full audience.
Our campsite was ambushed and a group freedom fighters kidnapped us. We’ve been out here for… I don’t know, maybe a month?
But it’s been hard, Kaden, just trying to survive in an environment that is so set on seeing you dead.
I shot a man in the head shortly after our capture, and I can still see it in my head like I just turned away from it.
We want to run away and never look back to Port Haven or Amstead, but I… can’t. Not like this, not now. I feel like I’m being crushed from all sides. Kasse has never had a family, so I don’t know how to explain to him how it feels that mine is slowly being obliterated. I’ve done nothing but hurt him these past few days—do you see it? Look at him, the bend in his lips. It’s in the corners.
Kaden, is our blood cursed or did we just fuck up?
Hearing his name aloud with such a pronounced statement, Kasse knew he wasn’t being spoken to—just spoken about. He pressed his lips together to stifle the brief curl that tugged at their corner as he glanced sidelong at Eo, leaning close enough to trespass his lover’s hand in silence.
Their disagreement did nothing to tarnish the way he felt,
the way he belonged with Eoran, in between him,
to him.
I don’t know what’s wrong with us, Eoran,
I’m just fighting to stay sane, to stay alive.
I’ve got another month in the hole—
I don’t know if I can do this.
I can’t do this.
I didn’t do this.
I can’t.
Kaden’s mind shot back into his cinderblock prison, cold and desperate, defeat cloying at the edges of his vision. Was this really what was going to break him? End him? He remained motionless, the mismatched black of his eyes dead in the dim light, the triangular implant at the base of his neck blinking red, its wireframe spider legs wrapped greedily around his nervous system. It finally sensed the faintest hints of utility coursing through his distant mind.
You can’t come home.
You have to survive.
You have to run.
For me, Eo.
Stay away.
This city is going to kill me.
It will kill you too.
Please, Eo.
Listen to me.
Just this once, do as I say.
This one fucking thing—for me.
Please, Eo.
Please.
Eoran’s head sharply turned to the side, intent on hiding the emotion that was welling in his eyes, the furious crimson that was coloring his cheeks. He was mute again, but in the echochamber of his head…
The youngest of the Toriet line was a scream unbridled; a meltdown in bloom.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
NO.
Not you too.
How can you say this?
How can you fucking DO THIS to me? how
how
how can you YOU’RE THE SMART ONE how
how how
how
can you do this
how how
how can you YOU’RE THE RESPONSIBLE ONE how can you
how can you fucking do this
how
how
how how
how how can you do this
how how can you say this to me
how
when you know fucking well
that i cannot
leave you
or mom
or dad
to fucking
R O T
in that shithole fucking city
while i live my life??????????
PRESUMABLY FUCKING HAPPY
WHILE YOU ARE MISERABLE
you all
OR DEAD?!
a f t e r a l L Y O U J U S T S A I D
after all you just said
are you insane????
how how can you do this
how can you say this to me
how
how how
how
do
you
expect me
to live with
MYSELF?
Kasse felt Eoran’s quake in his bones. It started as a tremor in their connected hands, rattled up his phalanx till it shook through his wrist, in time across radius and ulna, his joints aching with the weight of the other boy’s transparent suffering. It sagged into his shoulders, seeped through him like the cold of the avalanche, atomic caress still lingering between their lungs.
Unconscious, the older boy was pulling the younger into his arms, nose to the curve of his neck, warm breath a quiet reminder, transposed between their skin—
I’m still here still here
still here still here
and i’m not going anywhere without you.
The convict, so remote, was in a similar state, eyes closed with his jaw clenched tight, masseter jumping at his mandible with every shudder in his borrowed breath. There was no one to see him there—and even if there was, he’d spent so many days and even more nights caught between rage and sorrow, self hatred flowing like the blood he used to call. He could feel the implant sparking to life, gaging his output, teasing apart what was him and what was someone else.
How could he let Eoran go? His voice, even in his flaying howls, was the only bright point he’d spotted in his long drag through the grey. To know he would lose him soon, that time was short—how could he say everything that needed to be said—how would he—
He loves you, Eoran.
I’m so happy for you.
I wish we could go back to when we opened that fucking letter.
I wish we’d burned it instead.
I’m sorry.
I’m getting emotional.
I don’t know when I’ll hear from you again.
I miss you.
I l—
An electric pain ripped through both the Toriet boys, knocking their link out of line.
As he felt his world slowly slipping out of his grasp, Eoran sunk into Kasse’s hold, buried his head into his shoulder. When the shock of him and his brother’s severance came, he let out a cry into the rags that boy wore—defeated, and injured, and freshly broken by the unjust cruelty of the world they lived in. It was a noise that came from deep within, born out of a desire to not have their connection cut, but unable to do anything about it; handicapped, even in his own body, and feeling the kickback of that long distance punishment ringing in static dissonance, a waveform force of voltaic misery on the rebound between his ears.
aaaAA“AAH!“
His mind ricocheted in the emptiness of their reality. Eoran didn’t push away from the other boy, but he sat upright and inhaled deep. His eyes were wide in the dark, glossy… glistening, cheeks traversed by slipshod rivers mussed by old cloth. He felt new in his marred emergence, raw and transmuted too much, too fast,
but what was there to really do about that
other than sit there
and soundlessly
sob.