Page 76 of When Night Falls
I land my fist across my brother’s jaw line, which only makes him laugh cynically as blood spurts from his mouth.
"Do it again. I fucking dare you." His smirk is taunting. He thinks that I care about his thoughts; that I am not worthy because my mother was not made queen. But the truth of the matter is, I am to be a king. His king.
"Please, you two." Pain haunts Troy's voice. Something that doesn't happen often. She holds herself at an annoyingly high standard of not letting anything faze her. But for some reason, when her brothers fight, she becomes fragile.
I wipe my brother's blood against my white button up, my hand covered in it from tempting to rip his heart clear out of his chest.
"Nothing is ever good enough for you, is it Rivian? You've got a fucking tether in front of you and can't even treat her right.For what reason?" Trav dusts himself off while smearing blood across his jacket, touching his finger to his mouth to assess the damage.
His sudden change of verbal battery from my mother to my fiancé doesn't truly shift my anger, only intensifies it. I don't realize that I react the same to the mention of her that I do my mother. Something visceral charges me; the need to defend her and protect her settles deep inside me.
"Don't fucking speak about Lucynda or it'll be your tongue I pull from your body." I lower my voice when I speak to him, the need to rattle his bones with fear is heavy. And it works, because the fucker doesn't dare open his mouth again.
"And what about you, huh, Trav? Like you're doing any better with Trin?" Troian decides to find her voice again and points the accusation back at her other brother.
"Fuck you. Both of you," he spits as he walks over to my desk. He grabs the bottle I was drinking out of and downs the rest of its contents.
Despite all the fighting and all the disagreements between the three of us, there's a more pressing matter at hand that we both need to be on the same page for. And I need to get to the bottom of what Travois has been up to, if only to clear his name.
"Viktrum is going to call for war." I come straight out with the news that I'm sure none of them knew about. "They found his brother's body, Dominek, sometime in the dark of morning."
"And you're just now telling us this?" Travois' attention seems to stand at full attention now, irritation scratching his voice.
"Where do you go when you're not with Trinity, Travois?" I unbutton my soiled shirt and yanks it from my body, realizing that it smells like Cyn and blood—my senses flood with greed.
Trav hesitates, obvious confliction swimming in his multi-colored eyes.
"Answer him!" Troian demands of him.
He sighs, knowing he's not going to get out of this.
"I go to Valor," his admission doesn't really surprise me. But the need to know why still begs.
"For what reason?"
He seems to think over if he is actually going to feed me that information. Troy grows visibly impatient with him as he makes us wait a beat. I could pull it from him. Entering a Royals mind is not off limits if it’s one Royal to another. But I know he’ll have forced the truth down just like I do my own.
"You better fucking answer me.”
Troy looks at me with slight trepidation or maybe satisfaction. I can’t tell with his sinister reserve holding in his emotions like a caged animal.
"I visit someone there." Is all he says.
"Who?"
Again. More silence.
The tension in the room is like a thick layer of fog. It's almost unbreathable.
"Travois, this is serious. Who are you visiting?" Troian shouts at him.
"I visit our mother."
Troy’s gasp is audible. Her whole body language changes from controlled to having an addled brain, causing her to need to hold herself up by palming the surface closest to her.
"She's alive?" Her breathing is scarce as she looks between her seemingly oppugnant brother, the floor, and me.
"How long?" I ask, nothing giving my feelings away. I express no concern, or shock, or anger, or anything of the sort.