A Court of Three Stars

38: Ashes

Ulsan Penninsula, Astra, Solarea

73 years ago

Ler

"Why did you do it?"

I was on my knees in burning embers, but I did not feel the pain. I didn't feel them burn into my armor, melting down the metal, through the leathers, into my skin.

I didn't feel anything at all.

I didn't see anything but Rhys.

He looked the same as ever, perhaps a bit older- but it had been over 400 years, hadn't it? The same typical black suit, out of place on a smoking battlefield, clean skin and wide black wings stretched behind his back. Our father's eyes, our mother's nose, raven black hair glinting in the firelight.

He was perfect. Impossibly so.

And he was staring at me with that look. That maddening, insufferable look he gave whenever he was about to turn some small thing into a grand lesson. Make a single mistake into a broader truth.

It used to irritate me to no end. But now?

Now, I would give anything to see it one more time.

One more lesson. How many times had I begged for it?

"What?" I rasped, my voice cracking like dry kindling.

"Why did you do it, Leur?" He asked again, an exasperated look on his face.

It no longer felt like looking in a mirror, not because he had changed- but because I had.

"Do what?" I tried to remember, to latch onto something solid, but the world existed only in a haze of smoke and ash. "What did I do?"

An almost... disappointed look, "You gave in."

Did I? Was that what this was?

Fire. Smoke. Shadows screaming in my ears.

A choice.

An explosion.

Blood. Mist. Ash. Screaming. Begging.

Merciless.

"Am I dead?" I blinked up at him, "Is that what this is? If I'm dead, why are you here?"

"You're avoiding the question." His response was clinical, detached. His polished boots crunched over the embers as he moved closer. "Why did you do it?

"It was the only way." I said, but it sounded like a lie even to my own ears.

He shook his head, "That's bullshit, and you know it."

He took another step forward, the embers beneath his feet sparking to life, catching light that shouldn't have existed.

"Why, Leur?" he pressed, his voice a blade against my raw, open mind. "Why did you do it?"

He wasn't intending for it to be cruel, I knew that. It didn't matter how much time passed, that wasn't in my brother's nature.

No, he was trying to make me see something, trying to get me to face my own shadows.

The problem wasn't him, it was me .

I didn't want to admit how many people I had just slaughtered, didn't want to admit that my choice made me the very thing I was trying to stop.

He knelt in front of me, holding out a tattooed hand, his voice gentle and low- as if he were speaking to a wounded animal, "Why did you do it, lunet?"