Soulwoven

Chapter Thirty-Six

~36~

The shadows wrapped cold and deep around Cole Jin’s shoulders. The splintered, chipped wood behind him bit damply into his back. The stars hung white and distant overhead, and the rigging below them creaked lonely in the wind. His nose was sore, his ribs were bruised, and he couldn’t find a comfortable position against the battered starboard rail of the Rokwet’s forecastle.

So he stood.

He stood, and he ignored the tension in his shoulders and the soreness in his arms. He watched his brother spill his heart all over the bloodstained decking and get walked all over by the only girl he’d ever loved.

And he listened to his brother say things that seemed to scare even Ryse.

Cole didn’t move, and he didn’t make a sound. But the wind changed direction ever so slightly, and as Ryse left and Litnig turned to put his back against the cold, Cole saw his brother spot him.

Litnig’s face went pale. His body tensed. Cole watched the question, Yenor’s eye, did he hear? float over him like a cloud waiting to burst.

So he burst it.

“I saw the dragon too, once,” Cole said. “In my dreams, the night the first two heart dragons were broken.” He placed his hands on the rail and heaved himself onto it. His legs dangled over the deck. His back faced the sea and the stars. “I didn’t think it was such a big deal.”

The last bit was a lie. Sometimes, the memory still terrified him.

But with time that fear was growing dimmer and colder, buried beneath the thousand things that had happened since.

Litnig limped forward and leaned on the rail next to Cole. His chin bedded down on his sleeves. The wind ruffled his hair.

The cold and damp of the wood began to make its way into Cole’s buttocks.

But Cole didn’t move.

“I should’ve told her sooner,” Litnig mumbled.

“Screw that,” Cole said. “What could she have done? What’s she going to do?” Litnig didn’t answer, so Cole answered for him. “Nothing.”

Litnig’s eyes shone gray and cold as the stars above. He grunted noncommittally.

The ship creaked and moaned. The water splashed in gentle rhythm against its keel. And in the spaces left by the music of the sea, comfortable silence hung between Cole and his brother, buoyed by long years during which they’d always shared each other’s secrets. Sometimes reluctantly, sometimes of necessity, sometimes by accident—but always.

“You know you owe me one, right Cole? That’s the rule.”

Cole rolled his eyes. ‘The rule’ said that every secret one brother yielded up by accident had to be answered by the other. Cole had been the one to invent it, when he was ten, and it had come back to bite him in the ass more often than not ever since.

“C’mon. I didn’t mean for you to hear me asking about Leramis like that. Even it up.”

Cole stared into space. The wind caught his hair and curled it around his ears.

The mop on top of his head had grown longer over the journey. He’d have cut it already, but he had a sneaking suspicion that Dil liked it that way.

“Alright, I’m scared. How’s that?”

Litnig laughed. “Call that a secret?”

Cole turned to face his brother and flushed. Maybe it didn’t seem like a secret, but it was. Or at least there was one underneath it. Cole had been afraid before—of the nightmares he’d had as a child, of his father’s hands, of injury in street brawls and death itself in the tunnels beneath Aleana—but this was different. This was terror of not knowing what would come next, and of wondering whether he could do everything right and still fail.

Litnig swallowed.

Cole held up a hand.

“Don’t bother.”

Litnig frowned and looked at the deck. His brows fell over his eyes. His lips grew thin and sharpened. It was the look he always got when he was thinking hard.

“Just let me talk, Lit,” Cole said.

And he did. He poured his damn guts out. He talked about realizing that what they were doing was serious, and that they couldn’t give it up. He admitted that it scared the living, bloody, three-eyed daylights out of him. He owned up to the fact that all of a sudden he did have things to care about, like their mother, and Litnig, and Dil, and that it terrified him, and that he hated being afraid.

Litnig nodded with each phrase. The look of concentration never left his face.

And Cole began to feel lighter as he talked. His brother didn’t always have the right words for him, but damn if he didn’t try. Damn if every time Cole had a problem, Litnig didn’t sit there and listen to him talk and try to figure out how to solve it. Cole loved him for that, he realized, maybe more than for anything else.

Cole ran out of things to say. The wind whispered in the sails. The stars winked in the sky. The briny sea kissed the Rokwet’s hull as the ship creaked coldly westward.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Litnig asked. “Being afraid, I mean—if you hate it so much.”

Cole opened his mouth to reply.

And he found he had no answer.

He looked up at the stars, but they were cold and far away, and they had nothing to tell him. He looked down at the sea, but it offered only meaningless whispers against the ship’s sides. He looked back at Litnig and saw only the question. There was no answer waiting behind it.

Cole slid down from the railing and leaned on it next to his brother.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

But he didn’t give up. And he didn’t let his mind feel sorry for itself. He would do something about it. He just didn’t know what yet.

When he opened his eyes, Litnig was grinning at him.

“I think you’ve grown up, little brother,” Litnig said. “Mom will be thrilled.”

“Mom,” Cole groaned. “Yenor’s third, twisting eye—what are we gonna tell her when we get home?”

Litnig snorted. “‘Maybe we’re ready to take over the business.’ ‘Maybe it’s time to settle down.’ I might not even be lying about it by then.” Litnig squeezed Cole’s shoulder reassuringly, but his face looked troubled and gray, like he was starting to think that maybe he couldn’t go back. Ever.

Inhuman. Not natural. Cole had heard the words.

He straightened up and put his arm around his brother’s shoulders.

“Let’s do that then. Promise?”

Litnig nodded, but the smile he gave Cole looked weak and forced. The fear never left his eyes.

And when Cole saw that, something changed. His heart, beating warm and strong within him, felt stronger.

If it was Lit’s turn to be the one with a problem, he would solve it for him.

Because whatever else he was—out of his depth, powerless, petrified—he was still Cole Jin, and nobody could take that away from him.

Ever.

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