My Brother's Keeper

Prologue

Hi! This is WolfClawsAndWhatNot and I'm new to the writing community on Wattpad. This story is one that is the favorite and most complex of the stories I've written privately.
Enjoy!!!

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She bent low from her place on the high, thin branch. Her cat-like grace allowed her to balance faultlessly as she tilted her head towards the voices in the clearing, a few hundred yards from where she perched in the shadows, like a dark leopard stalking its prey. She had been there for quite some time, waiting for the brothers to appear, until finally, one by one, they emerged gradually from the tree line.

One. Two. Four. She snickered to herself as they left each other's embraces and spun around in confusion. She was enjoying this immensely. More than you should, Mistress had scolded. But Circe didn't care, not even when Mistress had forbidden her anywhere near the Four. She wanted to watch as the chips fell and crashed, no matter the wrath of her Mistress.

"Brother!", cried the youngest of the three petulantly. "Are you present?!"

She watched as satisfaction filled her chest and laughter clogged her throat. The brothers paced, cried and wept as they waited frivolously for their perfect and kind brother to announce himself, clinging on to the edge of hope that he had simply been late; made tardy by some other equally taxing matter. But Circe relished the fact that she knew that deep down, they felt his absence. They felt it and it had only struck them at that very moment.

She watched as the oldest- an arrogant, pompous bastard, in her belief- finally broke his well-maintained composure as he sat on a rock, his head in his hands. His rare moment of vulnerability surprised and pleased her all at once.

"This cannot be", he said in a whisper that would not have reached a mortal's ear- not even in the silence of the Siberian wilderness. "Never has this happened! Not even at the most dire of moments."

"We cannot be completely certain that he is lost! perhaps he...", the golden one's eyes were wide in desperation, and his mouth searching for words that could possibly keep them afloat. He clamped his mouth shut. He could find none.

"Perhaps he what?!", exclaimed the older one viciously. "Perhaps it slipped his mind ? We all know that that is not even the most desperate of possibilities! something has surely happened to him and I intend to know what."

Circe chuckled softly and let herself enjoy the moment of knowing something another does not. It gave her power, and that was enough to satiate her.

She allowed herself one last glance at the youngest- a child, really. His face, once affable and exuberant, was now soulful and shocked. like his heart was being torn out. It was an expression so familiar to her, that she could not bear to look a moment longer.

She strided back silently into her shelter of darkness and melted into the shadows.